As will be noted in the discussion on the names of the foreign deities listed in verses 30-31, there is much disagreement among interpreters (and translations) regarding the correct identification and spelling of several of these names. It is likely that the original spellings of some of these names have been changed, either accidentally by scribes or deliberately in order to make fun of these foreign gods.

There is no reason to believe that the expressions the men of Babylon, the men of Cuth and the men of Hamath are intended to exclude women. So it will be better to translate “the people of/from…” (Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version). What they made were “idols of the god” (Good News Translation) from each of these places. Another way of making this information explicit is by translating made as “made a statue of” (La Bible du Semeur).

Although the spelling differs in Hebrew, the name Cuth should be spelled the same as in verse 24 since it refers to the same city.

The writer begins to list the names of the foreign deities in this verse: Succoth-benoth, Nergal, and Ashima. Succoth is the name of two different places referred to in the Old Testament: (1) the first stopping place of the Israelites during the Exodus from Egypt (Exo 12.37) and (2) a town located on the east side of the Jordan River, which is mentioned in 1 Kgs 7.46.

A Babylonian god by the name Succoth-benoth is not known from any other ancient source. For this reason some scholars think that the two Hebrew words, succoth and benoth, should be translated according to their meaning. Succoth is the plural of the Hebrew word for “booth” or “stall.” Some scholars think that the name Succoth-benoth refers to booths where women (benoth) were involved in some sort of sexual ceremonies. But this is far from certain.

Another solution has been to assume that the words succoth and benoth are a scribal error and that the Hebrew text originally read the name “Sarpanitu,” the name of a Babylonian goddess (so Gray), but the textual evidence to support this correction is far from certain.

Others suggest that the name was originally “Sakkuth,” the star-god mentioned in Amos 5.26 (so La Bible Pléiade), and that the word benoth was added to the text after the name Sakkuth was miscopied as succoth. La Bible Pléiade follows this interpretation and translates the beginning of this verse as follows: “The people of Babylon made Sakkuth [ ] ….” But there are serious linguistic difficulties in making this identification, so the rendering in La Bible Pléiade is not recommended.

The New American Bible translators decided that the Hebrew text here contains an error, so they corrected the text to read “Marduk” instead of Succoth-benoth. Marduk was the patron deity of Babylon.

Translators would be wise to treat the term Succoth-benoth as a proper name without attempting to reflect the possible meaning of the Hebrew words.

Both Nergal and Ashima are names that do not occur elsewhere in the Bible. The Mesopotamian god Nergal, who is well known from ancient non-biblical documents, was a god of the underworld and was associated with fire, famine, plagues, and death. Ashima, however, cannot be identified with certainty with any other known god or goddess. Some scholars think that Ashima refers to the Phoenician god Eshmun. Other interpreters think that the words “guilt [ʾashmath in Hebrew] of Samaria” in Amos 8.14 originally read “Ashimah [ʾashimaʾ in Hebrew] of Samaria,” but such an interpretation of Amos 8.14 is debated.

The classifier term “god” will have to be added in most languages to each name if the translation is to be meaningful.

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 .