2 Samuel 1:9

1:9 He said to me, ‘Stand over me and finish me off!¹ I’m very dizzy,² even though I’m still alive.’³

2 Samuel 1:26

1:26 I grieve over you, my brother Jonathan!

You were very dear to me.

Your love was more special to me than the love of women.

2 Samuel 2:17

2:17 Now the battle was very severe that day; Abner and the men of Israel were overcome by David’s soldiers.⁴

2 Samuel 4:1

Ish-bosheth is killed

4:1 When Ish-bosheth⁵ the son of Saul heard that Abner had died in Hebron, he was very disheartened,⁶ and all Israel was afraid.

2 Samuel 6:8

6:8 David was angry because the Lord attacked⁷ Uzzah; so he called that place Perez Uzzah,⁸ which remains its name to this very day.

2 Samuel 12:5

12:5 Then David became very angry at this man. He said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die!⁹

2 Samuel 12:15

12:15 Then Nathan went to his home. The Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and the child became very ill.¹⁰

2 Samuel 13:3

13:3 Now Amnon had a friend named Jonadab, the son of David’s brother Shimeah. Jonadab was a very crafty man.

2 Samuel 17:1

The Death of Ahithophel

17:1 Ahithophel said to Absalom, “Let me pick out twelve thousand men. Then I will go and pursue David this very night.

2 Samuel 19:12

19:12 You are my brothers – my very own flesh and blood!¹¹ Why should you delay any further in bringing the king back?’

¹tn As P. K. McCarter (II Samuel [AB], 59) points out, the Polel of the verb מוּת (mut, “to die”) “refers to dispatching or ‘finishing off’ someone already wounded and near death.” Cf. NLT “put me out of my misery.”

²tn Heb “the dizziness has seized me.” On the meaning of the Hebrew noun translated “dizziness,” see P. K. McCarter, II Samuel (AB), 59-60. The point seems to be that he is unable to kill himself because he is weak and disoriented.

³tn The Hebrew text here is grammatically very awkward (Heb “because all still my life in me”). Whether the broken construct phrase is due to the fact that the alleged speaker is in a confused state of mind as he is on the verge of dying, or whether the MT has sustained corruption in the transmission process, is not entirely clear. The former seems likely, although P. K. McCarter understands the MT to be the result of conflation of two shorter forms of text (P. K. McCarter, II Samuel [AB], 57, n. 9). Early translators also struggled with the verse, apparently choosing to leave part of the Hebrew text untranslated. For example, the Lucianic recension of the LXX lacks “all,” while other witnesses (namely, one medieval Hebrew ms, codices A and B of the LXX, and the Syriac Peshitta) lack “still.”

⁴tn Heb “servants.” So also elsewhere.

⁵tn The MT does not specify the subject of the verb here, but the reference is to Ish-bosheth, so the name has been supplied in the translation for clarity. 4QSam^a and the LXX mistakenly read “Mephibosheth.”

⁶tn Heb “his hands went slack.”

⁷tn Heb “because the Lord broke out [with] a breaking out [i.e., an outburst] against Uzzah.”

⁸sn The name Perez Uzzah means in Hebrew “the outburst [against] Uzzah.”

⁹tn Heb “the man doing this [is] a son of death.” See 1 Sam 20:31 for another use of this expression, which must mean “he is as good as dead” or “he deserves to die,” as 1 Sam 20:32 makes clear.

¹⁰tn Heb “and the Lord struck the child…and he was ill.” It is necessary to repeat “the child” in the translation to make clear who became ill, since “the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and he became very ill” could be understood to mean that David himself became ill.

¹¹tn Heb “my bone and my flesh.”