1 Samuel 8:12

8:12 He will appoint for himself leaders of thousands and leaders of fifties, ¹  as well as those who plow his ground, reap his harvest, and make his weapons of war and his chariot equipment.

1 Samuel 15:12

15:12 Then Samuel got up early to meet Saul the next morning. But Samuel was informed, “Saul has gone to Carmel where ²  he is setting up a monument for himself. Then Samuel left ³  and went down to Gilgal.” ⁴ 

1 Samuel 19:22

19:22 Finally Saul ⁵  himself went to Ramah. When he arrived at the large cistern that is in Secu, he asked, “Where are Samuel and David?” They said, “At Naioth in Ramah.”

1 Samuel 23:7

23:7 When Saul was told that David had come to Keilah, Saul said, “God has delivered ⁶  him into my hand, for he has boxed himself into a corner by entering a city with two barred gates.” ⁷ 

1 Samuel 24:3

24:3 He came to the sheepfolds by the road, where there was a cave. Saul went into it to relieve himself. ⁸ 

Now David and his men were sitting in the recesses of the cave.

1 Samuel 26:10

26:10 David went on to say, “As the Lord lives, the Lord himself will strike him down. Either his day will come and he will die, or he will go down into battle and be swept away.

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.” ⁹ 

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¹ 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.

² tn Heb “and look.”

³ tn Heb “and he turned and crossed over.”

⁴ tc At the end of v. 12 the LXX and one Old Latin ms include the following words not found in the MT: “to Saul. And behold, he was offering as a burnt offering to the Lord the best of the spoils that he had brought from the Amalekites.”

⁵ tn Heb “he” (also in v. 23). the referent (Saul) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁶ 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.

⁷ 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.”

⁸ tn Heb “to cover his feet,” an idiom (euphemism) for relieving oneself (cf. NAB “to ease nature”).

⁹ tn Heb “Use divination for me with the ritual pit and bring up for me the one whom I say to you.”