2 Kings 11:21

Joash’s Reign over Judah

11:21 (12:1) ¹  Jehoash ²  was seven years old when he began to reign.

2 Kings 11:2

11:2 So Jehosheba, the daughter of King Joram and sister of Ahaziah, took Ahaziah’s son Joash and sneaked ³  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. ⁴  So he was hidden from Athaliah and escaped execution. ⁵ 

2 Kings 24:1

24:1 During Jehoiakim’s reign, ⁶  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked. ⁷  Jehoiakim was his subject for three years, but then he rebelled against him. ⁸ 

[11:21]  ¹ sn Beginning with 11:21, the verse numbers through 12:21 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 11:21 ET = 12:1 HT, 12:1 ET = 12:2 HT, 12:2 ET = 12:3 HT, etc., through 12:21 ET = 12:22 HT. With 13:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.

[11:21]  ² tn Jehoash is an alternate name for Joash (see 11:2).

[11:2]  ³ tn Heb “stole.”

[11:2]  ⁴ 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]  ⁵ 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.

[24:1]  ⁶ tn Heb “In his days.”

[24:1]  ⁷ tn Heb “came up.” Perhaps an object (“against him”) has been accidentally omitted from the text. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 306.

[24:1]  ⁸ tn The Hebrew text has “and he turned and rebelled against him.”