¹sn A seah was a dry measure equivalent to about 7 quarts.
²tn Heb “the officer on whose hand the king leans.”
³tn Heb “man of God.”
⁴tn Heb “the Lord was making holes in the sky, could this thing be?” Opening holes in the sky would allow the waters stored up there to pour to the earth and assure a good crop. But, the officer argues, even if this were to happen, it would take a long time to grow and harvest the crop.
⁵tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
⁶tn Heb “you will not eat from there.”
⁷sn See the note at 2 Kgs 5:1.
⁸tn Heb “until we die.”
⁹tn Heb “If we say, ‘We will enter the city,’ the famine is in the city and we will die there.”
¹⁰tn Heb “fall.”
¹¹tn Heb “keep us alive.”
¹²tn Heb “we will die.” The paraphrastic translation attempts to bring out the logical force of their reasoning.
¹³tn Heb “they arose to go to.”
¹⁴tn Heb “they ate and drank.”
¹⁵tn Heb “and they hid [it].”
¹⁶tn Heb “and they took from there.”
¹⁷tn Heb “this day is a day of good news and we are keeping silent.”
¹⁸tn Heb “the light of the morning.”
¹⁹tn Heb “punishment will find us.”
²⁰tn 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.
²¹tn Heb “and, look, there was no man or voice of a man there.”
²²tn Heb “but the horses are tied up and the donkeys are tied up and the tents are as they were.”
²³tn Heb “and the gatekeepers called out and they told [it] to the house of the king.”
²⁴tn Heb “servants” (also in v. 13).
²⁵tn Heb “Let them take five of the remaining horses that remain in it. Look, they are like all the people of Israel that remain in it. Look, they are like all the people of Israel that have come to an end.” The MT is dittographic here; the words “that remain in it. Look they are like all the people of Israel” have been accidentally repeated. The original text read, “Let them take five of the remaining horses that remain in it. Look, they are like all the people of Israel that have come to an end.”
²⁶tn Heb “and let us send so we might see.”
²⁷tn Heb “and the king sent [them] after the Syrian camp.”
²⁸tn Heb “Go and see.”
²⁹tn Heb “went after.”
³⁰tn Heb “and look, all the road was full of clothes and equipment that Syria had thrown away in their haste.”
³¹tn Or “messengers.”
³²sn A seah was a dry measure equivalent to about 7 quarts.
³³tn Heb “according to the word of the Lord.”
³⁴tn Heb “the officer on whose hand he leans.”
³⁵tn Heb “and the people trampled him in the gate and he died.”
³⁶tn Heb “just as the man of God had spoken, [the word] which he spoke when the king came down to him.”
³⁷tn Heb “the Lord was making holes in the sky, could this thing be?” See the note at 7:2.
³⁸tn Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
³⁹tn Heb “you will not eat from there.”
tn In the Hebrew text vv. 18-19a are one lengthy sentence, “When the man of God spoke to the king…, the officer replied to the man of God, ‘Look…so soon?’” The translation divides this sentence up for stylistic reasons.