2 Kings 2:23

2:23 He went up from there to Bethel. ¹  As he was traveling up the road, some young boys ²  came out of the city and made fun of him, saying, “Go on up, baldy! Go on up, baldy!”

2 Kings 5:18

5:18 May the Lord forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master enters the temple of Rimmon to worship, and he leans on my arm and I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the Lord forgive your servant for this.” ³ 

2 Kings 7:2

7:2 An officer who was the king’s right-hand man ⁴  responded to the prophet, ⁵  “Look, even if the Lord made it rain by opening holes in the sky, could this happen so soon?” ⁶  Elisha ⁷  said, “Look, you will see it happen with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of the food!” ⁸ 

2 Kings 7:4

7:4 If we go into the city, we’ll die of starvation, ⁹  and if we stay here we’ll die! So come on, let’s defect ¹⁰  to the Syrian camp! If they spare us, ¹¹  we’ll live; if they kill us – well, we were going to die anyway.” ¹² 

2 Kings 7:10

7:10 So they went and called out to the gatekeepers ¹³  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. ¹⁴  But the horses and donkeys are still tied up, and the tents remain up.” ¹⁵ 

2 Kings 7:19

7:19 But the officer replied to the prophet, “Look, even if the Lord made it rain by opening holes in the sky, could this happen so soon?” ¹⁶  Elisha ¹⁷  said, “Look, you will see it happen with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of the food!” ¹⁸ 

2 Kings 9:27

9:27 When King Ahaziah of Judah saw what happened, he took off ¹⁹  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. ²⁰  He fled to Megiddo ²¹  and died there.

2 Kings 12:9

12:9 Jehoiada the priest took a chest and drilled a hole in its lid. He placed it on the right side of the altar near the entrance of ²²  the Lord’s temple. The priests who guarded the entrance would put into it all the silver brought to the Lord’s temple.

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. ²³  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 ²⁴  recovered Elat for Syria; he drove the Judahites from there. ²⁵  Syrians ²⁶  arrived in Elat and live there to this very day.)

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. ²⁷ 

He will not attack it with his shield-carrying warriors, ²⁸ 

nor will he build siege works against it.

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 ²⁹  and threw the dust in the Kidron Valley.

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; ³⁰  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 ³¹  turned and saw the grave of the prophet who had foretold this. ³² 

2 Kings 23:27

23:27 The Lord announced, “I will also spurn Judah, ³³  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.” ³⁴ 

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. ³⁵ 

2 Kings 24:13

24:13 Nebuchadnezzar ³⁶  took from there all the riches in the treasuries of the Lord’s temple and of the royal palace. He removed all the gold items which King Solomon of Israel had made for the Lord’s temple, just as the Lord had warned.

¹ map For location see Map4-G4; Map5-C1; Map6-E3; Map7-D1; Map8-G3.

² tn The word נַעַר (na’ar), here translated “boy,” can refer to a broad age range, including infants as well as young men. But the qualifying term “young” (or “small”) suggests these youths were relatively young. The phrase in question (“young boy”) occurs elsewhere in 1 Sam 20:35; 1 Kgs 3:7 (used by Solomon in an hyperbolic manner); 11:17; 2 Kgs 5:14; and Isa 11:6.

³ tn Heb “When my master enters the house of Rimmon to bow down there, and he leans on my hand and I bow down [in] the house of Rimmon, when I bow down [in] the house of Rimmon, may the Lord forgive your servant for this thing.”

⁵ tn Heb “the officer on whose hand the king leans.”

⁶ tn Heb “man of God.”

⁷ tn Heb “the Lord was making holes in the sky, could this thing be?” Opening holes in the sky would allow the waters stored up there to pour to the earth and assure a good crop. But, the officer argues, even if this were to happen, it would take a long time to grow and harvest the crop.

⁸ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁹ tn Heb “you will not eat from there.”

⁷ tn Heb “If we say, ‘We will enter the city,’ the famine is in the city and we will die there.”

⁸ tn Heb “fall.”

⁹ tn Heb “keep us alive.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “we will die.” The paraphrastic translation attempts to bring out the logical force of their reasoning.

⁹ 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.

¹⁰ tn Heb “and, look, there was no man or voice of a man there.”

¹¹ tn Heb “but the horses are tied up and the donkeys are tied up and the tents are as they were.”

¹¹ tn Heb “the Lord was making holes in the sky, could this thing be?” See the note at 7:2.

¹² tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹³ tn Heb “you will not eat from there.”

¹³ tn Heb “and Ahaziah king of Judah saw and fled.”

¹⁴ 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.

¹⁵ map For location see Map1-D4; Map2-C1; Map4-C2; Map5-F2; Map7-B1.

¹⁵ tn Heb “on the right side of the altar as a man enters.”

¹⁷ 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.”

¹⁹ 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.

²⁰ tn Heb “from Elat.”

²¹ 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.”

²¹ tn Heb “there.”

²² tn Heb “[with] a shield.” By metonymy the “shield” stands for the soldier who carries it.

²³ 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.

²⁵ tn Heb “and he sent and took the bones from the tombs.”

²⁶ tn Heb “the king”; this has been specified as “King Josiah” in the translation for clarity (cf. TEV, CEV, NLT).

²⁷ 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).

²⁷ tn Heb “Also Judah I will turn away from my face.”

²⁸ tn Heb “My name will be there.”

²⁹ tn Heb “and he took Jehoahaz, and he came to Egypt and he died there.”

³¹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Nebuchadnezzar) has been specified in the translation for clarity.