2 Kings 2:21

2:21 He went out to the spring and threw the salt in. Then he said, “This is what the Lord says, ‘I have purified ¹  this water. It will no longer cause death or fail to produce crops.” ² 

2 Kings 7:4

7:4 If we go into the city, we’ll die of starvation, ³  and if we stay here we’ll die! So come on, let’s defect ⁴  to the Syrian camp! If they spare us, ⁵  we’ll live; if they kill us – well, we were going to die anyway.” ⁶ 

2 Kings 7:10

7:10 So they went and called out to the gatekeepers ⁷  of the city. They told them, “We entered the Syrian camp and there was no one there. We didn’t even hear a man’s voice. ⁸  But the horses and donkeys are still tied up, and the tents remain up.” ⁹ 

2 Kings 9:27

9:27 When King Ahaziah of Judah saw what happened, he took off ¹⁰  up the road to Beth Haggan. Jehu chased him and ordered, “Shoot him too.” They shot him while he was driving his chariot up the ascent of Gur near Ibleam. ¹¹  He fled to Megiddo ¹²  and died there.

2 Kings 15:20

15:20 Menahem got this silver by taxing all the wealthy men in Israel; he took fifty shekels of silver from each one of them and paid it to the king of Assyria. ¹³  Then the king of Assyria left; he did not stay there in the land.

2 Kings 16:6

16:6 (At that time King Rezin of Syria ¹⁴  recovered Elat for Syria; he drove the Judahites from there. ¹⁵  Syrians ¹⁶  arrived in Elat and live there to this very day.)

2 Kings 17:27

17:27 So the king of Assyria ordered, “Take back one of the priests whom you ¹⁷  deported from there. He must settle there and teach them the requirements of the God of the land.” ¹⁸ 

2 Kings 19:32

19:32 So this is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria:

“He will not enter this city,

nor will he shoot an arrow here. ¹⁹ 

He will not attack it with his shield-carrying warriors, ²⁰ 

nor will he build siege works against it.

2 Kings 23:16

23:16 When Josiah turned around, he saw the tombs there on the hill. So he ordered the bones from the tombs to be brought; ²¹  he burned them on the altar and defiled it. This fulfilled the Lord’s announcement made by the prophet while Jeroboam stood by the altar during a festival. King Josiah ²²  turned and saw the grave of the prophet who had foretold this. ²³ 

2 Kings 23:27

23:27 The Lord announced, “I will also spurn Judah, ²⁴  just as I spurned Israel. I will reject this city that I chose – both Jerusalem and the temple, about which I said, “I will live there.” ²⁵ 

2 Kings 23:34

23:34 Pharaoh Necho made Josiah’s son Eliakim king in Josiah’s place, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. He took Jehoahaz to Egypt, where he died. ²⁶ 

¹ tn Or “healed.”

² tn Heb “there will no longer be from there death and miscarriage [or, ‘barrenness’].”

³ tn Heb “If we say, ‘We will enter the city,’ the famine is in the city and we will die there.”

⁴ tn Heb “fall.”

⁵ tn Heb “keep us alive.”

⁶ tn Heb “we will die.” The paraphrastic translation attempts to bring out the logical force of their reasoning.

⁵ tn The MT has a singular form (“gatekeeper”), but the context suggests a plural. The pronoun that follows (“them”) is plural and a plural noun appears in v. 11. The Syriac Peshitta and the Targum have the plural here.

⁶ tn Heb “and, look, there was no man or voice of a man there.”

⁷ tn Heb “but the horses are tied up and the donkeys are tied up and the tents are as they were.”

⁷ tn Heb “and Ahaziah king of Judah saw and fled.”

⁸ tn After Jehu’s order (“kill him too”), the MT has simply, “to the chariot in the ascent of Gur which is near Ibleam.” The main verb in the clause, “they shot him” (וַיִּכְהוּ, vayyikhhu), has been accidentally omitted by virtual haplography/homoioteleuton. Note that the immediately preceding form הַכֻּהוּ (hakkuhu), “shoot him,” ends with the same suffix.

⁹ map For location see Map1-D4; Map2-C1; Map4-C2; Map5-F2; Map7-B1.

⁹ tn Heb “and Menahem brought out the silver over Israel, over the prominent men of means, to give to the king of Assyria, fifty shekels of silver for each man.”

¹¹ tc Some prefer to read “the king of Edom” and “for Edom” here. The names Syria (Heb “Aram,” אֲרָם, ’aram) and Edom (אֱדֹם, ’edom) are easily confused in the Hebrew consonantal script.

¹² tn Heb “from Elat.”

¹³ tc The consonantal text (Kethib), supported by many medieval Hebrew mss, the Syriac version, and some mss of the Targum and Vulgate, read “Syrians” (Heb “Arameans”). The marginal reading (Qere), supported by the LXX, Targums, and Vulgate, reads “Edomites.”

¹³ tc The second plural subject may refer to the leaders of the Assyrian army. However, some prefer to read “whom I deported,” changing the verb to a first person singular form with a third masculine plural pronominal suffix. This reading has some support from Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic witnesses.

¹⁴ tc Heb “and let them go and let them live there, and let him teach them the requirements of the God of the land.” The two plural verbs seem inconsistent with the preceding and following contexts, where only one priest is sent back to Samaria. The singular has the support of Greek, Syriac, and Latin witnesses.

¹⁵ tn Heb “there.”

¹⁶ tn Heb “[with] a shield.” By metonymy the “shield” stands for the soldier who carries it.

¹⁷ tn Heb “and he sent and took the bones from the tombs.”

¹⁸ tn Heb “the king”; this has been specified as “King Josiah” in the translation for clarity (cf. TEV, CEV, NLT).

¹⁹ tc The MT is much shorter than this. It reads, “according to the word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.” The LXX has a much longer text at this point. It reads: “[which was proclaimed by the man of God] while Jeroboam stood by the altar at a celebration. Then he turned and saw the grave of the man of God [who proclaimed these words].” The extra material attested in the LXX was probably accidentally omitted in the Hebrew tradition when a scribe’s eye jumped from the first occurrence of the phrase “man of God” (which appears right before the extra material) and the second occurrence of the phrase (which appears at the end of the extra material).

¹⁹ tn Heb “Also Judah I will turn away from my face.”

²⁰ tn Heb “My name will be there.”

²¹ tn Heb “and he took Jehoahaz, and he came to Egypt and he died there.”