2 Kings 1:10

1:10 Elijah replied to the captain, 1  “If I am indeed a prophet, may fire come down from the sky and consume you and your fifty soldiers!” Fire then came down 2  from the sky and consumed him and his fifty soldiers.

2 Kings 1:12

1:12 Elijah replied to them, 3  “If I am indeed a prophet, may fire come down from the sky and consume you and your fifty soldiers!” Fire from God 4  came down from the sky and consumed him and his fifty soldiers.

2 Kings 10:26

10:26 They hauled out the sacred pillar of the temple of Baal and burned it.

2 Kings 10:28

10:28 So Jehu eradicated Baal worship 5  from Israel.

2 Kings 11:4

11:4 In the seventh year Jehoiada summoned 6  the officers of the units of hundreds of the Carians 7  and the royal bodyguard. 8  He met with them 9  in the Lord’s temple. He made an agreement 10  with them and made them swear an oath of allegiance in the Lord’s temple. Then he showed them the king’s son.

2 Kings 15:16

15:16 At that time Menahem came from Tirzah and attacked Tiphsah. He struck down all who lived in the city and the surrounding territory, because they would not surrender. 11  He even ripped open the pregnant women.

2 Kings 17:15

17:15 They rejected his rules, the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and the laws he had commanded them to obey. 12  They paid allegiance to 13  worthless idols, and so became worthless to the Lord. 14  They copied the practices of the surrounding nations in blatant disregard of the Lord’s command. 15 

2 Kings 17:26

17:26 The king of Assyria was told, 16  “The nations whom you deported and settled in the cities of Samaria do not know the requirements of the God of the land, so he has sent lions among them. They are killing the people 17  because they do not know the requirements of the God of the land.”

2 Kings 21:13

21:13 I will destroy Jerusalem the same way I did Samaria 18  and the dynasty of Ahab. 19  I will wipe Jerusalem clean, just as one wipes a plate on both sides. 20 

2 Kings 24:2

24:2 The Lord sent against him Babylonian, Syrian, Moabite, and Ammonite raiding bands; he sent them to destroy Judah, as he had warned he would do through his servants the prophets. 21 

2 Kings 25:13

25:13 The Babylonians broke the two bronze pillars in the Lord’s temple, as well as the movable stands and the big bronze basin called the “The Sea.” 22  They took the bronze to Babylon.

1 tn Heb “answered and said to the officer of fifty.”

2 tn Wordplay contributes to the irony here. The king tells Elijah to “come down” (Hebrew יָרַד, yarad), but Elijah calls fire down (יָרַד) on the arrogant king’s officer.

3 tc Two medieval Hebrew mss, the LXX, and the Syriac Peshitta have the singular “to him.”

4 tn Or “intense fire.” The divine name may be used idiomatically to emphasize the intensity of the fire. Whether one translates אֱלֹהִים (’elohim) here as a proper name or idiomatically, this addition to the narrative (the name is omitted in the first panel, v. 10b) emphasizes the severity of the judgment and is appropriate given the more intense command delivered by the king to the prophet in this panel.

5 tn Heb “destroyed Baal.”

7 tn Heb “Jehoiada sent and took.”

8 sn The Carians were apparently a bodyguard, probably comprised of foreigners. See HALOT 497 s.v. כָּרִי and M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 126.

9 tn Heb “the runners.”

10 tn Heb “he brought them to himself.”

11 tn Or “covenant.”

9 tn Heb “then Menahem attacked Tiphsah and all who were in it and its borders from Tirzah, for it would not open, and he attacked.”

11 tn Or “and his warnings he had given them.”

12 tn Heb “They went [or, ‘followed’] after.” This idiom probably does not mean much if translated literally. It is found most often in Deuteronomy or in literature related to the covenant. It refers in the first instance to loyalty to God and to His covenant or His commandments (1 Kgs 14:8; 2 Chr 34:31) with the metaphor of a path or way underlying it (Deut 11:28; 28:14). To “follow other gods” was to abandon this way and this loyalty (to “abandon” or “forget” God, Judg 2:12; Hos 2:13) and to follow the customs or religious traditions of the pagan nations (2 Kgs 17:15). The classic text on “following” God or another god is 1 Kgs 18:18, 21 where Elijah taunts the people with “halting between two opinions” whether the Lord was the true God or Baal was. The idiom is often found followed by “to serve and to worship” or “they served and worshiped” such and such a god or entity (Jer 8:2; 11:10; 13:10; 16:11; 25:6; 35:15).

13 tn Heb “they followed after the worthless thing/things and became worthless.” The words “to the Lord” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit from the context. There is an obvious wordplay on the verb “became worthless” and the noun “worthless thing”, which is probably to be understood collectively and to refer to idols as it does in Jer 8:19; 10:8; 14:22; Jonah 2:8.

14 tn Heb “and [they walked] after the nations which were around them, concerning which the Lord commanded them not to do like them.”

13 tn Heb “and they said to the king of Assyria, saying.” The plural subject of the verb is indefinite.

14 tn Heb “Look they are killing them.”

15 map For location see Map2-B1; Map4-D3; Map5-E2; Map6-A4; Map7-C1.

16 tn Heb “I will stretch out over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria, and the plumb line of the house of Ahab.” The measuring line and plumb line are normally used in building a structure, not tearing it down. But here they are used ironically as metaphors of judgment, emphasizing that he will give careful attention to the task of judgment.

17 tn Heb “just as one wipes a plate, wiping and turning [it] on its face.” The word picture emphasizes how thoroughly the Lord will judge the city.

17 tn Heb “he sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the Lord which he spoke by the hand of his servants the prophets.”

19 sn See the note at 1 Kgs 7:23.