translation_id: net-engnet

label: NET translator note

text: 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 .


text: Heb “read in their ears.”


text: Heb “cut,” that is, “made, agreed to.”


text: Heb “walk after.”


text: Or “soul.”


text: Heb “words.”


text: Heb “stood in the covenant.”


text: Heb “the priests of the second [rank],” that is, those ranked just beneath Hilkiah.


text: Or “doorkeepers.”


text: Heb “for.”


text: Heb “all the host of heaven” (also in v. 5 ).


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


text: Or “fields.” For a defense of the translation “terraces,” see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 285.


text: For location see Map4-G4 ; Map5-C1 ; Map6-E3 ; Map7-D1 ; Map8-G3 .


text: Perhaps, “destroyed.”


text: Or “burn incense.”


text: Or “burned incense.”


text: Heb “and he burned it in the Kidron Valley.”


label: NET textual note

text: 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 common people (see BDB 766 s.v. עַם ), as opposed to the upper classes who would have private tombs.


text: Or “cubicles.” Heb “houses.”


text: Heb “houses.” Perhaps tent-shrines made from cloth are in view (see BDB 109 s.v. בַּיִת ). M. Cogan and H. Tadmor ( II Kings [AB], 286) understand this as referring to clothes made for images of the goddess.


text: Heb “defiled; desecrated,” that is, “made ritually unclean and unusable.”


text: 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 בָּמוֹת הַשְּׁעָרִים ( bamot hashÿ ’ 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.


text: Heb “their brothers.”


text: The MT simply reads “the horses.” The words “statues of” have been supplied in the translation for clarity.


text: Heb “who/which was in the […?].” The meaning of the Hebrew term פַּרְוָרִים ( 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.”


text: Heb “and the chariots of the sun he burned with fire.”


text: 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 רוּץ [ ruts ], “run”) to a Hiphil of רוּץ with third plural suffix and translate, “he quickly removed them” (see BDB 930 s.v. רוּץ , and M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings [AB], 289). The suffix could have been lost in MT by haplography (note the mem [ מ ] that immediately follows the verb on the form מִשֳׁם , misham , “from there”). Another option, the one reflected in the translation, is to emend the verb to a Piel of רָצַץ ( ratsats ), “crush,” with third plural suffix.


text: Heb “their places.”


text: 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.


text: 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. בָּמָה ( bamah ) here stands by metonymy for the combustible items located on the high place. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 289.


text: Heb “and he sent and took the bones from the tombs.”


text: Heb “the king”; this has been specified as “King Josiah” in the translation for clarity (cf. TEV, CEV, NLT).


text: Heb “man of God.”


text: 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 ) 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.


text: 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.


text: 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 .


text: 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 כִּי ( ki ) as asseverative and translate, “indeed.”


text: 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.”


text: Here בִּעֵר ( bi ’ er ) is not the well attested verb “burn,” but the less common homonym meaning “devastate, sweep away, remove.” See HALOT 146 s.v. בער .


text: Heb “carrying out the words of the law.”


text: 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 .


text: 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.”


text: Heb “Also Judah I will turn away from my face.”


text: Heb “My name will be there.”


text: 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?”


text: Heb “went up to.” The idiom עַל … עָלָה (’ 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.


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


text: For location see Map1-D4 ; Map2-C1 ; Map4-C2 ; Map5-F2 ; Map7-B1 .


text: Heb “him, dead.”


text: Or “anointed him.”


text: For location see Map5-B1 ; Map6-F3 ; Map7-E2 ; Map8-F2 ; Map10-B3 ; JP1-F4 ; JP2-F4 ; JP3-F4 ; JP4-F4 .


text: Heb “the name of his mother.”


text: Heb “in the eyes of.”


text: Heb “according to all which his fathers had done.”


text: 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.”


text: Or “fine.”


text: The Hebrew term כִּכָּר ( kikkar , “circle”) refers generally to something that is round. When used of metals it can refer to a disk-shaped weight made of the metal or to a standard unit of weight, generally regarded as a talent. Since the accepted weight for a talent of metal is about 75 pounds, this would have amounted to about 7,500 pounds of silver and 75 pounds of gold (cf. NCV, NLT); CEV “almost four tons of silver and about seventy-five pounds of gold.”


text: Heb “and he took Jehoahaz, and he came to Egypt and he died there.”


text: 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.”