2 Samuel 1:10

1:10 So I stood over him and put him to death, since I knew that he couldn’t live in such a condition. ¹  Then I took the crown which was on his head and the ²  bracelet which was on his arm. I have brought them here to my lord.” ³ 

2 Samuel 4:12

4:12 So David issued orders to the soldiers and they put them to death. Then they cut off their hands and feet and hung them ⁴  near the pool in Hebron. But they took the head of Ish-bosheth ⁵  and buried it in the tomb of Abner ⁶  in Hebron. ⁷ 

2 Samuel 12:4

12:4 “When a traveler arrived at the rich man’s home, ⁸  he did not want to use one of his own sheep or cattle to feed ⁹  the traveler who had come to visit him. ¹⁰  Instead, he took the poor man’s lamb and cooked ¹¹  it for the man who had come to visit him.”

2 Samuel 20:3

20:3 Then David went to his palace ¹²  in Jerusalem. The king took the ten concubines he had left to care for the palace and placed them under confinement. ¹³  Though he provided for their needs, he did not have sexual relations with them. ¹⁴  They remained in confinement until the day they died, living out the rest of their lives as widows.

2 Samuel 21:8

21:8 So the king took Armoni and Mephibosheth, the two sons of Aiah’s daughter Rizpah whom she had born to Saul, and the five sons of Saul’s daughter Merab ¹⁵  whom she had born to Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite.

2 Samuel 21:10

21:10 Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it out for herself on a rock. From the beginning of the harvest until the rain fell on them, ¹⁶  she did not allow the birds of the air to feed ¹⁷  on them by day, nor the wild animals ¹⁸  by night.

2 Samuel 21:12

21:12 he ¹⁹  went and took the bones of Saul and of his son Jonathan ²⁰  from the leaders ²¹  of Jabesh Gilead. (They had secretly taken ²²  them from the plaza at Beth Shan. It was there that Philistines ²³  publicly exposed their corpses ²⁴  after ²⁵  they ²⁶  had killed Saul at Gilboa.)

2 Samuel 21:17

21:17 But Abishai the son of Zeruiah came to David’s aid, striking the Philistine down and killing him. Then David’s men took an oath saying, “You will not go out to battle with us again! You must not extinguish the lamp of Israel!”

---

¹ tn Heb “after his falling”; NAB “could not survive his wound”; CEV “was too badly wounded to live much longer.”

² tc The MT lacks the definite article, but this is likely due to textual corruption. It is preferable to read the alef (א) of אֶצְעָדָה (’ets’adah) as a ה (he) giving הַצְּעָדָה (hatsÿ’adah). There is no reason to think that the soldier confiscated from Saul’s dead body only one of two or more bracelets that he was wearing (cf. NLT “one of his bracelets”).

³ sn The claims that the soldier is making here seem to contradict the story of Saul’s death as presented in 1 Sam 31:3-5. In that passage it appears that Saul took his own life, not that he was slain by a passerby who happened on the scene. Some scholars account for the discrepancy by supposing that conflicting accounts have been brought together in the MT. However, it is likely that the young man is here fabricating the account in a self-serving way so as to gain favor with David, or so he supposes. He probably had come across Saul’s corpse, stolen the crown and bracelet from the body, and now hopes to curry favor with David by handing over to him these emblems of Saul’s royalty. But in so doing the Amalekite greatly miscalculated David’s response to this alleged participation in Saul’s death. The consequence of his lies will instead be his own death.

⁴ tn The antecedent of the pronoun “them” (which is not present in the Hebrew text, but implied) is not entirely clear. Presumably it is the corpses that were hung and not merely the detached hands and feet; cf. NIV “hung the (their NRSV, NLT) bodies”; the alternative is represented by TEV “cut off their hands and feet, which they hung up.”

⁵ tc 4QSam^a mistakenly reads “Mephibosheth” here.

⁶ tc The LXX adds “the son of Ner” by conformity with common phraseology elsewhere.

⁷ tc Some mss of the LXX lack the phrase “in Hebron.”

⁸ tn Heb “came to the rich man.” In the translation “arrived at the rich man’s home” has been used for stylistic reasons.

⁹ tn Heb “and he refused to take from his flock and from his herd to prepare [a meal] for.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “who had come to him” (also a second time later in this verse). The word “visit” has been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons and for clarity.

¹¹ tn Heb “and prepared.”

¹² tn Heb “house.”

¹³ tn Heb “and he placed them in a guarded house.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “he did not come to them”; NAB “has no further relations with them”; NIV “did not lie with them”; TEV “did not have intercourse with them”; NLT “would no longer sleep with them.”

¹⁵ tc The MT reads “Michal” here, but two Hebrew manuscripts read “Merab,” along with some LXX manuscripts. Cf. 1 Sam 18:19.

¹⁶ tn Heb “until water was poured on them from the sky.”

¹⁷ tn Heb “rest.”

¹⁸ tn Heb “the beasts of the field.”

¹⁹ tn Heb “David.” For stylistic reasons the name has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation.

²⁰ tn Heb “the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son.” See also v. 13.

²¹ tn Heb “lords.”

²² tn Heb “stolen.”

²³ tc Against the MT, this word is better read without the definite article. The MT reading is probably here the result of wrong word division, with the letter ה (he) belonging with the preceding word שָׁם (sham) as the he directive (i.e., שָׁמָּה, samah, “to there”).

²⁴ tn Heb “had hung them.”

²⁵ tn Heb “in the day.”

²⁶ tn Heb “Philistines.”