2 Kings 15:20

And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord,.... Not only in committing the above crimes of usurpation and murder, but idolatry, and particularly the worshipping of the calves, hinted at in the text.

And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord,.... Not only in committing the above crimes of usurpation and murder, but idolatry, and particularly the worshipping of the calves, hinted at in the text.

2 Kings 15:29

kg2 15:29

kg2 15:29

kg2 15:29In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglathpileser king of Assyria,.... Into the land of Israel; he is called by a Jewish chronologer (c), Pul-Asir; so Phul-Assar by Metasthenes (d), who says he reigned twenty five years; he very probably was the son of Pul the Assyrian king, mentioned Kg2 15:19, and is thought to be the same that Aelianus (e) calls Tilgamos; some think he had the first part of his name from Diglath, or Diglito, by which the river Tigris is called in Pliny (f), with which Assyria was washed; and that Pil, or Pul, is Baal, Bel, Jupiter, and Azar is Mars (g); of all which his name is composed:

and took Ijon, and Abelbethmaachah; of which see Kg1 15:20,

and Janoah; a city in the tribe of Ephraim, Jos 16:6.

and Kedesh, and Hazor; cities in Naphtali: Jos 19:36.

and Gilead; a country beyond Jordan, which belonged to the Reubenites, Gadites, and half tribe of Manasseh:

and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali; that is, upper Galilee, which lay in Naphtali:

and carried them captive to Assyria; which was the first captivity of Israel in which half their tribes were carried away.

(c) David Ganz. Ut supra. (Tzemach David, par. 2. fol. 3. 2.) (d) Ut supra. (De Judicio Temp. & Annal. Pers. fol. 221. 2.) (e) De Animal. l. 12. c. 21. (f) Nat. Hist. l. 6. c. 27. (g) Hyde Hist. Relig. Pers. p. 65, 66.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

2Ki 15:20 And Menahem exacted the money of Israel, [even] of all the mighty men of wealth, of each man fifty shekels of silver, to give to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria turned back, and stayed not there in the land.

Ver. 20. And Menahem exacted.] Heb., Caused to come forth, sc., by his exactors, who received from his rich subjects no less sums of curses than of coin.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

2Ki 15:20. Of all the mighty men of wealth — By exacting the money only of the rich, it is likely, he thought he should ingratiate himself with the common people, upon whom he laid no tax. Fifty shekels of silver, demanded of each man of wealth, were a sum equal to f7. 10s. of our money.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Verse 20. Each man fifty shekels of silver] Upwards of five pounds sterling a man.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(20) Exacted.—Literally, caused to go out; a word already used in the sense of to lay out, expend money (2Ki_12:12). Probably, therefore, laid (vayyissâ), i.e., imposed, should be read here (Gen_31:17).

Of.—Heb., upon.

The mighty men of wealth.—A later use of the Hebrew phrase, which, in older parlance, means “the heroes of the host” (Jdg_6:12; 1Sa_9:1).

Fifty shekels.—The talent of silver was worth 3,000 shekels. The payment of 1,000 talents (3,000,000 shekels) therefore implies a total of 60,000 persons able to contribute. Fifty shekels were one maneh (Assyrian, mana; Greek, μνῦ, and Latin, mina). There was no great Temple treasury to draw from in the northern kingdom, and any palace hoards would have disappeared in the confusions attending the frequent revolutions of the time.

There.—Or, then (Psa_14:5).

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

20. Menahem exacted the money] Fifty shekels=one maneh, was the sixtieth part of a talent of silver. Hence the mighty men of wealth must have numbered 60,000, a number which tells of the richness of the time. The population of Israel in David’s time had 800,000 soldiers (2Sa_24:9).

stayed not there] He had evidently made his approach to the very border, and perhaps over it.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Menahem exacted the money - The kings of Israel had no such ready resource in difficulties as that possessed by the kings of Judah in the temple treasury 2Ki 12:18; 2Ki 16:8. Hence, the forced contribution from the people, the odium of which was diminished by confining the levy to the comparatively rich.

