2 Kings 3:19

3:19 You will defeat every fortified city and every important ¹  city. You must chop down ²  every productive ³  tree, stop up all the springs, and cover all the cultivated land with stones.” ⁴ 

2 Kings 3:25

3:25 They tore down the cities and each man threw a stone into every cultivated field until they were covered. ⁵  They stopped up every spring and chopped down every productive tree.

Only Kir Hareseth was left intact, ⁶  but the slingers surrounded it and attacked it.

2 Kings 8:21

8:21 Joram ⁷  crossed over to Zair with all his chariots. The Edomites, who had surrounded him, attacked at night and defeated him and his chariot officers. ⁸  The Israelite army retreated to their homeland. ⁹ 

2 Kings 9:15

9:15 But King Joram had returned to Jezreel to recover from the wounds he received from the Syrians ¹⁰  when he fought against King Hazael of Syria. ¹¹  Jehu told his supporters, ¹²  “If you really want me to be king, ¹³  then don’t let anyone escape from the city to go and warn Jezreel.”

2 Kings 9:27

9:27 When King Ahaziah of Judah saw what happened, he took off ¹⁴  up the road to Beth Haggan. Jehu chased him and ordered, “Shoot him too.” They shot him while he was driving his chariot up the ascent of Gur near Ibleam. ¹⁵  He fled to Megiddo ¹⁶  and died there.

2 Kings 10:9

10:9 In the morning he went out and stood there. Then he said to all the people, “You are innocent. I conspired against my master and killed him. But who struck down all of these men?

2 Kings 12:21

12:21 His servants Jozabad son of Shimeath and Jehozabad son of Shomer murdered him. ¹⁷  He was buried ¹⁸  with his ancestors in the city of David. His son Amaziah replaced him as king.

2 Kings 13:17

13:17 Elisha ¹⁹  said, “Open the east window,” and he did so. ²⁰  Elisha said, “Shoot!” and

he did so. ²¹  Elisha ²²  said, “This arrow symbolizes the victory the Lord will give you over Syria. ²³  You will annihilate Syria in Aphek!” ²⁴ 

2 Kings 13:25

13:25 Jehoahaz’s son Jehoash took back from ²⁵  Ben Hadad son of Hazael the cities that he had taken from his father Jehoahaz in war. Joash defeated him three times and recovered the Israelite cities.

2 Kings 14:6-7

14:6 But he did not execute the sons of the assassins. He obeyed the Lord’s commandment as recorded in the law scroll of Moses, ²⁶  “Fathers must not be put to death for what their sons do, ²⁷  and sons must not be put to death for what their fathers do. ²⁸  A man must be put to death only for his own sin.” ²⁹ 

14:7 He defeated ³⁰  10,000 Edomites in the Salt Valley; he captured Sela in battle and renamed it Joktheel, a name it has retained to this very day.

2 Kings 15:25

15:25 His officer Pekah son of Remaliah conspired against him. He and fifty Gileadites assassinated Pekahiah, as well as Argob and Arieh, in Samaria in the fortress of the royal palace. ³¹  Pekah then took his place as king.

2 Kings 19:35

19:35 That very night the Lord’s messenger went out and killed 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp. When they ³²  got up early the next morning, there were all the corpses. ³³ 

2 Kings 19:37

19:37 One day, ³⁴  as he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, ³⁵  his sons ³⁶  Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword. ³⁷  They escaped to the land of Ararat; his son Esarhaddon replaced him as king.

2 Kings 25:25

25:25 But in the seventh month ³⁸  Ishmael son of Nethaniah, son of Elishama, who was a member of the royal family, ³⁹  came with ten of his men and murdered Gedaliah, ⁴⁰  as well as the Judeans and Babylonians who were with him at Mizpah.

[3:19]  ¹ tn Heb “choice” or “select.”

[3:19]  ² 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]  ³ tn Heb “good.”

[3:19]  ⁴ tn Heb “and ruin every good portion with stones.”

[3:25]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ tn Heb “until he had allowed its stones to remain in Kir Hareseth.”

[8:21]  ⁹ sn Joram is a short form of the name Jehoram.

