¹ tn Heb “and there was a great famine in Samaria.”

¹ tn Heb “and he arose and went and came to Samaria.”

² sn King Ahab of Samaria. Samaria, as the capital of the northern kingdom, here stands for the nation of Israel.

¹ tn Heb “and the king died and he came to Samaria, and they buried the king in Samaria.”

² tn Heb “went up from Tirzah and arrived in Samaria and attacked Shallum son of Jabesh in Samaria.”

² tn Heb “and he went up and besieged Samaria and fought against it.”

¹ tn Heb “and they saw, and look, [they were] in the middle of Samaria.”

² sn In vv. 24-29 Samaria stands for the entire northern kingdom of Israel.

² tn Heb “and the people, all of them, knew; Ephraim and the residents of Samaria.”

¹ tn Heb “her”; the referent (Samaria) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹ tn Grk “town of Samaria.” The noun Σαμαρείας (Samareias) has been translated as an attributive genitive.

¹ sn The precious metal used by Samaria’s pagan worship centers to make idols are here compared to a prostitute’s wages because Samaria had been unfaithful to the Lord and prostituted herself to pagan gods, such as Baal.

² tn Heb “if the dirt of Samaria suffices for the handfuls of all the people who are at my feet.”

¹ tn Heb “and he struck down all the remaining ones to Ahab in Samaria until he destroyed him.”

² tn Heb “the beauty of his splendor.” In the translation the masculine pronoun (“his”) has been replaced by “its” because the referent (the “crown”) is the city of Samaria.

¹ map For the location of Samaria see Map2 B1; Map4 D3; Map5 E2; Map6 A4; Map7 C1.

⁴ tn Heb “the city”; this probably refers to the city of Samaria (cf. 6:1), which in turn, by metonymy, represents the entire northern kingdom.

³ tn Heb “Samaria.” The name of Israel’s capital city here stands for the northern kingdom as a whole. Actually Samaria was not built and named until several years after this (see 1 Kgs 16:24), so it is likely that the author of Kings, writing at a later time, is here adapting the old prophet’s original statement.

³ tn Heb “that they rescued Samaria from my hand?” But this gives the impression that the gods of Sepharvaim were responsible for protecting Samaria, which is obviously not the case. The implied subject of the plural verb “rescued” must be the generic “gods of the nations/lands” (vv. 33, 35).

³ tn Heb “that they rescued Samaria from my hand?” But this gives the impression that the gods of Sepharvaim were responsible for protecting Samaria, which is obviously not the case. The implied subject of the plural verb “rescued” must be the generic “gods of the nations/lands” (vv. 18, 20).