1 Samuel 8:22

8:22 The Lord said to Samuel, “Do as they say ¹  and install a king over them.” Then Samuel said to the men of Israel, “Each of you go back to his own city.”

1 Samuel 16:4

16:4 Samuel did what the Lord told him. ²  When he arrived in Bethlehem, ³  the elders of the city were afraid to meet him. They ⁴  said, “Do you come in peace?”

1 Samuel 20:6

20:6 If your father happens to miss me, you should say, ‘David urgently requested me to let him go ⁵  to his city Bethlehem, ⁶  for there is an annual sacrifice there for his entire family.’

1 Samuel 23:7

23:7 When Saul was told that David had come to Keilah, Saul said, “God has delivered ⁷  him into my hand, for he has boxed himself into a corner by entering a city with two barred gates.” ⁸ 

1 Samuel 27:5

27:5 David said to Achish, “If I have found favor with you, let me be given a place in one of the country towns so that I can live there. Why should your servant settle in the royal city with you?”

1 Samuel 31:12

31:12 all their warriors set out and traveled throughout the night. They took Saul’s corpse and the corpses of his sons from the city wall of Beth Shan and went ⁹  to Jabesh, where they burned them.

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¹ tn Heb “listen to their voice.”

² tn Heb “said.”

³ map For location see Map5-B1; Map7-E2; Map8-E2; Map10-B4.

⁴ tc In the MT the verb is singular (“he said”), but the translation follows many medieval Hebrew mss and ancient versions in reading the plural (“they said”).

⁵ tn Heb “to run.”

⁶ map For location see Map5-B1; Map7-E2; Map8-E2; Map10-B4.

⁷ 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.

⁸ 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.”

⁹ tc The translation follows the MT, which vocalizes the verb as a Qal. The LXX, however, treats the verb as a Hiphil, “they brought.”