11:9 The officers of the units of hundreds did just as 1 Jehoiada the priest ordered. Each of them took his men, those who were on duty during the Sabbath as well as those who were off duty on the Sabbath, and reported 2 to Jehoiada the priest.
23:4 The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the high-ranking priests, 9 and the guards 10 to bring out of the Lord’s temple all the items that were used in the worship of 11 Baal, Asherah, and all the stars of the sky. 12 The king 13 burned them outside of Jerusalem in the terraces 14 of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. 15 23:5 He eliminated 16 the pagan priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to offer sacrifices 17 on the high places in the cities of Judah and in the area right around Jerusalem. (They offered sacrifices 18 to Baal, the sun god, the moon god, the constellations, and all the stars in the sky.) 23:6 He removed the Asherah pole from the Lord’s temple and took it outside Jerusalem to the Kidron Valley, where he burned it. 19 He smashed it to dust and then threw the dust in the public graveyard. 20 23:7 He tore down the quarters 21 of the male cultic prostitutes in the Lord’s temple, where women were weaving shrines 22 for Asherah.
23:8 He brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and ruined 23 the high places where the priests had offered sacrifices, from Geba to Beer Sheba. 24 He tore down the high place of the goat idols 25 situated at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the city official, on the left side of the city gate. 23:9 (Now the priests of the high places did not go up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, but they did eat unleavened cakes among their fellow priests.) 26 23:10 The king 27 ruined Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom so that no one could pass his son or his daughter through the fire to Molech. 28
1 tn Heb “according to all that.”
2 tn Heb “came.”
3 tn The Hebrew text also has, “and said to them.” This is redundant in English and has not been translated.
4 tn Heb “ranks.”
5 tn Heb “for the priest had said, ‘Let her not be put to death in the house of the
6 tn Heb “stole.”
7 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.
8 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 tn Heb “the priests of the second [rank],” that is, those ranked just beneath Hilkiah.
10 tn Or “doorkeepers.”
11 tn Heb “for.”
12 tn Heb “all the host of heaven” (also in v. 5).
13 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
14 tn Or “fields.” For a defense of the translation “terraces,” see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 285.
15 map For location see Map4-G4; Map5-C1; Map6-E3; Map7-D1; Map8-G3.
16 tn Perhaps, “destroyed.”
17 tn Or “burn incense.”
18 tn Or “burned incense.”
19 tn Heb “and he burned it in the Kidron Valley.”
20 tc Heb “on the grave of the sons of the people.” Some Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Aramaic, and Latin witnesses read the plural “graves.”
21 tn Or “cubicles.” Heb “houses.”
22 tn Heb “houses.” Perhaps tent-shrines made from cloth are in view (see BDB 109 s.v. בַּיִת). M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 286) understand this as referring to clothes made for images of the goddess.
23 tn Heb “defiled; desecrated,” that is, “made ritually unclean and unusable.”
24 sn These towns marked Judah’s northern and southern borders, respectively, at the time of Josiah.
25 tc The Hebrew text reads “the high places of the gates,” which is problematic in that the rest of the verse speaks of a specific gate. The translation assumes an emendation to בָּמוֹת הַשְּׁעָרִים (bamot hashÿ’arim), “the high place of the goats” (that is, goat idols). Worship of such images is referred to in Lev 17:7 and 2 Chr 11:15. For a discussion of the textual issue, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 286-87.
26 tn Heb “their brothers.”
27 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
28 sn Attempts to identify this deity with a god known from the ancient Near East have not yet yielded a consensus. For brief discussions see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor II Kings (AB), 288 and HALOT 592 s.v. מֹלֶךְ. For more extensive studies see George C. Heider, The Cult of Molek, and John Day, Molech: A God of Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament.