2 Kings 10:25-28

10:25 When he finished offering the burnt sacrifice, Jehu ordered the royal guard ¹  and officers, “Come in and strike them down! Don’t let any escape!” So the royal guard and officers struck them down with the sword and left their bodies lying there. ²  Then they entered the inner sanctuary of the temple of Baal. ³  10:26 They hauled out the sacred pillar of the temple of Baal and burned it. 10:27 They demolished ⁴  the sacred pillar of Baal and ⁵  the temple of Baal; it is used as ⁶  a latrine ⁷  to this very day. 10:28 So Jehu eradicated Baal worship ⁸  from Israel.

[10:25]  ¹ tn Heb “runners.”

[10:25]  ² tn Heb “and they threw.” No object appears. According to M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 116), this is an idiom for leaving a corpse unburied.

[10:25]  ³ tn Heb “and they came to the city of the house of Baal.” It seems unlikely that a literal city is meant. Some emend עִיר (’ir), “city,” to דְּבִיר (dÿvir) “holy place,” or suggest that עִיר is due to dittography of the immediately preceding עַד (’ad) “to.” Perhaps עִיר is here a technical term meaning “fortress” or, more likely, “inner room.”

[10:27]  ⁴ tn Or “pulled down.”

[10:27]  ⁵ tn The verb “they demolished” is repeated in the Hebrew text.

[10:27]  ⁶ tn Heb “and they made it into.”

[10:27]  ⁷ tn The consonantal text (Kethib) has the hapax legomenon מַחֲרָאוֹת (makhara’ot), “places to defecate” or “dung houses” (note the related noun חרא (khr’)/חרי (khri), “dung,” HALOT 348-49 s.v. *חֲרָאִים). The marginal reading (Qere) glosses this, perhaps euphemistically, מוֹצָאוֹת (motsa’ot), “outhouses.”

[10:28]  ⁸ tn Heb “destroyed Baal.”