1 Samuel 3:4

3:4 The Lord called to Samuel, and he replied, “Here I am!”

1 Samuel 5:4

5:4 But when they got up early the following day, Dagon was again lying on the ground before the ark of the Lord. The head of Dagon and his two hands were sheared off and were lying at the threshold. Only Dagon’s body was left intact. ¹ 

1 Samuel 10:1

Samuel Anoints Saul

10:1 Then Samuel took a small container of olive oil and poured it on Saul’s ²  head. Samuel ³  kissed him and said, “The Lord has chosen you ⁴  to lead his people Israel! You will rule over the Lord’s people and you will deliver them from the power of the enemies who surround them. This will be your sign that the Lord has chosen ⁵  you as leader over his inheritance. ⁶ 

1 Samuel 14:25

14:25 Now the whole army ⁷  entered the forest and there was honey on the ground. ⁸ 

1 Samuel 14:45

14:45 But the army said to Saul, “Should Jonathan, who won this great victory in Israel, die? May it never be! As surely as the Lord lives, not a single hair of his head will fall to the ground! For it is with the help of God that he has acted today.” So the army rescued Jonathan from death. ⁹ 

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¹ tc Heb “only Dagon was left.” We should probably read the word גֵּו (gev, “back”) before Dagon, understanding it to have the sense of the similar word גְּוִיָּה (gÿviyyah, “body”). This variant is supported by the following evidence: The LXX has ἡ ῥάχις (Jh rJacis, “the back” or “trunk”); the Syriac Peshitta has wegusmeh (“and the body of”); the Targum has gupyeh (“the body of”); the Vulgate has truncus (“the trunk of,” cf. NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT). On the strength of this evidence the present translation employs the phrase “Dagon’s body.”

² tn Heb “his”; the referent (Saul) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Samuel) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁴ tn Heb “Is it not that the Lord has anointed you?” The question draws attention to the fact and is a rhetorical way of affirming the Lord’s choice of Saul. The translation reflects the rhetorical force of the question.

⁵ tn That is, “anointed.”

⁶ tc The MT reads simply “Is it not that the Lord has anointed you over his inheritance for a leader?” The translation follows the LXX. The MT apparently suffers from parablepsis, whereby a scribe’s eye jumped from the first occurrence of the expression “the Lord has anointed you” to the second occurrence of this expression at the end of v. 1. This mistake caused the accidental omission of the intervening material in the LXX, which appears to preserve the original Hebrew text here.

⁷ tn Heb “all the land.”

⁸ tn Heb “the surface of the field.”

⁹ tn Heb “and he did not die.”