18:9 Then Absalom happened to come across David’s men. Now as Absalom was riding on his 1 mule, it 2 went under the branches of a large oak tree. His head got caught in the oak and he was suspended in midair, 3 while the mule he had been riding kept going.
20:1 Now a wicked man 4 named Sheba son of Bicri, a Benjaminite, 5 happened to be there. He blew the trumpet 6 and said,
“We have no share in David;
we have no inheritance in this son of Jesse!
Every man go home, 7 O Israel!”
1 tn Heb “the.”
2 tn Heb “the donkey.”
3 tn Heb “between the sky and the ground.”
4 tn Heb “a man of worthlessness.”
5 tn The expression used here יְמִינִי (yÿmini) is a short form of the more common “Benjamin.” It appears elsewhere in 1 Sam 9:4 and Esth 2:5. Cf. 1 Sam 9:1.
6 tn Heb “the shophar” (the ram’s horn trumpet). So also v. 22.
7 tc The MT reads לְאֹהָלָיו (lÿ’ohalav, “to his tents”). For a similar idiom, see 19:9. An ancient scribal tradition understands the reading to be לְאלֹהָיו (le’lohav, “to his gods”). The word is a tiqqun sopherim, and the scribes indicate that they changed the word from “gods” to “tents” so as to soften its theological implications. In a consonantal Hebrew text the change involved only the metathesis of two letters.