2 Kings 3:10-27

3:10 The king of Israel said, “Oh no! ¹  Certainly the Lord has summoned these three kings so that he can hand them over to the king of Moab!” 3:11 Jehoshaphat asked, “Is there no prophet of the Lord here that we might seek the Lord’s direction?” ²  One of the servants of the king of Israel answered, “Elisha son of Shapat is here; he used to be Elijah’s servant.” ³  3:12 Jehoshaphat said, “The Lord speaks through him.” ⁴  So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to visit him.

3:13 Elisha said to the king of Israel, “Why are you here? ⁵  Go to your father’s prophets or your mother’s prophets!” The king of Israel replied to him, “No, for the Lord is the one who summoned these three kings so that he can hand them over to Moab.” 3:14 Elisha said, “As certainly as the Lord who rules over all ⁶  lives (whom I serve), ⁷  if I did not respect King Jehoshaphat of Judah, ⁸  I would not pay attention to you or acknowledge you. ⁹  3:15 But now, get me a musician.” ¹⁰  When the musician played, the Lord energized him, ¹¹  3:16 and he said, “This is what the Lord says, ‘Make many cisterns in this valley,’ ¹²  3:17 for this is what the Lord says, ‘You will not feel ¹³  any wind or see any rain, but this valley will be full of water and you and your cattle and animals will drink.’ 3:18 This is an easy task for the Lord; ¹⁴  he will also hand Moab over to you. 3:19 You will defeat every fortified city and every important ¹⁵  city. You must chop down ¹⁶  every productive ¹⁷  tree, stop up all the springs, and cover all the cultivated land with stones.” ¹⁸ 

3:20 Sure enough, the next morning, at the time of the morning sacrifice, water came flowing down from Edom and filled the land. ¹⁹  3:21 Now all Moab had heard that the kings were attacking, ²⁰  so everyone old enough to fight was mustered and placed at the border. ²¹  3:22 When they got up early the next morning, the sun was shining on the water. To the Moabites, who were some distance away, the water looked red like blood. 3:23 The Moabites ²²  said, “It’s blood! The kings are totally destroyed! ²³  They have struck one another down! Now, Moab, seize the plunder!” 3:24 When they approached the Israelite camp, the Israelites rose up and struck down the Moabites, who then ran from them. The Israelites ²⁴  thoroughly defeated ²⁵  Moab. 3:25 They tore down the cities and each man threw a stone into every cultivated field until they were covered. ²⁶  They stopped up every spring and chopped down every productive tree.

Only Kir Hareseth was left intact, ²⁷  but the slingers surrounded it and attacked it. 3:26 When the king of Moab realized he was losing the battle, ²⁸  he and 700 swordsmen tried to break through and attack ²⁹  the king of Edom, but they failed. 3:27 So he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him up as a burnt sacrifice on the wall. There was an outburst of divine anger against Israel, ³⁰  so they broke off the attack ³¹  and returned to their homeland.

[3:10]  ¹ tn Or “ah.”

[3:11]  ² tn Heb “that we might inquire of the Lord through him?”

[3:11]  ³ tn Heb “who poured water on the hands of Elijah.” This refers to one of the typical tasks of a servant.

[3:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “the word of the Lord is with him.”

[3:13]  ⁵ tn Or “What do we have in common?” The text reads literally, “What to me and to you?”

[3:14]  ⁶ tn Traditionally “the Lord of hosts.”

[3:14]  ⁷ tn Heb “before whom I stand.”

[3:14]  ⁸ tn Heb “if I did not lift up the face of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah.”

[3:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “I would not look at you or see you.”

[3:15]  ¹⁰ tn The term used refers to one who plays a stringed instrument, perhaps a harp.

[3:15]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the hand of the Lord came on him.” This may refer to what typically happened, “[for] when a musician played, the hand of the Lord would come upon him.”

[3:16]  ¹² tn Heb “making this valley cisterns, cisterns.” The Hebrew noun גֵּב (gev) means “cistern” in Jer 14:3 (cf. Jer 39:10). The repetition of the noun is for emphasis. See GKC 396 §123.e. The verb (“making”) is an infinitive absolute, which has to be interpreted in light of the context. The translation above takes it in an imperatival sense. The command need not be understood as literal, but as hyperbolic. Telling them to build cisterns is a dramatic way of leading into the announcement that he would miraculously provide water in the desert. Some prefer to translate the infinitive as an imperfect with the Lord as the understood subject, “I will turn this valley [into] many pools.”

[3:17]  ¹³ tn Heb “see.”

[3:18]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and this is easy in the eyes of the Lord.”

[3:19]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “choice” or “select.”

[3:19]  ¹⁶ tn Elisha places the object first and uses an imperfect verb form. The stylistic shift may signal that he is now instructing them what to do, rather than merely predicting what would happen.

[3:19]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “good.”

[3:19]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “and ruin every good portion with stones.”

[3:20]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “and in the morning, when the offering is offered up, look, water was coming from the way of Edom, and the land was filled with water.”

[3:21]  ²⁰ tn Heb “had come up to fight them.”

[3:21]  ²¹ tn Heb “and they mustered all who tied on a belt and upwards, and they stood at the border.”

[3:23]  ²² tn Heb “they”; the referent (the Moabites) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[3:23]  ²³ tn The translation assumes the verb is חָרַב (kharav, “to be desolate”). The infinitive absolute precedes the finite verb form for emphasis. (For another example of the Hophal infinitive with a Niphal finite verb, see Lev 19:20. Cf. also IBHS 582 §35.2.1c.) Some prefer to derive the verb from a proposed homonym meaning “at HALOT 349 s.v. II חרב and BDB 352 s.v. חָרְבָה).

[3:24]  ²⁴ tn Heb “they.”

[3:24]  ²⁵ tc The consonantal text (Kethib) suggests, “and they went, striking down,” but the marginal reading (Qere) is “they struck down, striking down.” For a discussion of the textual problem, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 46.

[3:25]  ²⁶ tn Heb “and [on] every good portion they were throwing each man his stone and they filled it.” The vav + perfect (“and they filled”) here indicates customary action contemporary with the situation described in the preceding main clause (where a customary imperfect is used, “they were throwing”). See the note at 3:4.

[3:25]  ²⁷ tn Heb “until he had allowed its stones to remain in Kir Hareseth.”

[3:26]  ²⁸ tn Heb “and the king of Moab saw that the battle was too strong for him.”

[3:26]  ²⁹ tn Heb “he took with him seven hundred men, who drew the sword, to break through against.”

[3:27]  ³⁰ tn Heb “there was great anger against Israel.”

[3:27]  ³¹ tn Heb “they departed from him.”