1 Samuel 2:21

2:21 So the Lord graciously attended to Hannah, and she was able to conceive and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. The boy Samuel grew up at the Lord’s sanctuary.¹

1 Samuel 4:17

4:17 The messenger replied, “Israel has fled from² the Philistines! The army has suffered a great defeat! Your two sons, Hophni and Phineas, are dead! The ark of God has been captured!”

1 Samuel 6:7

6:7 So now go and make a new cart. Get two cows that have calves and that have never had a yoke placed on them. Harness the cows to the cart and take their calves from them back to their stalls.

1 Samuel 9:26

9:26 They got up at dawn and Samuel called to Saul on the roof, “Get up, so I can send you on your way.” So Saul got up and the two of them – he and Samuel – went outside.

1 Samuel 11:11

11:11 The next day Saul placed the people in three groups. They went to the Ammonite camp during the morning watch and struck them³ down until the hottest part of the day. The survivors scattered; no two of them remained together.

1 Samuel 13:21

13:21 They charged⁴ two-thirds of a shekel⁵ to sharpen plowshares and cutting instruments, and a third of a shekel⁶ to sharpen picks and axes, and to set ox goads.

1 Samuel 23:7

23:7 When Saul was told that David had come to Keilah, Saul said, “God has delivered⁷ him into my hand, for he has boxed himself into a corner by entering a city with two barred gates.”⁸

1 Samuel 27:3

27:3 David settled with Achish in Gath, along with his men and their families.⁹ David had with him his two wives, Ahinoam the Jezreelite and Abigail the Carmelite, Nabal’s widow.

1 Samuel 28:8

28:8 So Saul disguised himself and put on other clothing and left, accompanied by two of his men. They came to the woman at night and said, “Use your ritual pit to conjure up for me the one I tell you.”¹⁰

1 Samuel 30:12

30:12 They gave him a slice of pressed figs and two bunches of raisins to eat. This greatly refreshed him,¹¹ for he had not eaten food or drunk water for three days and three nights.

¹tn Heb “with the Lord.” Cf. NAB, TEV “in the service of the Lord”; NIV, NRSV, NLT “in the presence of the Lord”; CEV “at the Lord’s house in Shiloh.”

²tn Heb “before.”

³tn Heb “Ammon.” By metonymy the name “Ammon” is used collectively for the soldiers in the Ammonite army.

⁴tn Heb “the price was.” The meaning of the Hebrew word פְּצִירָה (pÿtsirah) is uncertain. This is the only place it occurs in the OT. Some propose the meaning “sharpening,” but “price” is a more likely meaning if the following term refers to a weight (see the following note on the word “shekel”). See P. K. McCarter, I Samuel (AB), 238.

⁵tn This word, which appears only here in the OT, probably refers to a stone weight. Stones marked פִּים (pim) have been found in excavations of Palestinian sites. The average weight of such stones is 0.268 ounces, which is equivalent to about two-thirds of a shekel. This probably refers to the price charged by the Philistines for the services listed. See P. K. McCarter, I Samuel (AB), 238; DNWSI 2:910; and G. I. Davies, Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions, 259.

⁶tc Heb “and for a third, a pick.” The Hebrew text suffers from haplography at this point. The translation follows the textual reconstruction offered by P. K. McCarter, I Samuel (AB), 235.

⁷tn The MT reading (“God has alienated him into my hand”) in v. 7 is a difficult and uncommon idiom. The use of this verb in Jer 19:4 is somewhat parallel, but not entirely so. Many scholars have therefore suspected a textual problem here, emending the word נִכַּר (nikkar, “alienated”) to סִכַּר (sikkar, “he has shut up [i.e., delivered]”). This is the idea reflected in the translations of the Syriac Peshitta and Vulgate, although it is not entirely clear whether they are reading something different from the MT or are simply paraphrasing what for them too may have been a difficult text. The LXX has “God has sold him into my hands,” apparently reading מַכַר (makar, “sold”) for MT’s נִכַּר. The present translation is a rather free interpretation.

⁸tn Heb “with two gates and a bar.” Since in English “bar” could be understood as a saloon, it has been translated as an attributive: “two barred gates.”

⁹tn Heb “a man and his house.”

¹⁰tn Heb “Use divination for me with the ritual pit and bring up for me the one whom I say to you.”

¹¹tn Heb “his spirit returned to him.”