2 Kings 11:1-11

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  11:3 He hid out with his nurse in the Lord’s temple ⁵  for six years, while Athaliah was ruling over the land.

11:4 In the seventh year Jehoiada summoned ⁶  the officers of the units of hundreds of the Carians ⁷  and the royal bodyguard. ⁸  He met with them ⁹  in the Lord’s temple. He made an agreement ¹⁰  with them and made them swear an oath of allegiance in the Lord’s temple. Then he showed them the king’s son. 11:5 He ordered them, “This is what you must do. One third of the unit that is on duty during the Sabbath will guard the royal palace. 11:6 Another third of you will be stationed at the Foundation ¹¹  Gate. Still another third of you will be stationed at the gate behind the royal guard. ¹²  You will take turns guarding the palace. ¹³  11:7 The two units who are off duty on the Sabbath will guard the Lord’s temple and protect the king. ¹⁴  11:8 You must surround the king. Each of you must hold his weapon in his hand. Whoever approaches your ranks must be killed. You must accompany the king wherever he goes.” ¹⁵ 

11:9 The officers of the units of hundreds did just as ¹⁶  Jehoiada the priest ordered. Each of them took his men, those who were on duty during the Sabbath as well as those who were off duty on the Sabbath, and reported ¹⁷  to Jehoiada the priest. 11:10 The priest gave to the officers of the units of hundreds King David’s spears and the shields that were kept in the Lord’s temple. 11:11 The royal bodyguard ¹⁸  took their stations, each holding his weapon in his hand. They lined up from the south side of the temple to the north side and stood near the altar and the temple, surrounding the king. ¹⁹ 

[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.

[11:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “and he was with her [in] the house of the Lord hiding.”

[11:4]  ⁶ tn Heb “Jehoiada sent and took.”

[11:4]  ⁷ sn The Carians were apparently a bodyguard, probably comprised of foreigners. See HALOT 497 s.v. כָּרִי and M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 126.

[11:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “the runners.”

[11:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “he brought them to himself.”

[11:4]  ¹⁰ tn Or “covenant.”

[11:6]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the gate of Sur” (followed by many English versions) but no such gate is mentioned elsewhere in the OT. The parallel account in 2 Chr 23:5 has “Foundation Gate.” סוּר (sur), “Sur,” may be a corruption of יְסוֹד (yÿsod) “foundation,” involving in part dalet-resh confusion.

[11:6]  ¹² tn Heb “the runners.”

[11:6]  ¹³ tn The meaning of מַסָּח (massakh) is not certain. The translation above, rather than understanding it as a genitive modifying “house,” takes it as an adverb describing how the groups will guard the palace. See HALOT 605 s.v. מַסָּח for the proposed meaning “alternating” (i.e., “in turns”).

[11:7]  ¹⁴ tn Verses 5b-7 read literally, “the third of you, the ones entering [on] the Sabbath and the ones guarding the guard of the house of the king, and the third in the gate of Sur, and the third in the gate behind the runners, and you will guard the guard of the house, alternating. And the two units of you, all the ones going out [on] the Sabbath, and they will guard the guard of the house of the Lord for the king.” The precise meaning of this text is impossible to determine. It would appear that the Carians and royal bodyguard were divided into three units. One unit would serve during the Sabbath; the other two would be off duty on the Sabbath. Jehoiada divided the first unit into three groups and assigned them different locations. The two off duty units were assigned the task of guarding the king.

[11:8]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and be with the king in his going out and in his coming in.”

[11:9]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “according to all that.”

[11:9]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “came.”

[11:11]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the runners” (also in v. 19).

[11:11]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “and the runners stood, each with his weapons in his hand, from the south shoulder of the house to the north shoulder of the house, at the altar and at the house, near the king all around.”