¹tn Heb “and the king sent and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem gathered to him.”
map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
²tn Heb “read in their ears.”
³tn Heb “cut,” that is, “made, agreed to.”
⁴tn Heb “walk after.”
⁵tn Or “soul.”
⁶tn Heb “words.”
⁷tn Heb “stood in the covenant.”
⁸tn Heb “the priests of the second [rank],” that is, those ranked just beneath Hilkiah.
⁹tn Or “doorkeepers.”
¹⁰tn Heb “for.”
¹¹tn Heb “all the host of heaven” (also in v. 5).
¹²tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
¹³tn Or “fields.” For a defense of the translation “terraces,” see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 285.
¹⁴map For location see Map4-G4; Map5-C1; Map6-E3; Map7-D1; Map8-G3.
¹⁵tn Perhaps, “destroyed.”
¹⁶tn Or “burn incense.”
¹⁷tn Or “burned incense.”
¹⁸tn Heb “and he burned it in the Kidron Valley.”
¹⁹tc Heb “on the grave of the sons of the people.” Some Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Aramaic, and Latin witnesses read the plural “graves.”
tn The phrase “sons of the people” refers here to the comm (see BDB 766 s.v. <u^), as opposed to the upper classes who would have private tombs.
²⁰tn Or “cubicles.” Heb “houses.”
²¹tn Heb “houses.” Perhaps tent-shrines made from cloth are in view (see BDB 109 s.v. ty]B^). M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 286) understand this as referring to clothes made for images of the goddess.
²²tn Heb “defiled; desecrated,” that is, “made ritually unclean and unusable.”
²³sn These towns marked Judah’s northern and southern borders, respectively, at the time of Josiah.
²⁴tc The Hebrew text reads “the high places of the gates,” which is problematic in that the rest of the verse speaks of a specific gate. The translation assumes an emendation to <yr]u*V=h^ tomB* (bamot hash^e’arim), “the high place of the goats” (that is, goat idols). Worship of such images is referred to in Lev 17:7 and 2 Chr 11:15. For a discussion of the textual issue, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 286-87.
²⁵tn Heb “their brothers.”
²⁶tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
²⁷sn Attempts to identify this deity with a god known from the ancient Near East have not yet yielded a consensus. For brief discussions see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor II Kings (AB), 288 and HALOT 592 s.v. El#m). For more extensive studies see George C. Heider, The Cult of Molek, and John Day, Molech: A God of Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament.
²⁸tn The MT simply reads “the horses.” The words “statues of” have been supplied in the translation for clarity.
²⁹tn Heb “who/which was in the […?].” The meaning of the Hebrew term <yr]w`r+P^ (parvarim), translated here “courtyards,” is uncertain. The relative clause may indicate where the room was located or explain who Nathan Melech was, “the eunuch who was in the courtyards.” See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 288-89, who translate “the officer of the precincts.”
<sup>30</sup>tn Heb “and the chariots of the sun he burned with fire.”
<sup>31</sup>tc The MT reads, “he ran from there,” which makes little if any sense in this context. Some prefer to emend the verbal form (Qal of JWr [ruts], “run”) to a Hiphil of JWr with third plural suffix and translate, “he quickly removed them” (see BDB 930 s.v. JWr, and M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings [AB], 289). The suffix could have been lost in MT by haplography (note the mem [m] that immediately follows the verb on the form <v(m!, misham, “from there”). Another option, the one reflected in the translation, is to emend the verb to a Piel of Jx^r` (ratsats), “crush,” with third plural suffix.
³²sn This is a derogatory name for the Mount of Olives, involving a wordplay between hj*v=m* (mash^ekhah), “anointing,” and tyj!v=m^ (mash^ekhit), “destruction.” See HALOT 644 s.v. tyj!v=m^ and M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 289.
³³tn Heb “their places.”
³⁴map For location see Map4-G4; Map5-C1; Map6-E3; Map7-D1; Map8-G3.
³⁵tn Heb “And also the altar that is in Bethel, the high place that Jeroboam son of Nebat who encouraged Israel to sin, also that altar and the high place he tore down.” The more repetitive Hebrew text is emphatic.
³⁶tn Heb “he burned the high place, crushing to dust, and he burned the Asherah pole.” High places per se are never referred to as being burned elsewhere. hm*B* (bamah) here stands by metonymy for the combustible items located on the high place. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 289.
³⁷tn Heb “and he sent and took the bones from the tombs.”
