2 Kings 1:16

1:16 Elijah ¹  said to the king, ²  “This is what the Lord says, ‘You sent messengers to seek an oracle from Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron. You must think there is no God in Israel from whom you can seek an oracle! ³  Therefore you will not leave the bed you lie on, for you will certainly die.’” ⁴ 

2 Kings 20:13

20:13 Hezekiah welcomed ⁵  them and showed them his whole storehouse, with its silver, gold, spices, and high quality olive oil, as well as his armory and everything in his treasuries. Hezekiah showed them everything in his palace and in his whole kingdom. ⁶ 

2 Kings 22:13

22:13 “Go, seek an oracle from ⁷  the Lord for me and the people – for all Judah. Find out about ⁸  the words of this scroll that has been discovered. For the Lord’s fury has been ignited against us, ⁹  because our ancestors have not obeyed the words of this scroll by doing all that it instructs us to do.” ¹⁰ 

2 Kings 23:24

23:24 Josiah also got rid of ¹¹  the ritual pits used to conjure up spirits, ¹²  the magicians, personal idols, disgusting images, ¹³  and all the detestable idols that had appeared in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. In this way he carried out the terms of the law ¹⁴  recorded on the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had discovered in the Lord’s temple.

2 Kings 25:19

25:19 From the city he took a eunuch who was in charge of the soldiers, five ¹⁵  of the king’s advisers ¹⁶  who were discovered in the city, an official army secretary who drafted citizens ¹⁷  for military service, and sixty citizens from the people of the land who were discovered in the city.

[1:16]  ¹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elijah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:16]  ² tn Heb “him”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:16]  ³ tn Heb “Because you sent messengers to inquire of Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron, is there no God in Israel to inquire of his word?”

[1:16]  ⁴ sn For the third time in this chapter we read the Lord’s sarcastic question to king and the accompanying announcement of judgment. The repetition emphasizes one of the chapter’s main themes. Israel’s leaders should seek guidance from their own God, not a pagan deity, for Israel’s sovereign God is the one who controls life and death.

[20:13]  ⁵ tc Heb “listened to.” Some Hebrew mss, as well as the LXX, Syriac, and Vulgate versions agree with the parallel passage in Isa 39:2 and read, “was happy with.”

[20:13]  ⁶ tn Heb “there was nothing which Hezekiah did not show them in his house and in all his kingdom.”

[22:13]  ⁹ tn Or “inquire of.”

[22:13]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “concerning.”

[22:13]  ¹¹ tn Heb “for great is the anger of the Lord which has been ignited against us.”

[22:13]  ¹² tn Heb “by doing all that is written concerning us.” Perhaps עָלֵינוּ (’alenu), “concerning us,” should be altered to עָלָיו (’alav), “upon it,” in which case one could translate, “by doing all that is written in it.”

[23:24]  ¹³ tn Here בִּעֵר (bi’er) is not the well attested verb “burn,” but the less common homonym meaning “devastate, sweep away, remove.” See HALOT 146 s.v. בער.

[23:24]  ¹⁴ sn See the note at 2 Kgs 21:6.

[23:24]  ¹⁵ sn See the note at 1 Kgs 15:12.

[23:24]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “carrying out the words of the law.”

[25:19]  ¹⁷ tn The parallel passage in Jer 52:25 has “seven.”

[25:19]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “five seers of the king’s face.”

[25:19]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “the people of the land.”