2 Kings 1:14

1:14 Indeed, ¹  fire came down from the sky and consumed the two captains who came before me, along with their men. ²  So now, please have respect for my life.”

2 Kings 16:3

16:3 He followed in the footsteps of ³  the kings of Israel. He passed his son through the fire, ⁴  a horrible sin practiced by the nations ⁵  whom the Lord drove out from before the Israelites.

2 Kings 17:17

17:17 They passed their sons and daughters through the fire, ⁶  and practiced divination and omen reading. They committed themselves to doing evil in the sight of the Lord and made him angry. ⁷ 

2 Kings 17:31

17:31 the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak, ⁸  and the Sepharvites burned their sons in the fire as an offering to Adrammelech and Anammelech, ⁹  the gods of Sepharvaim.

2 Kings 19:18

19:18 They have burned the gods of the nations, ¹⁰  for they are not really gods, but only the product of human hands manufactured from wood and stone. That is why the Assyrians could destroy them. ¹¹ 

2 Kings 21:6

21:6 He passed his son ¹²  through the fire ¹³  and practiced divination and omen reading. He set up a ritual pit to conjure up underworld spirits, and appointed magicians to supervise it. ¹⁴  He did a great amount of evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. ¹⁵ 

2 Kings 23:10

23:10 The king ¹⁶  ruined Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom so that no one could pass his son or his daughter through the fire to Molech. ¹⁷ 

2 Kings 25:9

25:9 He burned down the Lord’s temple, the royal palace, and all the houses in Jerusalem, including every large house. ¹⁸ 

[1:14]  ¹ tn Heb “look.”

[1:14]  ² tn Heb “their fifty.”

[16:3]  ³ tn Heb “he walked in the way of.”

[16:3]  ⁴ sn This may refer to child sacrifice, though some interpret it as a less drastic cultic practice. For discussion see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 266-67.

[16:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “like the abominable practices of the nations.”

[17:17]  ⁵ sn See the note at 2 Kgs 16:3.

[17:17]  ⁶ tn Heb “they sold themselves to doing what was evil in the eyes of the Lord, angering him.”

[17:31]  ⁷ sn Nibhaz and Tartak were two Elamite deities. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 212.

[17:31]  ⁸ sn Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of the Sepharvaim are unknown in extra-biblical literature. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 212.

[19:18]  ⁹ tn Heb “and they put their gods in the fire.”

[19:18]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “so they destroyed them.”

[21:6]  ¹¹ tc The LXX has the plural “his sons” here.

[21:6]  ¹² sn See the note at 2 Kgs 16:3.

[21:6]  ¹³ tn Heb “and he set up a ritual pit, along with conjurers.” The Hebrew אוֹב (’ov), “ritual pit,” refers to a pit used by a magician to conjure up underworld spirits. In 1 Sam 28:7 the witch of Endor is called a בַעֲלַת אוֹב (ba’alat ’ov), “owner of a ritual pit.” See H. Hoffner, “Second millennium Antecedents to the Hebrew ’OñBù,” JBL 86 (1967), 385-401.

[21:6]  ¹⁴ tc Heb “and he multiplied doing what is evil in the eyes of the Lord, angering.” The third masculine singular pronominal suffix (“him”) has been accidentally omitted in the MT by haplography (note the vav that immediately follows).

[23:10]  ¹³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[23:10]  ¹⁴ sn Attempts to identify this deity with a god known from the ancient Near East have not yet yielded a consensus. For brief discussions see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor II Kings (AB), 288 and HALOT 592 s.v. מֹלֶךְ. For more extensive studies see George C. Heider, The Cult of Molek, and John Day, Molech: A God of Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament.

[25:9]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and every large house he burned down with fire.”