1:17 He died just as the Lord had prophesied through Elijah. 1 In the second year of the reign of King Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat over Judah, Ahaziah’s brother Jehoram replaced him as king of Israel, because he had no son. 2
Now Joram had been in Ramoth Gilead with the whole Israelite army, 3 guarding against an invasion by King Hazael of Syria.
13:1 In the twenty-third year of the reign of Judah’s King Joash son of Ahaziah, Jehu’s son Jehoahaz became king over Israel. He reigned in Samaria 10 for seventeen years.
14:23 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Judah’s King Amaziah, son of Joash, Jeroboam son of Joash became king over Israel. He reigned for forty-one years in Samaria. 15
18:37 Eliakim son of Hilkiah, the palace supervisor, accompanied by Shebna the scribe and Joah son of Asaph, the secretary, went to Hezekiah with their clothes torn 17 and reported to him what the chief adviser had said.
22:14 So Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Acbor, Shaphan, and Asaiah went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shullam son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, the supervisor of the wardrobe. 18 (She lived in Jerusalem in the Mishneh 19 district.) They stated their business, 20
1 tn Heb “according to the word of the
2 tn Heb “Jehoram replaced him as king…because he had no son.” Some ancient textual witnesses add “his brother,” which was likely added on the basis of the statement later in the verse that Ahaziah had no son.
3 tn Heb “he and all Israel.”
5 tn Heb “found.”
6 tn Or “brothers.”
7 tn Heb “for the peace of.”
7 tn Heb “stole.”
8 tn Heb “him and his nurse in an inner room of beds.” The verb is missing in the Hebrew text. The parallel passage in 2 Chr 22:11 has “and she put” at the beginning of the clause. M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 126) regard the Chronicles passage as an editorial attempt to clarify the difficulty of the original text. They prefer to take “him and his nurse” as objects of the verb “stole” and understand “in the bedroom” as the place where the royal descendants were executed. The phrase בַּחֲדַר הַמִּטּוֹת (bakhadar hammittot), “an inner room of beds,” is sometimes understood as referring to a bedroom (HALOT 293 s.v. חֶדֶר), though some prefer to see here a “room where the covers and cloths were kept for the beds (HALOT 573 s.v. מִטָּת). In either case, it may have been a temporary hideout, for v. 3 indicates that the child hid in the temple for six years.
9 tn Heb “and they hid him from Athaliah and he was not put to death.” The subject of the plural verb (“they hid”) is probably indefinite.
9 map For location see Map2-B1; Map4-D3; Map5-E2; Map6-A4; Map7-C1.
11 tn Heb “from the hand of.”
13 tc The MT has the plural form of the verb, but the final vav (ו) is virtually dittographic. The word that immediately follows in the Hebrew text begins with a yod (י). The form should be emended to the singular, which is consistent in number with the verb (“he broke down”) that follows.
14 tn Heb “came to.”
15 tn Heb “four hundred cubits.” The standard cubit in the OT is assumed by most authorities to be about eighteen inches (45 cm) long.
15 map For location see Map2-B1; Map4-D3; Map5-E2; Map6-A4; Map7-C1.
17 tn Heb “and he struck him down in Samaria in the fortress of the house of the king, Argob and Arieh, and with him fifty men from the sons of the Gileadites, and they killed him.”
19 sn As a sign of grief and mourning.
21 tn Heb “the keeper of the clothes.”
22 tn Or “second.” For a discussion of the possible location of this district, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 283.
23 tn Heb “and they spoke to her.”
23 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).
24 tn Heb “[was] from the seed of the kingdom.”
25 tn Heb “and they struck down Gedaliah and he died.”