¹ tn Heb “which the Syrians inflicted [on] him.”

¹ tn Heb “which the Syrians inflicted [on] him.”

¹ tn Heb “and the king sent [them] after the Syrian camp.”

¹ tn Heb “they”; the referent (the Syrians) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

³ tn Heb “they”; the referent (the Syrians) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

² tn Or “this nation,” perhaps emphasizing the strength of the Syrian army.

¹ sn Rimmon was the Syrian storm god. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 65.

⁴ tn Heb “because he was sick,” presumably referring to the wounds he received in the battle with the Syrians.

² tn Heb “Look, my master spared this Syrian Naaman by not taking from his hand what he brought.”

¹ tn Grk “And they”; “they” is probably an indefinite plural, referring to people in general rather than to the Syrians (cf. v. 25).

² sn The precise identity of this would-be puppet king is unknown. He may have been a Syrian official or the ruler of one of the small neighboring states. See Y. Aharoni, Land of the Bible, 370.

¹ sn Modern scholars identify this creature with the rock badger (the Syrian hyrax), a small mammal that lives in the crevices of the rock. Its wisdom consists in its ingenuity to find a place of security.

¹ sn God so confuses the crafty that they are unable to fulfill their plans—it is as if they encounter darkness in broad daylight. This is like the Syrians in 2 Kgs 6:18-23.

³ tc The consonantal text (Kethib), supported by many medieval Hebrew mss, the Syriac version, and some mss of the Targum and Vulgate, read “Syrians” (Heb “Arameans”). The marginal reading (Qere), supported by the LXX, Targums, and Vulgate, reads “Edomites.”

¹ tn Three cities are known by this name in the OT: (1) an Aroer located near the Arnon, (2) an Aroer in Ammon, and (3) an Aroer of Judah. (See BDB 792-93 s.v. עֲרֹעֵר, and HALOT 883 s.v. II עֲרוֹעֵר.) There is no mention of an Aroer in Syrian territory. For this reason some want to emend the text here to עֲזֻבוֹת עָרַיהָ עֲדֵי עַד (ʿazuvot ʿarayha ʿade ʿad, “her cities are permanently abandoned”). However, Aroer near the Arnon was taken by Israel and later conquered by the Syrians. (See Josh 12:2; 13:9, 16; Judg 11:26; 2 Kgs 10:33). This oracle pertains to Israel as well as Syria (note v. 3), so it is possible that this is a reference to Israelite and/or Syrian losses in Transjordan.

⁴ sn The reference to Naaman the Syrian (see 2 Kgs 5:1-24) is another example where an outsider and Gentile was blessed. The stress in the example is the missed opportunity of the people to experience God’s work, but it will still go on without them.

¹ tn It is not clear what the practice of “holding a branch to the nose” indicates. A possible parallel is the Syrian relief of a king holding a flower to his nose as he worships the stars (ANEP 281). See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 1:145-46. The LXX glosses the expression as “Behold, they are like mockers.”

² sn The places have been tentatively identified. W. C. Kaiser summarizes the suggestions that Pi Hahiroth, as an Egyptian word, may mean “temple of the [Syrian god] Hrt” or “The Hir waters of the canal” or “The Dwelling of Hator” (“Exodus,” EBC 2:387; see the literature on these names, including C. DeWit, The Date and Route of the Exodus, 17).

² tc The Hebrew text reads literally, “adversaries of Rezin against him [i.e., them].” The next verse describes how the Syrians (over whom Rezin ruled, see 7:1, 8) and the Philistines encroached on Israel’s territory. Since the Syrians and Israelites were allies by 735 b.c. (see 7:1), the hostilities described probably occurred earlier, while Israel was still pro-Assyrian. In this case one might understand the phrase צָרֵי רְצִין (tsare r^etsin, “adversaries of Rezin”) as meaning “adversaries sent from Rezin.” However, another option, the one chosen in the translation above, is to emend the phrase to צָרָיו (tsarayv, “his [i.e., their] adversaries”). This creates tighter parallelism with the next line (note “his [i.e., their] enemies”). The phrase in the Hebrew text may be explained as virtually dittographic.

¹ tc The reading Σαλά (Sala, “Sala”) is found in the best and earliest witnesses (P⁴ א* B sy^s sa). Almost all the rest of the mss (א² A D L Θ Ψ 0102 [ƒ^1,13] 33 M latt sy^p,h bo) have Σαλμών (Salmōn, “Salmon”), an assimilation to Matt 1:4-5 and 1 Chr 2:11 (LXX). “In view of the early tradition that Luke was a Syrian of Antioch it is perhaps significant that the form Σαλά appears to embody a Syriac tradition” (TCGNT 113).