1 Samuel 4:8

4:8 Too bad for us! Who can deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all sorts of plagues in the desert!

1 Samuel 8:7

8:7 The Lord said to Samuel, “Do everything the people request of you. ¹  For it is not you that they have rejected, but it is me that they have rejected as their king.

1 Samuel 13:20

13:20 So all Israel had to go down to the Philistines in order to get their plowshares, cutting instruments, axes, and sickles ²  sharpened.

1 Samuel 14:39

14:39 For as surely as the Lord, the deliverer of Israel, lives, even if it turns out to be my own son Jonathan, he will certainly die!” But no one from the army said anything. ³ 

1 Samuel 22:1

David Goes to Adullam and Mizpah

22:1 So David left there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. When his brothers and the rest of his father’s family ⁴  learned about it, they went down there to him.

1 Samuel 25:22

25:22 God will severely punish David, ⁵  if I leave alive until morning even one male ⁶  from all those who belong to him!”

---

¹ tn Heb “Listen to the voice of the people, to all which they say to you.”

² tc The translation follows the LXX (“their sickle”) here, rather than the MT “plowshares,” which is due to dittography from the word earlier in the verse.

³ tn Heb “and there was no one answering from all the army.”

⁴ tn Heb “house.”

⁵ tc Heb “Thus God will do to the enemies of David and thus he will add.” Most of the Old Greek ms tradition has simply “David,” with no reference to his enemies. In OT imprecations such as the one found in v. 22 it is common for the speaker to direct malediction toward himself as an indication of the seriousness with which he regards the matter at hand. In other words, the speaker invites on himself dire consequences if he fails to fulfill the matter expressed in the oath. However, in the situation alluded to in v. 22 the threat actually does not come to fruition due to the effectiveness of Abigail’s appeal to David in behalf of her husband Nabal. Instead, David is placated through Abigail’s intervention. It therefore seems likely that the reference to “the enemies of David” in the MT of v. 22 is the result of a scribal attempt to deliver David from the implied consequences of this oath. The present translation follows the LXX rather than the MT here.

⁶ tn Heb “one who urinates against a wall” (also in v. 34); KJV “any that pisseth against the wall.”