Each man fifty shekels - As the silver talent contained 3,000 shekels, the levy of fifty shekels a head must have extended to 60,000 persons.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Rich. The lower classes were not perhaps entirely exempted.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Of each man, i.e. of each of those wealthy Israelites. But as each of these were not equally wealthy, so it is not probable that he taxed them equally. Others therefore render it to or for each man, i.e. for every Assyrian soldier; which interpretation is favoured by the placing of the words in the Hebrew text, which differs from that in our translation.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

20. Turned back — But according to 1Ch_5:26, he carried away with him a number of Israelitish captives.

Pul is the first Assyrian king whose invasion of Israel is mentioned in the Bible, and it is deeply interesting to know that the recently exhumed monuments of the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris throw much light on the biblical history, and often strikingly confirm its statements. But antiquarian research has thus far failed to identify the biblical Pul with any king mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions. At one time Rawlinson thought the name might be an abbreviation of Vullush, but the discovery of the Assyrian Canon showed that three kings reigned between him and Tiglath-pileser, neither of whose names could possibly be represented by Pul. Accordingly, says Rawlinson, a high authority on this subject, “the Assyrian records do not merely omit Pul, but exclude him; and we have to inquire how this can be accounted for, and who the biblical Pul is, if he is not a regular and recognised Assyrian monarch.”

Some propose to identify him with Tiglath-pileser; others regard him as merely the general of the Assyrian army, but confounded in the Jewish records with the reigning monarch; but according to the latest views of the writer last quoted, “perhaps the most probable supposition is, that he was a pretender to the Assyrian crown, never acknowledged at Nineveh, but established in the western and southern provinces so firmly, that he could venture to conduct an expedition into Lower Syria, and to claim there the fealty of Assyria’s vassals. Or possibly he may have been a Babylonian monarch, who in the troublous times that had now evidently come upon the northern empire, possessed himself of the Euphrates valley, and thence descended upon Syria and Palestine. Berosus represented Pul as a Chaldean king, and the name itself, which is wholly alien to the ordinary Assyrian type, has at least one counterpart [Porus, in Ptolemy’s Canon] among known Babylonian names.” — Ancient Monarchies, vol. ii, p. 123.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And Menahem exacted the money of Israel. Either he was not possessed of any accumulated treasure, such as the kings of Judah could commonly draw upon (1Ki_15:18; 2Ki_12:18 2Ki_16:8 2Ki_18:15, 2Ki_18:16) or he thought it more prudent to keep his stores untouched, and obtain the money from his subjects. Even of all the mighty men of wealth. The context shows this to be the meaning; and the rendering is justified by Rth_2:1; 1Sa_9:1. "Mighty men of valor " cannot possibly be intended. Of each man fifty shekels of silver, to give to the King of Assyria. Fifty shekels was a heavy tax, not less than or of our money. To produce a thousand talents, this tax had to be levied on some sixty thousand persons. Tiglath-pileser mentions his receipt of tribute from "Minikhimmi of Tsammirin" (Menahem of Someron or Samaria) but does not tell us the amount (see "Epouym Canon," p. 120, line 29). So the King of Assyria turned back, and stayed not there in the land. Kings of Assyria usually returned home at the end of each campaign, and wintered in their own territory.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

To collect the requisite amount, Menahem imposed upon all persons of property a tax of fifty shekels each. יצא with על, he caused to arise, i.e., made a collection. הציא in a causative sense, from יצא, to arise, to be paid (Kg2 12:13). חיל גּבּורי: not warriors, but men of property, as in Ruth. Kg2 2:1; Sa1 9:1. אחד לאישׁ, for the individual. Pul was the first king of Assyria who invaded the kingdom of Israel and prepared the way for the conquest of this kingdom by his successors, and for the extension of the Assyrian power as far as Egypt. According to the thorough investigation made by Marc. v. Niebuhr (Gesch. Assurs u. Babels, pp. 128ff.), Pul, whose name has not yet been discovered upon the Assyrian monuments, was the last king of Nineveh of the family of the Derketades, who still ruled over Babylon according to Berosus, and the last king but one of this dynasty.

(Note: It is true that some trace of his expedition has been found in the monuments, since an inscription has been deciphered with tolerable certainty, stating that king Minikhimmi of Samirina (Menahem of Shomron or Samaria) paid tribute to an Assyrian king. But the name of this Assyrian king is not determined with certainty, as Rawlinson, and Oppert read it Tiglat-palassar, and suppose Tiglath-pileser to be intended; whereas M. v. Niebuhr (p. 132, note 1) imagines it to be the full name of Pul, since no Assyrian king ever had a name of one syllable like Pul as his official name, and even before that Hincks had detected in the name Minikhimmi the king Menahem who had to purchase the friendship of the Assyrian ruler Pul with 1000 talents of silver. (Comp. J. Brandis, uber d. histor. Gewinn aus der Entzifferung der assyr. Inschriften, Berl. 1856, p. 50.))

Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)

He did not stay there but returned to his home seeing that he recived the money and no longer protect him from other enemies

Radak on the Tanakh — English translations: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash” (CC BY 4.0); “Rabbi Mike Feuer, Jerusalem Anthology” (CC BY 4.0); and “R. David Kimhi on the first book of Psalms, Translated by R.G. Finch, London, 1919” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.