2 Raja-raja 6:25

6:25 Samaria’s food supply ran out. ¹  They laid siege to it so long that ²  a donkey’s head was selling for eighty shekels of silver ³  and a quarter of a kab ⁴  of dove’s droppings ⁵  for five shekels of silver. ⁶ 

2 Raja-raja 11:6

11:6 Another third of you will be stationed at the Foundation ⁷  Gate. Still another third of you will be stationed at the gate behind the royal guard. ⁸  You will take turns guarding the palace. ⁹ 

2 Raja-raja 12:19

12:19 The rest of the events of Joash’s reign, including all his accomplishments, are recorded in the scroll called the Annals of the Kings of Judah. ¹⁰ 

2 Raja-raja 25:18

25:18 The captain of the royal guard took Seraiah the chief priest and Zephaniah, the priest who was second in rank, and the three doorkeepers.

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

² tn Heb “and look, [they] were besieging it until.”

³ tn Heb “eighty, silver.” The unit of measurement is omitted.

⁴ sn A kab was a unit of dry measure, equivalent to approximately one quart.

⁵ tn The consonantal text (Kethib) reads, “dove dung” (חֲרֵייוֹנִים, khareyonim), while the marginal reading (Qere) has “discharge” (דִּבְיוֹנִים, divyonim). Based on evidence from Akkadian, M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 79) suggest that “dove’s dung” was a popular name for the inedible husks of seeds.

⁶ tn Heb “five, silver.” The unit of measurement is omitted.

⁷ tn Heb “the gate of Sur” (followed by many English versions) but no such gate is mentioned elsewhere in the OT. The parallel account in 2 Chr 23:5 has “Foundation Gate.” סוּר (sur), “Sur,” may be a corruption of יְסוֹד (yÿsod) “foundation,” involving in part dalet-resh confusion.

⁸ tn Heb “the runners.”

⁹ tn The meaning of מַסָּח (massakh) is not certain. The translation above, rather than understanding it as a genitive modifying “house,” takes it as an adverb describing how the groups will guard the palace. See HALOT 605 s.v. מַסָּח for the proposed meaning “alternating” (i.e., “in turns”).

¹⁰ tn Heb “As for the rest of the events of Joash, and all which he did, are they not written on the scroll of the events of the days of the kings of Judah?”