¹ tn Heb “from Gibeon until you enter Gezer.”

¹ tn Heb “and they camped against Gibeon and fought against it.”

¹ sn The tabernacle was located in Gibeon; see 1 Chr 21:29.

¹ sn In the same way he had appeared to him at Gibeon. See 1 Kgs 3:5.

¹ tn Heb “the many [or great] waters.” This is generally identified with the pool of Gibeon mentioned in 2 Sam 2:13.

² sn This probably alludes to the Lord’s victory over the Canaanites at Gibeon, during the days of Joshua. See Josh 10:10-11.

¹ tn Heb “and Solomon came from the high place which was in Gibeon [to] Jerusalem, from before the tent of meeting, and he reigned over Israel.”

¹ tn Heb “and Joshua struck them down, from Kadesh Barnea even to Gaza, and all the land of Goshen, even to Gibeon.”

² tn Heb “he.” The referent is probably Israel (mentioned at the end of the previous sentence in the verse; cf. NIV, NRSV), but it is also possible that the Lord should be understood as the referent (cf. NASB “and He slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon”), or even Joshua (cf. NEB “and Joshua defeated them utterly in Gibeon”).

¹ tn The parallel passage in Josh 21:17 adds “Gibeon and its pasturelands” (cf. NAB, NIV, NCV, NLT). The words “they were allotted” are supplied in the translation for both clarity and stylistic reasons.

² tc The LXX reads “at Gibeon on the mountain of the Lord” (cf. 21:9). The present translation follows the MT, although a number of recent English translations follow the LXX reading here (e.g., NAB, NRSV, NLT).

² sn This refers to the small remnant of people who were left of those from Mizpah who had been taken captive by Ishmael after he had killed Gedaliah and who had been rescued from him at Gibeon. There were other Judeans still left in the land of Judah who had not been killed or deported by the Babylonians.

³ tn Heb “And it happened in that year in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fourth year, in the fifth month, Hananiah son of Azzur, the prophet, who was from Gibeon, said to me in…” The sentence has been broken up in conformity with contemporary English style and the flavor given in modern equivalent terms.

² sn Geruth Kimham is nowhere else mentioned in the Bible, and its precise location is unknown. Many commentators, relating the second part of the name to the name of the son of David’s benefactor when he fled from Absalom (2 Sam 19:38-39), see this as a reference to an estate that David assigned this son as reward for his father’s largess. Gibeon was about six miles northwest of Jerusalem, and Benjamin is approximately the same distance southwest of it. Hence, the people mentioned here had not traveled all that far.

² tn The term “pool” (בְּרֵכָה, b^erekhah) usually refers to a man-made artificial water reservoir fed by water aqueducts rather than to a natural pond (HALOT 161 s.v.). For example, it is used in reference to man-made water reservoirs for the royal gardens (Eccl 2:6; Neh 2:14); man-made water reservoirs in Jerusalem, some of which were fed by aqueducts (2 Kgs 18:17; 20:20; Isa 7:3; 22:9, 11; 36:2; Neh 3:15, 16); the pool of Gibeon (2 Sam 2:13); the pool of Hebron (2 Sam 4:12); the pool of Samaria (1 Kgs 22:38); and the pools of Heshbon (Song 7:5). The pool of Siloam, built by Hezekiah and fed by the underground aqueduct known as Hezekiah’s Tunnel, is designated by the term בְּרֵכָה in 2 Kgs 20:20 and the Siloam Inscription (line 5).

¹ tn Verses 16-18a are a long, complex sentence in the Hebrew text with some rather awkward placements of qualifying terms. In the Hebrew text these verses read, “41:16 And he took, Johanan…and all the army officers with him, all the people who were left alive that he [Johanan] had taken back from Ishmael son of Nethaniah from Mizpah after he [Ishmael] had killed Gedaliah…men, men of war, and women and children and court officials that he [Johanan] had brought back from Gibeon, 41:17 and they went and stayed at Geruth Kimham…to go to enter Egypt 41:18 because of the Chaldeans, because they were afraid of them because Ishmael…” The sentence has been broken down and restructured to reflect all the relevant data in shorter sentences that better conform with contemporary English style. There are a couple of places where the text and syntax are debated. Many modern English versions and commentaries read, “They led off/took control of/took all survivors of the people whom Ishmael…had taken captive [reading שָׁבָה אֹתָם (shavah ʾotam) in place of הֵשִׁיב מֵאֵת (heshiv meʾet), “whom he (Johanan) had taken back/rescued from Ishmael] from Mizpah after he had…” This is a decidedly smoother text, but there is no manuscript or versional evidence for it, and so it has been rejected here. Some commentators and English versions see the words “men of war” (“soldiers”) following the word “men” as appositional to that word and hence see only one category. However, there are no parallels to these words used in this kind of apposition. So the translation reflects two categories.