2:27 A man of God came to Eli and said to him, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Did I not plainly 1 reveal myself to your ancestor’s 2 house when they were in Egypt in the house of Pharaoh?
4:18 When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli 9 fell backward from his chair beside the gate. He broke his neck and died, for he 10 was old and heavy. He had judged Israel for forty years.
4:21 She named the boy Ichabod, 11 saying, “The glory has departed from Israel,” referring to the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband.
12:12 “When you saw that King Nahash of the Ammonites was advancing against you, you said to me, ‘No! A king will rule over us’ – even though the Lord your God is your king!
13:13 Then Samuel said to Saul, “You have made a foolish choice! You have not obeyed 24 the commandment that the Lord your God gave 25 you. Had you done that, the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever!
14:15 Then fear overwhelmed 26 those who were in the camp, those who were in the field, all the army in the garrison, and the raiding bands. They trembled and the ground shook. This fear was caused by God. 27
16:23 So whenever the spirit from God would come upon Saul, David would take his lyre and play it. This would bring relief to Saul and make him feel better. Then the evil spirit would leave him alone. 30
18:10 The next day an evil spirit from God rushed upon Saul and he prophesied within his house. Now David was playing the lyre 32 that day. There was a spear in Saul’s hand,
22:3 Then David went from there to Mizpah in Moab, where he said to the king of Moab, “Please let my father and mother stay 33 with you until I know what God is going to do for me.”
Then the Lord said, “He will come down.”
1 tn The infinitive absolute appears before the finite verb for emphasis.
2 tn Heb “to your father’s” (also in vv. 28, 30).
3 tc The MT has וְהִגַּדְתִּי לוֹ (vÿhiggadti lo). The verb is Hiphil perfect 1st person common singular, and apparently the conjunction should be understood as vav consecutive (“I will say to him”). But the future reference makes more sense if Samuel is the subject. This would require dropping the final י (yod) and reading the 2nd person masculine singular וְהִגַּדְתָּ (vÿhiggadta). Although there is no external evidence to support it, this reading has been adopted in the present translation. The alternative is to understand the MT to mean “I said to him,” but for this we would expect the preterite with vav consecutive.
4 tn The translation understands the preposition to have a causal sense. However, the preposition could also be understood as the beth pretii, indicating in a broad sense the price attached to this action. So GKC 380 §119.p.
5 tc The translation follows the LXX θεόν (qeon, “God”) rather than the MT לָהֶם (lahem, “to them”). The MT seems to mean “they were bringing a curse on themselves” (cf. ASV, NASB). But this meaning is problematic in part because the verb qll means “to curse,” not “to bring a curse on,” and in part because it takes an accusative object rather than the equivalent of a dative. This is one of the so-called tiqqune sopherim, or “emendations of the scribes.” Why would the ancient copyists alter the original statement about Eli’s sons cursing God to the less objectionable statement that they brought a curse on themselves? Some argue that the scribes were concerned that such a direct and blasphemous affront against God could occur without an immediate response of judgment from God. Therefore they changed the text by deleting two letters א and י (alef and yod) from the word for “God,” with the result that the text then read “to them.” If this ancient scribal claim is accepted as accurate, it implies that the MT here is secondary. The present translation follows the LXX (κακολογοῦντες θεόν, kakologounte" qeon) and a few
6 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Eli) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
7 tn Heb “So God will do to you and thus he will add.” The verbal forms in this pronouncement are imperfects, not jussives, but the statement has the force of a curse or warning. One could translate, “May God do to you and thus may he add.”
8 tn Heb “before.”
9 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Eli) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
10 tn Heb “the man.”
11 sn The name Ichabod (אִי־כָבוֹד) may mean, “Where is the glory?”
12 tn Heb “your mice.” A Qumran
13 tn Heb “Perhaps he will lighten his hand from upon you and from upon your gods and from upon your land.”
14 sn A quarter shekel of silver would weigh about a tenth of an ounce (about 3 grams).
15 tn Heb “our way.”
16 tn Heb “your word is good.”
17 tc Two medieval Hebrew
tn Heb “they”; the referents (Saul and his servant) have been specified in the translation for clarity.
18 tn Heb “him”; the referent (Saul) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
19 tc The translation follows many medieval Hebrew
20 tn Heb “and you listen to his voice.”
21 tn Heb “the mouth of the
22 tn The words “all will be well” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
23 tn Heb “for we have added to all our sins an evil [thing] by asking for ourselves a king.”
24 tn Or “kept.”
25 tn Heb “commanded.”
26 tn Heb “fell upon.”
27 tn Heb “and it was by the fear of God.” The translation understands this to mean that God was the source or cause of the fear experienced by the Philistines. This seems to be the most straightforward reading of the sentence. It is possible, however, that the word “God” functions here simply to intensify the accompanying word “fear,” in which one might translate “a very great fear” (cf. NAB, NRSV). It is clear that on some occasions that the divine name carries such a superlative nuance. For examples see Joüon 2:525 §141.n.
28 tn Heb “they brought them.”
29 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Saul) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
30 tn Heb “would turn aside from upon him.”
31 tc The LXX includes here the following words not found in the MT: “Should I not go and smite him, and remove today reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised one?”
32 tn The Hebrew text adds here “with his hand.”
33 tn Heb “go forth.”
34 tn 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.
35 tn 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.”
36 tn Heb “all the days.”
37 tn Heb “him”; the referent (David) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
38 tn Here “the spear” almost certainly refers to Saul’s own spear, which according to the previous verse was stuck into the ground beside him as he slept. This is reflected in a number of English versions: TEV, CEV “his own spear”; NLT “that spear.” Cf. NIV, NCV “my spear,” in which case Abishai refers to his own spear rather than Saul’s, but this is unlikely since (1) Abishai would probably not have carried a spear along since such a weapon would be unwieldy when sneaking into the enemy camp; and (2) this would not explain the mention of Saul’s own spear stuck in the ground beside him in the previous verse.
39 tn Heb “let me strike him with the spear and into the ground one time.”
40 tn Heb “gods.” The modifying participle (translated “coming up”) is plural, suggesting that underworld spirits are the referent. But in the following verse Saul understands the plural word to refer to a singular being. The reference is to the spirit of Samuel.
41 tn Heb “I know that you are good in my eyes.”
42 tn Heb “people.”
43 tn Heb “said to stone him.”
44 tn Heb “for bitter was the soul of all the people, each one.”