1 tn Heb “and [one] for a leader [was] from him.” This probably refers to the Davidic king.
2 tn Heb “stuck close after.”
3 tn Heb “the Philistines.” The translation has substituted the pronoun “they” to avoid redundancy.
4 tn Heb “his”; the referent (Saul) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
5 tn Heb “ones armed with bow[s], using the right hand and the left hand with stones and with arrows with the bow, from the brothers of Saul from Benjamin.”
6 tn The words “These were” have been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons, because of the length of the intervening material since the beginning of the verse.
7 tn Heb “and the anger of the
8 tn Heb “because he stretched out his hand over the ark.”
9 sn The modern reader might think God seemed to overreact here, but Israel needed a vivid object lesson of God’s holiness. By loading the ark on a cart, David had violated the instructions in God’s law (Exod 25:12-14; Num 4:5-6, 15). Uzzah’s action, however innocent it may seem, betrayed a certain lack of reverence for God’s presence. God had to remind his people that his holiness could not under any circumstances be violated.