3. and even his son he passed through the fire. This expression, featuring the verb “to pass through” (or “pass over”), is used elsewhere in reference to the pagan cult of the Molech. It is unclear whether the expression refers to actually burning the son as an offering to the god or to a symbolic act of passing him through or over the fire. The translation preserves the ambiguity of the Hebrew, avoiding a rendering such as “consigned to the fire” that some modern translators favor.

4. under every lush tree. This phrase, which recurs in a number of different biblical texts, evidently refers to the worship of nature deities.

6. Rezin king of Aram restored Elath to Aram. It is puzzling that Rezin, in the midst of laying siege against Jerusalem, should have gone on an expedition to Elath in the far south. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that the consonantal text has Arameans settling in Elath, but the Masoretic marginal gloss corrects this to Edomites. (The graphic difference in Hebrew between “Aram” and “Edom” is minimal because the letters resh and dalet are similar in appearance.) The original verse may have read: the king of Edom restored Elath to Edom. The Edomites could easily have taken advantage of the fact that the Judahite forces were distracted by the siege of Jerusalem.

7. I am your servant and your son. This is obviously an expression of subservience or vassaldom.

8. Ahaz took the silver and the gold that were in the house of the LORD. The mechanics of this act are spelled out in verses 17–18.

as a bribe. This amounts to protection money. The Hebrew shoḥad always has a negative connotation and it is a mistake to translate it as “gifts.” Tiglath-Pileser was in any case engaged in a series of campaigns against Aram, Israel, Phoenicia, and the Philistines and thus scarcely needed encouragement, but the payment of silver and gold would have been an expression of Ahaz’s fealty to Assyria.

9. exiled its people. The Hebrew merely says “exiled it,” but since “it,” although grammatically referring to the city, actually refers to its inhabitants, an expansion in translation is called for here.

10. Ahaz sent to Uriah the priest the image of the altar and its design in all its fashioning. In the present instance, this is not an attempt to adapt pagan practice, for the narrator makes no critical comment, and the new altar erected in Jerusalem is adapted for the cult of YHWH and is not subsequently destroyed. Instead, Ahaz, a provincial monarch, comes to the metropolis of Damascus, where, as a kind of cultic tourist, he sees and marvels at the large and impressive altar constructed according to the most modern design, and he decides to adopt it for his own temple.

13. he turned his burnt offering and his grain offering to smoke. There are indications elsewhere that the king, on special ceremonial occasions such as the dedication of a new altar, officiated at the sacrifices, which otherwise were the province of the priests.

15. the large altar. This is the new altar, built according to the model of the altar in Damascus.

17. cut off the frames of the laver stands. As in the account of the sacred furnishings of Solomon’s temple, it is difficult to reconstruct the details of the cultic vessels, but the general idea is that Ahaz stripped the precious metals from them to send as his tribute to Tiglath-Pileser.