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 11:18

11:18 All the people of the land went and demolished ⁵  the temple of Baal. They smashed its altars and idols ⁶  to bits. ⁷  They killed Mattan the priest of Baal in front of the altar. Jehoiada the priest ⁸  then placed guards at the Lord’s temple.

2 Kings 14:14

14:14 He took away all the gold and silver, all the items found in the Lord’s temple and in the treasuries of the royal palace, and some hostages. ⁹  Then he went back to Samaria. ¹⁰ 

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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 16:17

16:17 King Ahaz took off the frames of the movable stands, and removed the basins from them. He took “The Sea” ¹²  down from the bronze bulls that supported it ¹³  and put it on the pavement.

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. ¹⁴  They paid allegiance to ¹⁵  worthless idols, and so became worthless to the Lord. ¹⁶  They copied the practices of the surrounding nations in blatant disregard of the Lord’s command. ¹⁷ 

2 Kings 23:12

23:12 The king tore down the altars the kings of Judah had set up on the roof of Ahaz’s upper room, as well as the altars Manasseh had set up in the two courtyards of the Lord’s temple. He crushed them up ¹⁸  and threw the dust in the Kidron Valley.

2 Kings 24:14

24:14 He deported all the residents of Jerusalem, including all the officials and all the soldiers (10,000 people in all). This included all the craftsmen and those who worked with metal. No one was left except for the poorest among the people of the land.

2 Kings 25:25

25:25 But in the seventh month ¹⁹  Ishmael son of Nethaniah, son of Elishama, who was a member of the royal family, ²⁰  came with ten of his men and murdered Gedaliah, ²¹  as well as the Judeans and Babylonians who were with him at Mizpah.

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 Or “tore down.”

⁶ tn Or “images.”

⁷ tn The Hebrew construction translated “smashed…to bits” is emphatic. The adverbial infinitive absolute (הֵיטֵב [hetev], “well”) accompanying the Piel form of the verb שָׁבַר (shavar), “break,” suggests thorough demolition.

⁸ tn Heb “the priest.” Jehoiada’s name is added for clarification.

⁷ tn Heb “the sons of the pledges.”

⁸ map For location see Map2-B1; Map4-D3; Map5-E2; Map6-A4; Map7-C1.

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 sn See the note at 1 Kgs 7:23.

¹² tn Heb “that [were] under it.”

¹³ tn Or “and his warnings he had given them.”

¹⁴ 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).

¹⁵ 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.

¹⁶ tn Heb “and [they walked] after the nations which were around them, concerning which the Lord commanded them not to do like them.”

¹⁵ tc The MT reads, “he ran from there,” which makes little if any sense in this context. Some prefer to emend the verbal form (Qal of רוּץ [ruts], “run”) to a Hiphil of רוּץ with third plural suffix and translate, “he quickly removed them” (see BDB 930 s.v. רוּץ, and M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings [AB], 289). The suffix could have been lost in MT by haplography (note the mem [מ] that immediately follows the verb on the form מִשֳׁם, misham, “from there”). Another option, the one reflected in the translation, is to emend the verb to a Piel of רָצַץ (ratsats), “crush,” with third plural suffix.

¹⁷ sn It is not altogether clear whether this is in the same year that Jerusalem fell or not. The wall was breached in the fourth month (= early July; Jer 39:2) and Nebuzaradan came and burned the palace, the temple, and many of the houses and tore down the wall in the fifth month (= early August; Jer 52:12). That would have left time between the fifth month and the seventh month (October) to gather in the harvest of grapes, dates and figs, and olives (Jer 40:12). However, many commentators feel that too much activity takes place in too short a time for this to have been in the same year and posit that it happened the following year or even five years later when a further deportation took place, possibly in retaliation for the murder of Gedaliah and the Babylonian garrison at Mizpah (Jer 52:30). The assassination of Gedaliah had momentous consequences and was commemorated in one of the post exilic fast days lamenting the fall of Jerusalem (Zech 8:19).

¹⁸ tn Heb “[was] from the seed of the kingdom.”

¹⁹ tn Heb “and they struck down Gedaliah and he died.”