The king of Babylon smote them, and put them to death: The two verbs used here seem to refer to punishment by beating which was then followed by execution. It is virtually certain that King Nebuchadnezzar did not actually perform all this activity by himself. For this reason it may be advisable to use causative verb forms in some languages, saying something like Good News Translation.

Good News Translation takes the words at Riblah in the land of Hamath as a part of the sentence that begins in the previous verse. Since the previous verse ends with “at Riblah,” this is somewhat redundant as presented in Revised Standard Version. Regarding the “territory” (Good News Translation) or “province” (Peregrino) of Hamath, see the comments on 1 Kgs 8.65 and 2 Kgs 23.33.

So Judah was taken into exile out of its land: This last sentence in the verse constitutes a separate paragraph in Good News Translation (also Bible en français courant, Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente, Nova Tradução na Linguagem de Hoje, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy, Peregrino) because it is a summary statement. Many versions, however, make it the final sentence of the paragraph that begins at verse 18.

The passive form of this final sentence in Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation may be made active by making King Nebuchadnezzar or the Babylonian army the subject of the sentence. Judah refers, of course, to “the people of Judah” (Good News Translation). Translators may therefore say something like “So King Nebuchadnezzar took the people of Judah away from their own land to live in exile” or “The army of Babylonia forced the people of Judah to leave their land and live in a foreign place.” Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente and Bible en français courant make it explicit that the exile was to a faraway land by saying “So the people of Judah were deported far away from their land” (similarly Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, La Bible Pléiade, em>Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente). Contemporary English Version provides another possible model with “The people of Judah no longer lived in their own country.”

The Hebrew word for land in this sentence is literally “soil.” See the comments on this same expression at 2 Kgs 21.8.

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 .