1 Samuel 2:5

2:5 Those who are well-fed hire themselves out to earn food,

but the hungry no longer lack.

Even ¹  the barren woman gives birth to seven, ² 

but the one with many children withers away. ³ 

1 Samuel 2:33

2:33 Any one of you that I do not cut off from my altar, I will cause your ⁴  eyes to fail ⁵  and will cause you grief. ⁶  All of those born to your family ⁷  will die in the prime of life. ⁸ 

1 Samuel 8:12

8:12 He will appoint for himself leaders of thousands and leaders of fifties, ⁹  as well as those who plow his ground, reap his harvest, and make his weapons of war and his chariot equipment.

1 Samuel 9:22

9:22 Then Samuel brought ¹⁰  Saul and his servant into the room and gave them a place at the head of those who had been invited. There were about thirty people present.

1 Samuel 22:2

22:2 All those who were in trouble or owed someone money or were discontented ¹¹  gathered around ¹²  him, and he became their leader. He had about four hundred men with him.

1 Samuel 28:1

The Witch of Endor

28:1 In those days the Philistines gathered their troops ¹³  for war in order to fight Israel. Achish said to David, “You should fully understand that you and your men must go with me into the battle.” ¹⁴ 

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¹ tc Against BHS but with the MT, the preposition (עַד, ’ad) should be taken with what follows rather than with what precedes. For this sense of the preposition see Job 25:5.

² sn The number seven is used here in an ideal sense. Elsewhere in the OT having seven children is evidence of fertility as a result of God’s blessing on the family. See, for example, Jer 15:9, Ruth 4:15.

³ tn Or “languishes.”

⁴ tc The LXX, a Qumran ms, and a few old Latin mss have the third person pronominal suffix “his” here.

⁵ tn Heb “to cause your eyes to fail.” Elsewhere this verb, when used of eyes, refers to bloodshot eyes resulting from weeping, prolonged staring, or illness (see Lev 26:16; Pss 69:3; 119:82; Lam 2:11; 4:17).

⁶ tn Heb “and to cause your soul grief.”

⁷ tn Heb “and all the increase of your house.”

⁸ tc The text is difficult. The MT literally says “they will die [as] men.” Apparently the meaning is that they will be cut off in the prime of their life without reaching old age. The LXX and a Qumran ms, however, have the additional word “sword” (“they will die by the sword of men”). This is an easier reading (cf. NAB, NRSV, TEV, CEV, NLT), but that fact is not in favor of its originality.

⁹ tc The numbers of v. 12 are confused in the Greek and Syriac versions. For “fifties” the LXX has “hundreds.” The Syriac Peshitta has “heads of thousands and heads of hundreds and heads of fifties and heads of tens,” perhaps reflecting influence from Deut 1:15.

¹⁰ tn Heb “took and brought.”

¹¹ tn Heb “bitter of soul.”

¹² tn Heb “to.”

¹³ tn Heb “their camps.”

¹⁴ tc The translation follows the LXX (εἰς πόλεμον, eis polemon) and a Qumran ms מלחמה במלחמה ([m]lkhmh) bammilkhamah (“in the battle”) rather than the MT’s בַמַּחֲנֶה (bammakhaneh, “in the camp”; cf. NASB). While the MT reading is not impossible here, and although admittedly it is the harder reading, the variant fits the context better. The MT can be explained as a scribal error caused in part by the earlier occurrence of “camp” in this verse.