2 Samuel 18:3

18:3 But the soldiers replied, ¹  “You should not do this! ²  For if we should have to make a rapid retreat, they won’t be too concerned about us. ³  Even if half of us should die, they won’t be too concerned about us. But you ⁴  are like ten thousand of us! So it is better if you remain in the city for support.”

2 Samuel 20:3

20:3 Then David went to his palace ⁵  in Jerusalem. The king took the ten concubines he had left to care for the palace and placed them under confinement. ⁶  Though he provided for their needs, he did not have sexual relations with them. ⁷  They remained in confinement until the day they died, living out the rest of their lives as widows.

2 Samuel 21:9

21:9 He turned them over to the Gibeonites, and they executed them on a hill before the Lord. The seven of them ⁸  died ⁹  together; they were put to death during harvest time – during the first days of the beginning ¹⁰  of the barley harvest.

2 Samuel 21:12

21:12 he ¹¹  went and took the bones of Saul and of his son Jonathan ¹²  from the leaders ¹³  of Jabesh Gilead. (They had secretly taken ¹⁴  them from the plaza at Beth Shan. It was there that Philistines ¹⁵  publicly exposed their corpses ¹⁶  after ¹⁷  they ¹⁸  had killed Saul at Gilboa.)

2 Samuel 21:14

21:14 They buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the land of Benjamin at Zela in the grave of his father Kish. After they had done everything ¹⁹  that the king had commanded, God responded to their prayers ²⁰  for the land.

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¹ tn Heb “the people said.”

² tn Heb “march out.”

³ tn Heb “they will not place to us heart.”

⁴ tc The translation follows the LXX (except for the Lucianic recension), Symmachus, and Vulgate in reading אָתָּה (’atta, “you”) rather than MT עָתָּה (’atta, “now”).

⁵ tn Heb “house.”

⁶ tn Heb “and he placed them in a guarded house.”

⁷ 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.”

⁸ tc The translation follows the Qere and several medieval Hebrew mss in reading שְׁבַעְתָּם (shÿva’tam, “the seven of them”) rather than MT שִׁבַעְתִּים (shiva’tim, “seventy”).

⁹ tn Heb “fell.”

¹⁰ tc The translation follows the Qere and many medieval Hebrew mss in reading בִּתְחִלַּת (bithkhillat, “in the beginning”) rather than MT תְחִלַּת (tÿkhillat, “beginning of”).

¹¹ tn Heb “David.” For stylistic reasons the name has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation.

¹² tn Heb “the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son.” See also v. 13.

¹³ tn Heb “lords.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “stolen.”

¹⁵ 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”).

¹⁶ tn Heb “had hung them.”

¹⁷ tn Heb “in the day.”

¹⁸ tn Heb “Philistines.”

¹⁹ tc Many medieval Hebrew mss have here כְּכֹל (kÿkhol, “according to all”).

²⁰ tn Heb “was entreated.” The verb is an example of the so-called niphal tolerativum, with the sense that God allowed himself to be supplicated through prayer (cf. GKC 137 §51.c).