12:12 “The prince 5 who is among them will raise his belongings 6 onto his shoulder in darkness, and will go out. He 7 will dig a hole in the wall to leave through. He will cover his face so that he cannot see the land with his eyes.
1 tn Heb “the city was breached.”
2 tn The Hebrew text is abrupt here: “And all the men of war by the night.” The translation attempts to capture the sense.
3 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.
4 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.
5 sn The prince is a reference to Zedekiah.
6 tn The words “his belongings” are not in the Hebrew text but are implied.
7 tc The MT reads “they”; the LXX and Syriac read “he.”