2 Kings 11:6-7

11:6 Another third of you will be stationed at the Foundation ¹  Gate. Still another third of you will be stationed at the gate behind the royal guard. ²  You will take turns guarding the palace. ³  11:7 The two units who are off duty on the Sabbath will guard the Lord’s temple and protect the king. ⁴ 

2 Kings 11:1

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. ⁵ 

2 Kings 23:28-32

23:28 The rest of the events of Josiah’s reign and all his accomplishments are recorded in the scroll called the Annals of the Kings of Judah. ⁶  23:29 During Josiah’s reign Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt marched toward ⁷  the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to fight him, but Necho ⁸  killed him at Megiddo ⁹  when he saw him. 23:30 His servants transported his dead body ¹⁰  from Megiddo in a chariot and brought it to Jerusalem, where they buried him in his tomb. The people of the land took Josiah’s son Jehoahaz, poured olive oil on his head, ¹¹  and made him king in his father’s place.

Jehoahaz’s Reign over Judah

23:31 Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. ¹²  His mother ¹³  was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah, from Libnah. 23:32 He did evil in the sight of ¹⁴  the Lord as his ancestors had done. ¹⁵ 

[11:6]  ¹ 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]  ² tn Heb “the runners.”

[11:6]  ³ 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]  ⁴ 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.

[11:1]  ⁵ 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.

[23:28]  ⁶ tn Heb “As for the rest of the events of Josiah, and all which he did, are they not written on the scroll of the events of the days of the kings of Judah?”

[23:29]  ⁷ tn Heb “went up to.” The idiom עַל…עָלָה (’alah …’al) can sometimes mean “go up against,” but here it refers to Necho’s attempt to aid the Assyrians in their struggle with the Babylonians.

[23:29]  ⁸ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Necho) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[23:29]  ⁹ map For location see Map1 D4; Map2 C1; Map4 C2; Map5 F2; Map7 B1.

[23:30]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “him, dead.”

[23:30]  ¹¹ tn Or “anointed him.”

[23:31]  ¹² map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[23:31]  ¹³ tn Heb “the name of his mother.”

[23:32]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “in the eyes of.”

[23:32]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “according to all which his fathers had done.”