2 Kings 7:4

7:4 If we go into the city, we’ll die of starvation, ¹  and if we stay here we’ll die! So come on, let’s defect ²  to the Syrian camp! If they spare us, ³  we’ll live; if they kill us – well, we were going to die anyway.” ⁴ 

2 Kings 7:6

7:6 The Lord had caused the Syrian camp to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a large army. Then they said to one another, “Look, the king of Israel has paid the kings of the Hittites and Egypt to attack us!”

2 Kings 7:10

7:10 So they went and called out to the gatekeepers ⁵  of the city. They told them, “We entered the Syrian camp and there was no one there. We didn’t even hear a man’s voice. ⁶  But the horses and donkeys are still tied up, and the tents remain up.” ⁷ 

[7:4]  ¹ tn Heb “If we say, ‘We will enter the city,’ the famine is in the city and we will die there.”

[7:4]  ² tn Heb “fall.”

[7:4]  ³ tn Heb “keep us alive.”

[7:4]  ⁴ tn Heb “we will die.” The paraphrastic translation attempts to bring out the logical force of their reasoning.

[7:10]  ⁵ tn The MT has a singular form (“gatekeeper”), but the context suggests a plural. The pronoun that follows (“them”) is plural and a plural noun appears in v. 11. The Syriac Peshitta and the Targum have the plural here.

[7:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “and, look, there was no man or voice of a man there.”

[7:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “but the horses are tied up and the donkeys are tied up and the tents are as they were.”