2 Kings 18:35

18:35 Who among all the gods of the lands has rescued their lands from my power? So how can the Lord rescue Jerusalem from my power?’” ¹ 

2 Kings 21:24

21:24 The people of the land executed all those who had conspired against King Amon, and they ²  made his son Josiah king in his place.

2 Kings 23:33

23:33 Pharaoh Necho imprisoned him in Riblah in the land of Hamath and prevented him from ruling in Jerusalem. ³  He imposed on the land a special tax ⁴  of one hundred talents ⁵  of silver and a talent of gold.

¹ tn Heb “that the Lord might rescue Jerusalem from my hand?” The logic runs as follows: Since no god has ever been able to withstand the Assyrian onslaught, how can the people of Jerusalem possibly think the Lord will rescue them?

² tn Heb “the people of the land.” The pronoun “they” has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons, to avoid the repetition of the phrase “the people of the land” from the beginning of the verse.

³ tc The consonantal text (Kethib) has “when [he was] ruling in Jerusalem,” but the marginal reading (Qere), which has support from Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Latin witnesses, has “[preventing him] from ruling in Jerusalem.”

⁴ tn Or “fine.”

⁵ tn The Hebrew term כִּכָּר (kikkar, “circle”) refers generally to something that is round. When used of metals it can refer to a disk-shaped weight made of the metal or to a standard unit of weight, generally regarded as a talent. Since the accepted weight for a talent of metal is about 75 pounds, this would have amounted to about 7,500 pounds of silver and 75 pounds of gold (cf. NCV, NLT); CEV “almost four tons of silver and about seventy-five pounds of gold.”