2 Kings 8:21

8:21 Joram ¹  crossed over to Zair with all his chariots. The Edomites, who had surrounded him, attacked at night and defeated him and his chariot officers. ²  The Israelite army retreated to their homeland. ³ 

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 ⁴  got up early the next morning, there were all the corpses. ⁵ 

2 Kings 25:4

25:4 The enemy broke through the city walls, ⁶  and all the soldiers tried to escape. They left the city during the night. ⁷  They went through the gate between the two walls that is near the king’s garden. ⁸  (The Babylonians were all around the city.) Then they headed for the Jordan Valley. ⁹ 

[8:21]  ¹ sn Joram is a short form of the name Jehoram.

[8:21]  ² 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]  ³ tn Heb “and the people fled to their tents.”

[19:35]  ⁴ tn This refers to the Israelites and/or the rest of the Assyrian army.

[19:35]  ⁵ tn Heb “look, all of them were dead bodies.”

[25:4]  ⁷ tn Heb “the city was breached.”

[25:4]  ⁸ tn The Hebrew text is abrupt here: “And all the men of war by the night.” The translation attempts to capture the sense.

[25:4]  ⁹ sn The king’s garden is mentioned again in Neh 3:15 in conjunction with the pool of Siloam and the stairs that go down from the city of David. This would have been in the southern part of the city near the Tyropean Valley which agrees with the reference to the “two walls” which were probably the walls on the eastern and western hills.

[25:4]  ¹⁰ sn Heb “toward the Arabah.” The Arabah was the rift valley north and south of the Dead Sea. Here the intention was undoubtedly to escape across the Jordan to Moab or Ammon. It appears from Jer 40:14; 41:15 that the Ammonites were known to harbor fugitives from the Babylonians.