¹ tn Heb “and Jehoram arose over the kingdom of his father and strengthened himself.”

² tn Heb “and he killed all his brothers with the sword.”

³ tn Heb “and they placed hands on her, and she went through the entrance of the gate of the horses [into] the house of the king.” Some English versions treat the phrase “gate of the horses” as the name of the gate (“the Horse Gate”; e.g., NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).

⁴ tn The parallel account in 2 Kgs 15:1-8 has the variant spelling “Azariah.”

⁵ tn Heb “the loot.” The pronoun (“it”) has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy.

⁶ map For location see Map2 B1; Map4 D3; Map5 E2; Map6 A4; Map7 C1.

⁷ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

⁸ tn Or “temple.”

⁹ tn Heb “in Babylon.” Repeating the proper name “Babylon” here would be redundant in contemporary English, so “there” has been used in the translation.

¹⁰ tn Heb “to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah.”

¹¹ tn Or “accepted.”

¹² sn According to Lev 25:4, the land was to remain uncultivated every seventh year. Lev 26:33-35 warns that the land would experience a succession of such sabbatical rests if the people disobeyed God, for he would send them away into exile.

¹³ sn Concerning the seventy years see Jer 25:11.

¹⁴ tn Heb “all the days of the desolation it rested to fulfill the seventy years.”

sn Cyrus’ edict (see vv. 22-23) occurred about fifty years after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 b.c., which is most naturally understood as the beginning point of the “days of desolation” mentioned in v. 21. The number “seventy” is probably used in a metaphorical sense, indicating a typical lifetime and suggesting a thorough or complete judgment that would not be lifted until an entirely new generation emerged.