Discovery Box2 Kings 8:21 
Context8:21 Joram 1 crossed over to Zair with all his chariots. The Edomites, who had surrounded him, attacked at night and defeated him and his chariot officers. 2 The Israelite army retreated to their homeland. 3
2 Kings 9:14
Context9:14 Then Jehu son of Jehoshaphat son of Nimshi conspired against Joram.
Now Joram had been in Ramoth Gilead with the whole Israelite army, 4 guarding against an invasion by King Hazael of Syria.
2 Kings 13:25
Context13:25 Jehoahaz’s son Jehoash took back from 5 Ben Hadad son of Hazael the cities that he had taken from his father Jehoahaz in war. Joash defeated him three times and recovered the Israelite cities.
2 Kings 14:28
Context14:28 The rest of the events of Jeroboam’s reign, including all his accomplishments, his military success in restoring Israelite control over Damascus and Hamath, are recorded in the scroll called the Annals of the Kings of Israel. 6
2 Kings 23:18
Context23:18 The king 7 said, “Leave it alone! No one must touch his bones.” So they left his bones undisturbed, as well as the bones of the Israelite prophet buried beside him. 8
1 sn Joram is a short form of the name Jehoram.
2 tn Heb “and he arose at night and defeated Edom, who had surrounded him, and the chariot officers.” The Hebrew text as it stands gives the impression that Joram was surrounded and launched a victorious night counterattack. It would then be quite natural to understand the last statement in the verse to refer to an Edomite retreat. Yet v. 22 goes on to state that the Edomite revolt was successful. Therefore, if the MT is retained, it may be better to understand the final statement in v. 21 as a reference to an Israelite retreat (made in spite of the success described in the preceding sentence). The translation above assumes an emendation of the Hebrew text. Adding a third masculine singular pronominal suffix to the accusative sign before Edom (reading אֶתוֹ [’eto], “him,” instead of just אֶת [’et]) and taking Edom as the subject of verbs allows one to translate the verse in a way that is more consistent with the context, which depicts an Israelite defeat, not victory. There is, however, no evidence for this emendation.
3 tn Heb “and the people fled to their tents.”
4 tn Heb “he and all Israel.”
5 tn Heb “from the hand of.”
6 tn Heb “As for the rest of the events of Jeroboam, and all which he did and his strength, [and] how he fought and how he restored Damascus and Hamath to Judah in Israel, are they not written on the scroll of the events of the days of the kings of Israel?” The phrase “to Judah” is probably not original; it may be a scribal addition by a Judahite scribe who was trying to link Jeroboam’s conquests with the earlier achievements of David and Solomon, who ruled in Judah. The Syriac Peshitta has simply “to Israel.” M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 162) offer this proposal, but acknowledge that it is “highly speculative.”
7 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
8 tn Heb “and they left undisturbed his bones, the bones of the prophet who came from Samaria.” If the phrase “the bones of the prophet” were appositional to “his bones,” one would expect the sentence to end “from Judah” (see v. 17). Apparently the “prophet” referred to in the second half of the verse is the old prophet from Bethel who buried the man of God from Judah in his own tomb and instructed his sons to bury his bones there as well (1 Kgs 13:30-31). One expects the text to read “from Bethel,” but “Samaria” (which was not even built at the time of the incident recorded in 1 Kgs 13) is probably an anachronistic reference to the northern kingdom in general. See the note at 1 Kgs 13:32 and the discussion in M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 290.
