The LORD smote the king, so that he was a leper: In spite of the overall positive rating given to Uzziah (verse 3), he was apparently punished for allowing the high places to remain in the kingdom. According to the account in 2 Chr 26.16-20, God punished him with leprosy because he had violated ritual requirements by offering sacrifices to God, which only the priests were supposed to do. The verb smote in this context indicates that the LORD caused the king to have a serious illness. In this case the problem was the dreaded skin disease referred to in most versions as leprosy (see the comments on this disease at 2 Kgs 5.1). Some other verbs used to express this idea are “afflicted” (New International Version), “inflicted” (God’s Word), and “punished” (Contemporary English Version).
The king refers to Uzziah (Azariah) in this verse, and in some languages it will be wise to use his proper name rather than his title (so Good News Translation).
Instead of saying to the day of his death, it will be more natural in certain languages to translate “for the remainder of his days on earth” or “as long as he lived.”
He dwelt in a separate house is literally “he dwelt in the house of freedom.” These words have long been problematic to scholars trying to interpret 2 Kings. Some understand this to mean that the king was released (freed) from his normal obligations. Revised English Bible expresses this sense with “he was relieved of all duties and lived in his palace.” But the meaning more likely is that the king lived in isolated quarters in a kind of quarantine. This may or may not have implied that he no longer fulfilled his royal obligations, but the following sentence makes it quite clear that Jotham assumed the duties of king. So it may be best to translate “He lived confined to his room” (New Jerusalem Bible), “he lived in isolated quarters” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh), or “He lived in quarantine” (Hobbs).
Instead of king’s son, some languages may have a special term that is more or less equivalent to “prince” (Hobbs) in English. If this is the case, such a word will be appropriate in this context.
The text seems to indicate that Jotham took over two distinct functions of his father. The phrase stating that he was over the household is more limited and seems to speak primarily of the management of the royal household (see 1 Kgs 4.6, where the same Hebrew phrase here is rendered “was in charge of the palace”), while governing the people of the land focuses more on his ruling the entire kingdom of Judah. Another translation of this last phrase is “was given the task of governing the kingdom” (Bible en français courant).
Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on 1-2 Kings, Volume 2. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2008. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .