1 tn Heb “I will place them [on? as?] rafts in the sea to the place where you designate to me.” This may mean he would send them by raft, or that he would tie them in raft-like bundles, and have ships tow them down to an Israelite port.
2 tn Heb “smash them,” i.e., untie the bundles.
3 tn Heb “as for you, you will satisfy my desire by giving food for my house.”
4 tc Many Hebrew
5 tn Heb “the eyes of all Israel are upon you to declare to them who will sit on the throne of my master the king after him.”
7 tn Heb “and you, hear [from] heaven and act and judge your servants by declaring the guilty to be guilty, to give his way on his head, and to declare the innocent to be innocent, to give to him according to his innocence.”
10 tn Heb “As for you, if you walk before me, as David your father walked, in integrity of heart and in uprightness, by doing all which I commanded you, [and] you keep my rules and my regulations.” Verse 4 is actually a lengthy protasis (“if” section) of a conditional sentence, the apodosis (“then” section) of which appears in v. 5.
13 tn Heb “made our yoke burdensome.”
14 tn Heb “but you, now, lighten the burdensome work of your father and the heavy yoke which he placed on us, and we will serve you.” In the Hebrew text the prefixed verbal form with vav (וְנַעַבְדֶךָ, [vÿna’avdekha] “and we will serve you”) following the imperative (הָקֵל [haqel], “lighten”) indicates purpose (or result). The conditional sentence used in the translation above is an attempt to bring out the logical relationship between these forms.
16 tn Heb “the God.”
17 tn Heb “that you are turning their heart[s] back.”
19 tn The Hebrew verbal forms could be imperatives (“Disguise yourself and enter”), but this would make no sense in light of the immediately following context. The forms are better interpreted as infinitives absolute functioning as cohortatives. See IBHS 594 §35.5.2a. Some prefer to emend the forms to imperfects.
22 tn Heb “listen to the request of your servant and your people Israel which they are praying concerning this place.”
23 tn Heb “and you, hear inside your dwelling place, inside heaven.” The precise nuance of the preposition אֶל (’el), used here with the verb “hear,” is unclear. One expects the preposition “from,” which appears in the parallel text in 2 Chr 6:21. The nuance “inside; among” is attested for אֶל (see Gen 23:19; 1 Sam 10:22; Jer 4:3), but in each case a verb of motion is employed with the preposition, unlike 1 Kgs 8:30. The translation above (“from inside”) is based on the demands of the immediate context rather than attested usage elsewhere.
24 tn Heb “hear and forgive.”
25 tn The translation understands כִּי (ki) in an emphatic or asseverative sense.
26 tn Heb “the good way in which they should walk.”
27 tn Or “for an inheritance.”
28 tn The words “their sin” are added for clarification.
29 tn Heb “and act and give to each one according to all his ways because you know his heart.” In the Hebrew text vv. 37-39a actually contain one lengthy conditional sentence, which the translation has divided up for stylistic reasons.
30 tn Heb “Indeed you know, you alone, the heart of all the sons of mankind.”
31 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Rehoboam) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
32 tn Heb “Your father made our yoke heavy, but make it lighter upon us.”
33 tn Heb “My little one is thicker than my father’s hips.” The referent of “my little one” is not clear. The traditional view is that it refers to the little finger. As the following statement makes clear, Rehoboam’s point is that he is more harsh and demanding than his father.
34 tn Heb “And you, you muster an army like the one that fell from you, horse like horse and chariot like chariot.”
35 tn Heb “he listened to their voice and did so.”