2 Kings 11:2

11:2 So Jehosheba, the daughter of King Joram and sister of Ahaziah, took Ahaziah’s son Joash and sneaked ¹  him away from the rest of the royal descendants who were to be executed. She hid him and his nurse in the room where the bed covers were stored. ²  So he was hidden from Athaliah and escaped execution. ³ 

2 Kings 11:1

Athaliah is Eliminated

11:1 When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she was determined to destroy the entire royal line. ⁴ 

2 Kings 3:11

3:11 Jehoshaphat asked, “Is there no prophet of the Lord here that we might seek the Lord’s direction?” ⁵  One of the servants of the king of Israel answered, “Elisha son of Shapat is here; he used to be Elijah’s servant.” ⁶ 

¹ tn Heb “stole.”

² 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.

³ 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.

⁴ tn Heb “she arose and she destroyed all the royal offspring.” The verb קוּם (qum) “arise,” is here used in an auxiliary sense to indicate that she embarked on a campaign to destroy the royal offspring. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 125.

⁵ tn Heb “that we might inquire of the Lord through him?”

⁶ tn Heb “who poured water on the hands of Elijah.” This refers to one of the typical tasks of a servant.