2 Kings 14:7

14:7 He defeated ¹  10,000 Edomites in the Salt Valley; he captured Sela in battle and renamed it Joktheel, a name it has retained to this very day.

2 Kings 23:10

23:10 The king ²  ruined Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom so that no one could pass his son or his daughter through the fire to Molech. ³ 

2 Kings 3:16-17

3:16 and he said, “This is what the Lord says, ‘Make many cisterns in this valley,’ ⁴  3:17 for this is what the Lord says, ‘You will not feel ⁵  any wind or see any rain, but this valley will be full of water and you and your cattle and animals will drink.’

2 Kings 2:16

2:16 They said to him, “Look, there are fifty capable men with your servants. Let them go and look for your master, for the wind sent from the Lord ⁶  may have carried him away and dropped him on one of the hills or in one of the valleys.” But Elisha ⁷  replied, “Don’t send them out.”

2 Kings 10:33

10:33 He conquered all the land of Gilead, including the territory of Gad, Reuben, and Manasseh, extending all the way from the Aroer in the Arnon Valley through Gilead to Bashan. ⁸ 

2 Kings 23:6

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. ⁹  He smashed it to dust and then threw the dust in the public graveyard. ¹⁰ 

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 ¹¹  and threw the dust in the Kidron Valley.

2 Kings 25:4

25:4 The enemy broke through the city walls, ¹²  and all the soldiers tried to escape. They left the city during the night. ¹³  They went through the gate between the two walls that is near the king’s garden. ¹⁴  (The Babylonians were all around the city.) Then they headed for the Jordan Valley. ¹⁵ 

2 Kings 18:34

18:34 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? ¹⁶  Indeed, did any gods rescue Samaria ¹⁷  from my power? ¹⁸ 

2 Kings 23:4

23:4 The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the high-ranking priests, ¹⁹  and the guards ²⁰  to bring out of the Lord’s temple all the items that were used in the worship of ²¹  Baal, Asherah, and all the stars of the sky. ²²  The king ²³  burned them outside of Jerusalem in the terraces ²⁴  of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. ²⁵ 

¹ tn Or “struck down.”

² tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

³ 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.

³ tn Heb “making this valley cisterns, cisterns.” The Hebrew noun גֵּב (gev) means “cistern” in Jer 14:3 (cf. Jer 39:10). The repetition of the noun is for emphasis. See GKC 396 §123.e. The verb (“making”) is an infinitive absolute, which has to be interpreted in light of the context. The translation above takes it in an imperatival sense. The command need not be understood as literal, but as hyperbolic. Telling them to build cisterns is a dramatic way of leading into the announcement that he would miraculously provide water in the desert. Some prefer to translate the infinitive as an imperfect with the Lord as the understood subject, “I will turn this valley [into] many pools.”

⁴ tn Heb “see.”

⁵ tn Or “the spirit of the Lord.”

⁶ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁶ tn Heb “all the land of Gilead, the Gadites, and the Reubenites, and the Manassehites, from Aroer which is near the Arnon Valley, and Gilead, and Bashan.”

⁷ tn Heb “and he burned it in the Kidron Valley.”

⁸ tc Heb “on the grave of the sons of the people.” Some Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Aramaic, and Latin witnesses read the plural “graves.”

⁸ 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.

⁹ tn Heb “the city was breached.”

¹⁰ tn The Hebrew text is abrupt here: “And all the men of war by the night.” The translation attempts to capture the sense.

¹¹ sn The king’s garden is mentioned again in Neh 3:15 in conjunction with the pool of Siloam and the stairs that go down from the city of David. This would have been in the southern part of the city near the Tyropean Valley which agrees with the reference to the “two walls” which were probably the walls on the eastern and western hills.

¹² sn Heb “toward the Arabah.” The Arabah was the rift valley north and south of the Dead Sea. Here the intention was undoubtedly to escape across the Jordan to Moab or Ammon. It appears from Jer 40:14; 41:15 that the Ammonites were known to harbor fugitives from the Babylonians.

¹⁰ tn The parallel passage in Isa 36:19 omits “Hena and Ivvah.” The rhetorical questions in v. 34a suggest the answer, “Nowhere, they seem to have disappeared in the face of Assyria’s might.”

¹¹ map For location see Map2-B1; Map4-D3; Map5-E2; Map6-A4; Map7-C1.

¹² tn Heb “that they rescued Samaria from my hand?” But this gives the impression that the gods of Sepharvaim were responsible for protecting Samaria, which is obviously not the case. The implied subject of the plural verb “rescued” must be the generic “gods of the nations/lands” (vv. 33, 35).

¹¹ tn Heb “the priests of the second [rank],” that is, those ranked just beneath Hilkiah.

¹² tn Or “doorkeepers.”

¹³ tn Heb “for.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “all the host of heaven” (also in v. 5).

¹⁵ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹⁶ tn Or “fields.” For a defense of the translation “terraces,” see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 285.

¹⁷ map For location see Map4-G4; Map5-C1; Map6-E3; Map7-D1; Map8-G3.