[8:21]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and he arose at night and defeated Edom, who had surrounded him, and the chariot officers.” The Hebrew text as it stands gives the impression that Joram was surrounded and launched a victorious night counterattack. It would then be quite natural to understand the last statement in the verse to refer to an Edomite retreat. Yet v. 22 goes on to state that the Edomite revolt was successful. Therefore, if the MT is retained, it may be better to understand the final statement in v. 21 as a reference to an Israelite retreat (made in spite of the success described in the preceding sentence). The translation above assumes an emendation of the Hebrew text. Adding a third masculine singular pronominal suffix to the accusative sign before Edom (reading אֶתוֹ [’eto], “him,” instead of just אֶת [’et]) and taking Edom as the subject of verbs allows one to translate the verse in a way that is more consistent with the context, which depicts an Israelite defeat, not victory. There is, however, no evidence for this emendation.

[8:21]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and the people fled to their tents.”

[9:15]  ¹³ tn Heb “which the Syrians inflicted [on] him.”

[9:15]  ¹⁴ sn See 2 Kgs 8:28-29a.

[9:15]  ¹⁵ tn The words “his supporters” are added for clarification.

[9:15]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “If this is your desire.” נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) refers here to the seat of the emotions and will. For other examples of this use of the word, see BDB 660-61 s.v.

[9:27]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and Ahaziah king of Judah saw and fled.”

[9:27]  ¹⁸ tn After Jehu’s order (“kill him too”), the MT has simply, “to the chariot in the ascent of Gur which is near Ibleam.” The main verb in the clause, “they shot him” (וַיִּכְהוּ, vayyikhhu), has been accidentally omitted by virtual haplography/homoioteleuton. Note that the immediately preceding form הַכֻּהוּ (hakkuhu), “shoot him,” ends with the same suffix.

[9:27]  ¹⁹ map For location see Map1 D4; Map2 C1; Map4 C2; Map5 F2; Map7 B1.

[12:21]  ²¹ tn Heb “struck him down and he died.”

[12:21]  ²² tn Heb “they buried him.”

[13:17]  ²⁵ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[13:17]  ²⁶ tn Heb “He opened [it].”

[13:17]  ²⁷ tn Heb “and he shot.”

[13:17]  ²⁸ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[13:17]  ²⁹ tn Heb “The arrow of victory of the Lord and the arrow of victory over Syria.”

[13:17]  ³⁰ tn Heb “you will strike down Syria in Aphek until destruction.”

[13:25]  ²⁹ tn Heb “from the hand of.”

[14:6]  ³³ tn Heb “as it is written in the scroll of the law of Moses which the Lord commanded, saying.”

[14:6]  ³⁴ tn Heb “on account of sons.”

[14:6]  ³⁵ tn Heb “on account of fathers.”

[14:6]  ³⁶ sn This law is recorded in Deut 24:16.

[14:7]  ³⁷ tn Or “struck down.”

[15:25]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “and he struck him down in Samaria in the fortress of the house of the king, Argob and Arieh, and with him fifty men from the sons of the Gileadites, and they killed him.”

[19:35]  ⁴⁵ tn This refers to the Israelites and/or the rest of the Assyrian army.

[19:35]  ⁴⁶ tn Heb “look, all of them were dead bodies.”

[19:37]  ⁴⁹ sn The assassination probably took place in 681 b.c.

[19:37]  ⁵⁰ sn No such Mesopotamian god is presently known. Perhaps the name is a corruption of Nusku.

[19:37]  ⁵¹ tc Although “his sons” is absent in the Kethib, it is supported by the Qere, along with many medieval Hebrew mss and the ancient versions. Cf. Isa 37:38.

[19:37]  ⁵² sn Extra-biblical sources also mention the assassination of Sennacherib, though they refer to only one assassin. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 239-40.

[25:25]  ⁵³ sn It is not altogether clear whether this is in the same year that Jerusalem fell or not. The wall was breached in the fourth month (= early July; Jer 39:2) and Nebuzaradan came and burned the palace, the temple, and many of the houses and tore down the wall in the fifth month (= early August; Jer 52:12). That would have left time between the fifth month and the seventh month (October) to gather in the harvest of grapes, dates and figs, and olives (Jer 40:12). However, many commentators feel that too much activity takes place in too short a time for this to have been in the same year and posit that it happened the following year or even five years later when a further deportation took place, possibly in retaliation for the murder of Gedaliah and the Babylonian garrison at Mizpah (Jer 52:30). The assassination of Gedaliah had momentous consequences and was commemorated in one of the post exilic fast days lamenting the fall of Jerusalem (Zech 8:19).

[25:25]  ⁵⁴ tn Heb “[was] from the seed of the kingdom.”

[25:25]  ⁵⁵ tn Heb “and they struck down Gedaliah and he died.”