AMMONIM
(Amʹmon·im).
At 2 Chronicles 20:1 the Masoretic text refers to some of “the Ammonim [Heb., ʽAm·moh·nimʹ]” as being joined with the sons of Moab and of Ammon against Jehoshaphat king of Judah in war. The Authorized Version inserts the word “other” to make the text read “the children of Moab, and the children of Ammon, and with them other beside the Ammonites”; while some other translations render the phrase in question as reading “some of the Ammonites” (MR, JP, Dy), though this seems illogical since the Ammonites are already mentioned in the verse. Most modern translations (Ro, Mo, AT, RS, JB, NW [1955 ed.]) consider the text as referring to the Meunim of 1 Chronicles 4:41 and 2 Chronicles 26:7. This view supposes that a scribal error resulted in the first two consonants (מע) of the Hebrew Meʽu·nimʹ being transposed, thus giving ʽAm·moh·nimʹ. This identification with the Meunim may find support in the fact that the remainder of the account of the fight against Jehoshaphat refers to “the mountainous region of Seir” (in place of “the Ammonim”) as joined with the Ammonite-Moabite forces. (2 Chron. 20:10, 22, 23) The translators of the Septuagint version used the same Greek word (Mi·naiʹon) to render the Hebrew term at 2 Chronicles 20:1 as they did in the texts referring to the Meunim, showing that they understood them to be the same.—See MEUNIM.
Since the matter is not certain, however, some translations, such as that of Isaac Leeser and the 1961 edition of the New World Translation, prefer simply to transliterate the term into English, thereby retaining the wording found in the Masoretic text.