27:3 He built the Upper Gate to the Lord’s temple and did a lot of work on the wall in the area known as Ophel. 1 27:4 He built cities in the hill country of Judah and fortresses and towers in the forests.
27:5 He launched a military campaign 2 against the king of the Ammonites and defeated them. That year the Ammonites paid him 100 talents 3 of silver, 10,000 kors 4 of wheat, and 10,000 kors 5 of barley. The Ammonites also paid this same amount of annual tribute the next two years. 6
27:6 Jotham grew powerful because he was determined to please the Lord his God. 7
1 tn Heb “wall of Ophel.” See HALOT 861 s.v. II עֹפֶל.
2 tn Heb “he fought with.”
3 tn The Hebrew word כִּכַּר (kikar, “circle”) refers generally to something that is round. When used of metals it can refer to a disk-shaped weight made of the metal or, by extension, to a standard unit of weight. According to the older (Babylonian) standard the “talent” weighed 130 lbs. (58.9 kg), but later this was lowered to 108.3 lbs. (49.1 kg). More recent research suggests the “light” standard talent was 67.3 lbs. (30.6 kg). Using this as the standard for calculation, the weight of the silver was 6,730 lbs. (3,060 kg).
4 sn As a unit of dry measure a kor was roughly equivalent to six bushels (about 220 liters).
5 tn Heb “10,000 kors of wheat and 10,000 of barley.” The unit of measure of the barley is omitted in the Hebrew text, but is understood to be “kors,” the same as the measures of wheat.
6 tn Heb “This the sons of Ammon brought to him, and in the second year and the third.”
7 tn Heb “because he established his ways before the