13:26 Then Absalom said, “If you will not go, 2 then let my brother Amnon go with us.” The king replied to him, “Why should he go with you?”
1 tn The Hebrew verb נַעֲלָה (na’alah) used here is the Niphal perfect 3rd person masculine singular of עָלָה (’alah, “to go up”). In the Niphal this verb “is used idiomatically, of getting away from so as to abandon…especially of an army raising a siege…” (see S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel, 244).
2 tn Heb “and not.”
3 tn Heb “as [is] good in his eyes.”
4 tn Heb “good news is in his mouth.”
5 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the runner) has been specified in the translation for clarity.