translation_id: net-engnet

label: NET translator note

text: Heb “the officer on whose hand the king leans.”


text: Heb “man of God.”


text: 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.


text: Heb “he”; the referent (Elisha) has been specified in the translation for clarity.


text: Heb “you will not eat from there.”


text: Heb “until we die.”


text: Heb “If we say, ‘We will enter the city,’ the famine is in the city and we will die there.”


text: Heb “fall.”


text: Heb “keep us alive.”


text: Heb “we will die.” The paraphrastic translation attempts to bring out the logical force of their reasoning.


text: Heb “they arose to go to.”


text: Heb “they ate and drank.”


text: Heb “and they hid [it].”


text: Heb “and they took from there.”


text: Heb “this day is a day of good news and we are keeping silent.”


text: Heb “the light of the morning.”


text: Heb “punishment will find us.”


text: 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.


text: Heb “and, look, there was no man or voice of a man there.”


text: Heb “but the horses are tied up and the donkeys are tied up and the tents are as they were.”


text: Heb “and the gatekeepers called out and they told [it] to the house of the king.”


text: Heb “servants” (also in v. 13 ).


text: 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.”


text: Heb “and let us send so we might see.”


text: Heb “and the king sent [them] after the Syrian camp.”


text: Heb “Go and see.”


text: Heb “went after.”


text: Heb “and look, all the road was full of clothes and equipment that Syria had thrown away in their haste.”


text: Or “messengers.”


text: Heb “the officer on whose hand he leans.”


text: Heb “and the people trampled him in the gate and he died.”


text: Heb “just as the man of God had spoken, [the word] which he spoke when the king came down to him.”


text: Heb “the Lord was making holes in the sky, could this thing be?” See the note at 7:2 .


text: Heb “you will not eat from there.” tn In the Hebrew text vv. 18-19 a 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.