³⁸tc The MT is much shorter than this. It reads, “according to the word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.” The LXX has a much longer text at this point. It reads: “[which was proclaimed by the man of God] while Jeroboam stood by the altar at a celebration. Then he turned and saw the grave of the man of God [who proclaimed these words].” The extra material attested in the LXX was probably accidentally omitted in the Hebrew tradition when a scribe’s eye jumped from the first occurrence of the phrase “man of God” (which appears right before the extra material) and the second occurrence of the phrase (which appears at the end of the extra material).
sn This recalls the prophecy recorded in 1 Kgs 13:2.
³⁹tn Heb “man of God.”
⁴⁰tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
⁴¹tn Heb “and they left undisturbed his bones, the bones of the prophet who came from Samaria.” If the phrase “the bones of the prophet” were appositional to “his bones,” one would expect the sentence to end “from Judah” (see v. 17). Apparently the “prophet” referred to in the second half of the verse is the old prophet from Bethel who buried the man of God from Judah in his own tomb and instructed his sons to bury his bones there as well (1 Kgs 13:30-31). One expects the text to read “from Bethel,” but “Samaria” (which was not even built at the time of the incident recorded in 1 Kgs 13) is probably an anachronistic reference to the northern kingdom in general. See the note at 1 Kgs 13:32 and the discussion in M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 290.
⁴²tc Heb “which the kings of Israel had made, angering.” The object has been accidentally omitted in the MT. It appears in the LXX, Syriac, and Vulgate versions.
⁴³tn Heb “and he did to them according to all the deeds he had done in Bethel.”
map For location see Map4-G4; Map5-C1; Map6-E3; Map7-D1; Map8-G3.
⁴⁴tn The Hebrew text has simply “because.” The translation attempts to reflect more clearly the logical connection between the king’s order and the narrator’s observation. Another option is to interpret yK! (ki) as asseverative and translate, “indeed.”
⁴⁵tn Heb “because there had not been observed [one] like this Passover from the days of the judges who judged Israel and all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.”
⁴⁶tn Here ru@B! (bi’er) is not the well attested verb “burn,” but the less common homonym meaning “devastate, sweep away, remove.” See HALOT 146 s.v. rub.
⁴⁷sn See the note at 2 Kgs 21:6.
⁴⁸sn See the note at 1 Kgs 15:12.
⁴⁹tn Heb “carrying out the words of the law.”
⁵⁰tn Heb “and like him there was not a king before him who returned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his being according to all the law of Moses, and after him none arose like him.”
sn The description of Josiah’s devotion as involving his whole “heart, soul, and being” echoes the language of Deut 6:5.
⁵¹tn Heb “Yet the Lord did not turn away from the fury of his great anger, which raged against Judah, on account of all the infuriating things by which Manasseh had made him angry.”
⁵²tn Heb “Also Judah I will turn away from my face.”
⁵³tn Heb “My name will be there.”
⁵⁴tn Heb “As for the rest of the events of Josiah, and all which he did, are they not written on the scroll of the events of the days of the kings of Judah?”
⁵⁵tn Heb “went up to.” The idiom lu^…hl*u* (’alah …’al) can sometimes mean “go up against,” but here it refers to Necho’s attempt to aid the Assyrians in their struggle with the Babylonians.
⁵⁶tn Heb “he”; the referent (Necho) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
⁵⁷map For location see Map1-D4; Map2-C1; Map4-C2; Map5-F2; Map7-B1.
⁵⁸tn Heb “him, dead.”
⁵⁹tn Or “anointed him.”
⁶⁰map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
⁶¹tn Heb “the name of his mother.”
⁶²tn Heb “in the eyes of.”
⁶³tn Heb “according to all which his fathers had done.”
⁶⁴tc The consonantal text (Kethib) has “when [he was] ruling in Jerusalem,” but the marginal reading (Qere), which has support from Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Latin witnesses, has “[preventing him] from ruling in Jerusalem.”
⁶⁵tn Or “fine.”
⁶⁶sn See the note at 1 Kgs 9:14.
⁶⁷tn Heb “and he took Jehoahaz, and he came to Egypt and he died there.”
⁶⁸tn Heb “And the silver and the gold Jehoiakim gave to Pharaoh, but he taxed the land to give the silver at the command of Pharaoh, [from] each according to his tax he collected the silver and the gold, from the people of the land, to give to Pharaoh Necho.”
⁶⁹map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.