2 Kings 17:17-19

17:17 They passed their sons and daughters through the fire, ¹  and practiced divination and omen reading. They committed themselves to doing evil in the sight of the Lord and made him angry. ² 

17:18 So the Lord was furious ³  with Israel and rejected them; ⁴  only the tribe of Judah was left. 17:19 Judah also failed to keep the commandments of the Lord their God; they followed Israel’s example. ⁵ 

2 Kings 21:2

21:2 He did evil in the sight of ⁶  the Lord and committed the same horrible sins practiced by the nations ⁷  whom the Lord drove out from before the Israelites.

2 Kings 21:14-16

21:14 I will abandon this last remaining tribe among my people ⁸  and hand them over to their enemies; they will be plundered and robbed by all their enemies, ⁹  21:15 because they have done evil in my sight ¹⁰  and have angered me from the time their ancestors left Egypt right up to this very day!’”

21:16 Furthermore Manasseh killed so many innocent people, he stained Jerusalem with their blood from end to end, ¹¹  in addition to encouraging Judah to sin by doing evil in the sight of the Lord. ¹² 

2 Kings 21:2

21:2 He did evil in the sight of ¹³  the Lord and committed the same horrible sins practiced by the nations ¹⁴  whom the Lord drove out from before the Israelites.

2 Kings 1:12-16

1:12 Elijah replied to them, ¹⁵  “If I am indeed a prophet, may fire come down from the sky and consume you and your fifty soldiers!” Fire from God ¹⁶  came down from the sky and consumed him and his fifty soldiers.

1:13 The king ¹⁷  sent a third captain and his fifty soldiers. This third captain went up and fell ¹⁸  on his knees before Elijah. He begged for mercy, “Prophet, please have respect for my life and for the lives of these fifty servants of yours. 1:14 Indeed, ¹⁹  fire came down from the sky and consumed the two captains who came before me, along with their men. ²⁰  So now, please have respect for my life.” 1:15 The Lord’s angelic messenger said to Elijah, “Go down with him. Don’t be afraid of him.” So he got up and went down ²¹  with him to the king.

1:16 Elijah ²²  said to the king, ²³  “This is what the Lord says, ‘You sent messengers to seek an oracle from Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron. You must think there is no God in Israel from whom you can seek an oracle! ²⁴  Therefore you will not leave the bed you lie on, for you will certainly die.’” ²⁵ 

2 Kings 1:1

Elijah Confronts the King and His Commanders

1:1 After Ahab died, Moab rebelled against Israel. ²⁶ 

Colossians 1:22

1:22 but now he has reconciled you ²⁷  by his physical body through death to present you holy, without blemish, and blameless before him –

[17:17]  ¹ sn See the note at 2 Kgs 16:3.

[17:17]  ² tn Heb “they sold themselves to doing what was evil in the eyes of the Lord, angering him.”

[17:18]  ³ tn Heb “very angry.”

[17:18]  ⁴ tn Heb “turned them away from his face.”

[17:19]  ⁵ tn Heb “they walked in the practices of Israel which they did.”

[21:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “in the eyes of.”

[21:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “like the abominable practices of the nations.”

[21:14]  ⁸ tn Heb “the remnant of my inheritance.” In this context the Lord’s remnant is the tribe of Judah, which had been preserved when the Assyrians conquered and deported the northern tribes. See 17:18 and M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 269.

[21:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “they will become plunder and spoils of war for all their enemies.”

[21:15]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “in my eyes.”

[21:16]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and also Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, until he filled Jerusalem from mouth to mouth.”

[21:16]  ¹² tn Heb “apart from his sin which he caused Judah to commit, by doing what is evil in the eyes of the Lord.”

[21:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “in the eyes of.”

[21:2]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “like the abominable practices of the nations.”

[1:12]  ¹⁵ tc Two medieval Hebrew mss, the LXX, and the Syriac Peshitta have the singular “to him.”

[1:12]  ¹⁶ tn Or “intense fire.” The divine name may be used idiomatically to emphasize the intensity of the fire. Whether one translates אֱלֹהִים (’elohim) here as a proper name or idiomatically, this addition to the narrative (the name is omitted in the first panel, v. 10b) emphasizes the severity of the judgment and is appropriate given the more intense command delivered by the king to the prophet in this panel.

[1:13]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:13]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “went up and approached and kneeled.”

[1:14]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “look.”

[1:14]  ²⁰ tn Heb “their fifty.”

[1:15]  ²¹ sn In this third panel the verb “come down” (יָרַד, yarad) occurs again, this time describing Elijah’s descent from the hill at the Lord’s command. The moral of the story seems clear: Those who act as if they have authority over God and his servants just may pay for their arrogance with their lives; those who, like the third commander, humble themselves and show the proper respect for God’s authority and for his servants will be spared and find God quite cooperative.

[1:16]  ²² tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elijah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:16]  ²³ tn Heb “him”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:16]  ²⁴ tn Heb “Because you sent messengers to inquire of Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron, is there no God in Israel to inquire of his word?”

[1:16]  ²⁵ sn For the third time in this chapter we read the Lord’s sarcastic question to king and the accompanying announcement of judgment. The repetition emphasizes one of the chapter’s main themes. Israel’s leaders should seek guidance from their own God, not a pagan deity, for Israel’s sovereign God is the one who controls life and death.

[1:1]  ²⁶ sn This statement may fit better with the final paragraph of 1 Kgs 22.

[1:22]  ²⁷ tc Some of the better representatives of the Alexandrian and Western texts have a passive verb here instead of the active ἀποκατήλλαξεν (apokathllaxen, “he has reconciled”): ἀποκατηλλάγητε (apokathllaghte) in (Ì⁴⁶) B, ἀποκατήλλακται [sic] (apokathllaktai) in 33, and ἀποκαταλλαγέντες (apokatallagente") in D* F G. Yet the active verb is strongly supported by א A C D² Ψ 048 075 [0278] 1739 1881 Ï lat sy. Internally, the passive creates an anacoluthon in that it looks back to the accusative ὑμᾶς (Juma", “you”) of v. 21 and leaves the following παραστῆσαι (parasthsai) dangling (“you were reconciled…to present you”). The passive reading is certainly the harder reading. As such, it may well explain the rise of the other readings. At the same time, it is possible that the passive was produced by scribes who wanted some symmetry between the ποτε (pote, “at one time”) of v. 21 and the νυνὶ δέ (nuni de, “but now”) of v. 22: Since a passive periphrastic participle is used in v. 21, there may have a temptation to produce a corresponding passive form in v. 22, handling the ὑμᾶς of v. 21 by way of constructio ad sensum. Since παραστῆσαι occurs ten words later, it may not have been considered in this scribal modification. Further, the Western reading (ἀποκαταλλαγέντες) hardly seems to have arisen from ἀποκατηλλάγητε (contra TCGNT 555). As difficult as this decision is, the preferred reading is the active form because it is superior externally and seems to explain the rise of all forms of the passive readings.