1 Samuel 2:10

2:10 The Lord shatters ¹  his adversaries; ² 

he thunders against them from ³  the heavens.

The Lord executes judgment to the ends of the earth.

He will strengthen ⁴  his king

and exalt the power ⁵  of his anointed one.” ⁶ 

1 Samuel 21:13

21:13 He altered his behavior in their presence. ⁷  Since he was in their power, ⁸  he pretended to be insane, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting his saliva run down his beard.

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¹ tn The imperfect verbal forms in this line and in the next two lines are understood as indicating what is typically true. Another option is to translate them with the future tense. See v. 10b.

² tc The present translation follows the Qere, many medieval Hebrew manuscripts, the Syriac Peshitta, and the Vulgate in reading the plural (“his adversaries,” similarly many other English versions) rather than the singular (“his adversary”) of the Kethib.

³ tn The Hebrew preposition here has the sense of “from within.”

⁴ tn The imperfect verbal forms in this and the next line are understood as indicating what is anticipated and translated with the future tense, because at the time of Hannah’s prayer Israel did not yet have a king.

⁵ tn Heb “the horn,” here a metaphor for power or strength. Cf. NCV “make his appointed king strong”; NLT “increases the might of his anointed one.”

⁶ tc The LXX greatly expands v. 10 with an addition that seems to be taken from Jer 9:23-24.

sn The anointed one is the anticipated king of Israel, as the preceding line makes clear.

⁷ tn Heb “in their eyes.”

⁸ tn Heb “in their hand.”