2 Kings 23:29

23:29 During Josiah’s reign Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt marched toward ¹  the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to fight him, but Necho ²  killed him at Megiddo ³  when he saw him.

2 Kings 23:33-34

23:33 Pharaoh Necho imprisoned him in Riblah in the land of Hamath and prevented him from ruling in Jerusalem. ⁴  He imposed on the land a special tax ⁵  of one hundred talents ⁶  of silver and a talent of gold. 23:34 Pharaoh Necho made Josiah’s son Eliakim king in Josiah’s place, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. He took Jehoahaz to Egypt, where he died. ⁷ 

---

¹ tn Heb “went up to.” The idiom עַל…עָלָה (’alah …’al) can sometimes mean “go up against,” but here it refers to Necho’s attempt to aid the Assyrians in their struggle with the Babylonians.

² tn Heb “he”; the referent (Necho) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

³ map For location see Map1-D4; Map2-C1; Map4-C2; Map5-F2; Map7-B1.

⁴ tc The consonantal text (Kethib) has “when [he was] ruling in Jerusalem,” but the marginal reading (Qere), which has support from Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Latin witnesses, has “[preventing him] from ruling in Jerusalem.”

⁵ tn Or “fine.”

⁶ tn The Hebrew term כִּכָּר (kikkar, “circle”) refers generally to something that is round. When used of metals it can refer to a disk-shaped weight made of the metal or to a standard unit of weight, generally regarded as a talent. Since the accepted weight for a talent of metal is about 75 pounds, this would have amounted to about 7,500 pounds of silver and 75 pounds of gold (cf. NCV, NLT); CEV “almost four tons of silver and about seventy-five pounds of gold.”

⁷ tn Heb “and he took Jehoahaz, and he came to Egypt and he died there.”