¹ tn Heb “and he arose and went and came to Samaria.”

¹ tn Heb “and there was a great famine in Samaria.”

² tn Heb “went up from Tirzah and arrived in Samaria and attacked Shallum son of Jabesh in Samaria.”

¹ tn Heb “and the king died and he came to Samaria, and they buried the king in Samaria.”

² sn King Ahab of Samaria. Samaria, as the capital of the northern kingdom, here stands for the nation of Israel.

¹ sn The precious metal used by Samaria’s pagan worship centers to make idols is compared to a prostitute’s wages because Samaria had been unfaithful to the Lord and prostituted herself to pagan gods such as Baal.

¹ tn Grk “town of Samaria.” The noun Σαμαρείας (Samareias) has been translated as an attributive genitive.

³ sn This is the only mention of Samaritans or Samaria in the Gospel of Matthew.

² tn Heb “and the people, all of them, knew; Ephraim and the residents of Samaria.”

² sn In vv. 24-29 Samaria stands for the entire northern kingdom of Israel.

¹ tn Heb “and they saw, and look, [they were] in the middle of Samaria.”

² tn Heb “and he went up and besieged Samaria and fought against it.”

⁴ tn Heb “Is it not Samaria?” The capital city, Samaria, represents the policies of the government and trend-setting behaviors of her people. The rhetorical question expects a positive answer, “Yes, it is.”

² tn Heb “if the dirt of Samaria suffices for the handfuls of all the people who are at my feet.”

⁴ tn Heb “the city”; this probably refers to the city of Samaria (cf. 6:1), which in turn, by metonymy, represents the entire northern kingdom.

¹ map For the location of Samaria see Map2 B1; Map4 D3; Map5 E2; Map6 A4; Map7 C1.

² tn Heb “the beauty of his splendor.” In the translation the masculine pronoun (“his”) has been replaced by “its” because the referent (the “crown”) is the city of Samaria.

¹ sn In Hosea the name “Ephraim” does not refer to the tribe but to the region of Mount Ephraim, where the royal residence of Samaria was located. It functions as a synecdoche of location (Mount Ephraim) for its inhabitants (the king of Samaria; e.g., 5:13; 8:8, 10).

³ tn Heb “that they rescued Samaria from my hand?” But this gives the impression that the gods of Sepharvaim were responsible for protecting Samaria, which is obviously not the case. The implied subject of the plural verb “rescued” must be the generic “gods of the nations/lands” (vv. 18, 20).

³ tn Heb “that they rescued Samaria from my hand?” But this gives the impression that the gods of Sepharvaim were responsible for protecting Samaria, which is obviously not the case. The implied subject of the plural verb “rescued” must be the generic “gods of the nations/lands” (vv. 33, 35).