2:23 King Solomon then swore an oath by the Lord, “May God judge me severely, 1 if Adonijah does not pay for this request with his life! 2
1 tn Heb “So may God do to me, and so may he add.”
2 tn Heb “if with his life Adonijah has not spoken this word.”
3 tn Heb “and now my father placed upon you a heavy yoke, but I will add to your yoke.”
4 tn Heb “My father punished you with whips, but I will punish you with scorpions.” “Scorpions” might allude to some type of torture using poisonous insects, but more likely it refers to a type of whip that inflicts an especially biting, painful wound. Cf. CEV “whips with pieces of sharp metal.”
5 tn Heb “Ahab”; the proper name has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation for stylistic reasons.