Only Kir Hareseth was left intact, 6 but the slingers surrounded it and attacked it.
9:27 When King Ahaziah of Judah saw what happened, he took off 14 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. 15 He fled to Megiddo 16 and died there.
he did so. 21 Elisha 22 said, “This arrow symbolizes the victory the Lord will give you over Syria. 23 You will annihilate Syria in Aphek!” 24
14:7 He defeated 30 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.
19:35 That very night the Lord’s messenger went out and killed 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp. When they 32 got up early the next morning, there were all the corpses. 33
1 tn Heb “choice” or “select.”
2 tn Elisha places the object first and uses an imperfect verb form. The stylistic shift may signal that he is now instructing them what to do, rather than merely predicting what would happen.
3 tn Heb “good.”
4 tn Heb “and ruin every good portion with stones.”
5 tn Heb “and [on] every good portion they were throwing each man his stone and they filled it.” The vav + perfect (“and they filled”) here indicates customary action contemporary with the situation described in the preceding main clause (where a customary imperfect is used, “they were throwing”). See the note at 3:4.
6 tn Heb “until he had allowed its stones to remain in Kir Hareseth.”
9 sn Joram is a short form of the name Jehoram.
10 tn Heb “and he arose at night and defeated Edom, who had surrounded him, and the chariot officers.” The Hebrew text as it stands gives the impression that Joram was surrounded and launched a victorious night counterattack. It would then be quite natural to understand the last statement in the verse to refer to an Edomite retreat. Yet v. 22 goes on to state that the Edomite revolt was successful. Therefore, if the MT is retained, it may be better to understand the final statement in v. 21 as a reference to an Israelite retreat (made in spite of the success described in the preceding sentence). The translation above assumes an emendation of the Hebrew text. Adding a third masculine singular pronominal suffix to the accusative sign before Edom (reading אֶתוֹ [’eto], “him,” instead of just אֶת [’et]) and taking Edom as the subject of verbs allows one to translate the verse in a way that is more consistent with the context, which depicts an Israelite defeat, not victory. There is, however, no evidence for this emendation.
11 tn Heb “and the people fled to their tents.”
13 tn Heb “which the Syrians inflicted [on] him.”
14 sn See 2 Kgs 8:28-29a.
15 tn The words “his supporters” are added for clarification.
16 tn Heb “If this is your desire.” נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) refers here to the seat of the emotions and will. For other examples of this use of the word, see BDB 660-61 s.v.
17 tn Heb “and Ahaziah king of Judah saw and fled.”
18 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.
19 map For location see Map1-D4; Map2-C1; Map4-C2; Map5-F2; Map7-B1.
21 tn Heb “struck him down and he died.”
22 tn Heb “they buried him.”
25 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
26 tn Heb “He opened [it].”
27 tn Heb “and he shot.”
28 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
29 tn Heb “The arrow of victory of the
30 tn Heb “you will strike down Syria in Aphek until destruction.”
29 tn Heb “from the hand of.”
33 tn Heb “as it is written in the scroll of the law of Moses which the
34 tn Heb “on account of sons.”
35 tn Heb “on account of fathers.”
36 sn This law is recorded in Deut 24:16.
37 tn Or “struck down.”
41 tn Heb “and he struck him down in Samaria in the fortress of the house of the king, Argob and Arieh, and with him fifty men from the sons of the Gileadites, and they killed him.”
45 tn This refers to the Israelites and/or the rest of the Assyrian army.
46 tn Heb “look, all of them were dead bodies.”
49 sn The assassination probably took place in 681
50 sn No such Mesopotamian god is presently known. Perhaps the name is a corruption of Nusku.
51 tc Although “his sons” is absent in the Kethib, it is supported by the Qere, along with many medieval Hebrew
52 sn Extra-biblical sources also mention the assassination of Sennacherib, though they refer to only one assassin. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 239-40.
53 sn It is not altogether clear whether this is in the same year that Jerusalem fell or not. The wall was breached in the fourth month (= early July; Jer 39:2) and Nebuzaradan came and burned the palace, the temple, and many of the houses and tore down the wall in the fifth month (= early August; Jer 52:12). That would have left time between the fifth month and the seventh month (October) to gather in the harvest of grapes, dates and figs, and olives (Jer 40:12). However, many commentators feel that too much activity takes place in too short a time for this to have been in the same year and posit that it happened the following year or even five years later when a further deportation took place, possibly in retaliation for the murder of Gedaliah and the Babylonian garrison at Mizpah (Jer 52:30). The assassination of Gedaliah had momentous consequences and was commemorated in one of the post exilic fast days lamenting the fall of Jerusalem (Zech 8:19).
54 tn Heb “[was] from the seed of the kingdom.”
55 tn Heb “and they struck down Gedaliah and he died.”