2 Kings 11:1-2

Athaliah is Eliminated

11:1 When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she was determined to destroy the entire royal line. ¹  11:2 So Jehosheba, the daughter of King Joram and sister of Ahaziah, took Ahaziah’s son Joash and sneaked ²  him away from the rest of the royal descendants who were to be executed. She hid him and his nurse in the room where the bed covers were stored. ³  So he was hidden from Athaliah and escaped execution. ⁴ 

2 Kings 9:23

9:23 Jehoram turned his chariot around and took off. ⁵  He said to Ahaziah, “It’s a trap, ⁶  Ahaziah!”

2 Kings 9:1

Jehu Becomes King

9:1 Now Elisha the prophet summoned a member of the prophetic guild ⁷  and told him, “Tuck your robes into your belt, take this container ⁸  of olive oil in your hand, and go to Ramoth Gilead.

2 Kings 18:17-18

18:17 The king of Assyria sent his commanding general, the chief eunuch, and the chief adviser ⁹  from Lachish to King Hezekiah in Jerusalem, ¹⁰  along with a large army. They went up and arrived at Jerusalem. They went ¹¹  and stood at the conduit of the upper pool which is located on the road to the field where they wash and dry cloth. ¹²  18:18 They summoned the king, so Eliakim son of Hilkiah, the palace supervisor, accompanied by Shebna the scribe and Joah son of Asaph, the secretary, went out to meet them.

[11:1]  ¹ tn Heb “she arose and she destroyed all the royal offspring.” The verb קוּם (qum) “arise,” is here used in an auxiliary sense to indicate that she embarked on a campaign to destroy the royal offspring. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 125.

[11:2]  ² tn Heb “stole.”

[11:2]  ³ tn Heb “him and his nurse in an inner room of beds.” The verb is missing in the Hebrew text. The parallel passage in 2 Chr 22:11 has “and she put” at the beginning of the clause. M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 126) regard the Chronicles passage as an editorial attempt to clarify the difficulty of the original text. They prefer to take “him and his nurse” as objects of the verb “stole” and understand “in the bedroom” as the place where the royal descendants were executed. The phrase בַּחֲדַר הַמִּטּוֹת (bakhadar hammittot), “an inner room of beds,” is sometimes understood as referring to a bedroom (HALOT 293 s.v. חֶדֶר), though some prefer to see here a “room where the covers and cloths were kept for the beds (HALOT 573 s.v. מִטָּת). In either case, it may have been a temporary hideout, for v. 3 indicates that the child hid in the temple for six years.

[11:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “and they hid him from Athaliah and he was not put to death.” The subject of the plural verb (“they hid”) is probably indefinite.

[9:23]  ⁵ tn Heb “and Jehoram turned his hands and fled.” The phrase “turned his hands” refers to how he would have pulled on the reins in order to make his horses turn around.

[9:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “Deceit, Ahaziah.”

[9:1]  ⁷ tn Heb “one of the sons of the prophets.”

[9:1]  ⁸ tn Or “flask.”

[18:17]  ⁹ sn For a discussion of these titles see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 229-30.

[18:17]  ¹⁰ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[18:17]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and they went up and came.”

[18:17]  ¹² tn Heb “the field of the washer.”