2 Raja-raja 3:27

3:27 So he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him up as a burnt sacrifice on the wall. There was an outburst of divine anger against Israel, ¹  so they broke off the attack ²  and returned to their homeland.

2 Raja-raja 16:17

16:17 King Ahaz took off the frames of the movable stands, and removed the basins from them. He took “The Sea” ³  down from the bronze bulls that supported it ⁴  and put it on the pavement.

2 Raja-raja 18:27

18:27 But the chief adviser said to them, “My master did not send me to speak these words only to your master and to you. ⁵  His message is also for the men who sit on the wall, for they will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine along with you.” ⁶ 

2 Raja-raja 25:1

25:1 So King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came against Jerusalem with his whole army and set up camp outside ⁷  it. They built siege ramps all around it. He arrived on the tenth day of the tenth month in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign. ⁸ 

2 Raja-raja 25:17

25:17 Each of the pillars was about twenty-seven feet ⁹  high. The bronze top of one pillar was about four and a half feet ¹⁰  high and had bronze latticework and pomegranate shaped ornaments all around it. The second pillar with its latticework was like it.

[3:27]  ¹ tn Heb “there was great anger against Israel.”

[3:27]  sn The meaning of this statement is uncertain, for the subject of the anger is not indicated. Except for two relatively late texts, the noun קֶצֶף (qetsef) refers to an outburst of divine anger. But it seems unlikely the Lord would be angry with Israel, for he placed his stamp of approval on the campaign (vv. 16-19). D. N. Freedman suggests the narrator, who obviously has a bias against the Omride dynasty, included this observation to show that the Lord would not allow the Israelite king to “have an undiluted victory” (as quoted in M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings [AB], 52, n. 8). Some suggest that the original source identified Chemosh the Moabite god as the subject and that his name was later suppressed by a conscientious scribe, but this proposal raises more questions than it answers. For a discussion of various views, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 47-48, 51-52.

[3:27]  ² tn Heb “they departed from him.”

[16:17]  ³ sn See the note at 1 Kgs 7:23.

[16:17]  ⁴ tn Heb “that [were] under it.”

[18:27]  ⁵ tn Heb “To your master and to you did my master send me to speak these words?” The rhetorical question expects a negative answer.

[18:27]  ⁶ tn Heb “[Is it] not [also] to the men…?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Yes, it is.”

[18:27]  sn The chief adviser alludes to the horrible reality of siege warfare, when the starving people in the besieged city would resort to eating and drinking anything to stay alive.

[25:1]  ⁷ tn Or “against.”

[25:1]  ⁸ sn This would have been Jan 15, 588 b.c. The reckoning is based on the calendar that begins the year in the spring (Nisan = March/April).

[25:17]  ⁹ tn Heb “eighteen cubits.” The standard cubit in the OT is assumed by most authorities to be about eighteen inches (45 cm) long.

[25:17]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “three cubits.” The parallel passage in Jer 52:22 has “five.”