3:22 Now David’s soldiers 1 and Joab were coming back from a raid, bringing a great deal of plunder with them. Abner was no longer with David in Hebron, for David 2 had sent him away and he had left in peace.
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 3 near the pool in Hebron. But they took the head of Ish-bosheth 4 and buried it in the tomb of Abner 5 in Hebron. 6
10:6 When the Ammonites realized that David was disgusted with them, 7 they 8 sent and hired 20,000 foot soldiers from Aram Beth Rehob and Aram Zobah, 9 in addition to 1,000 men from the king of Maacah and 12,000 men from Ish-tob. 10
18:3 But the soldiers replied, 14 “You should not do this! 15 For if we should have to make a rapid retreat, they won’t be too concerned about us. 16 Even if half of us should die, they won’t be too concerned about us. But you 17 are like ten thousand of us! So it is better if you remain in the city for support.”
19:8 So the king got up and sat at the city gate. When all the people were informed that the king was sitting at the city gate, they 18 all came before him.
But the Israelite soldiers 19 had all fled to their own homes. 20
1 tn Heb “And look, the servants of David.”
2 tn Heb “he”; the referent (David) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
3 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.”
4 tc 4QSama mistakenly reads “Mephibosheth” here.
5 tc The LXX adds “the son of Ner” by conformity with common phraseology elsewhere.
6 tc Some
7 tn Heb “that they were a stench [i.e., disgusting] with David.”
8 tn Heb “the Ammonites.”
9 tn Or “Arameans of Beth Rehob and Arameans of Zobah.”
10 tn Or perhaps “the men of Tob.” The ancient versions (the LXX, the Syriac Peshitta, and Vulgate) understand the name to be “Ish-tob.” It is possible that “Ish” is dittographic and that we should read simply “Tob,” a reading adopted by a number of recent English versions.
11 tn Heb “and lay.”
12 tn Heb “as you live and as your soul lives.”
13 tc The LXX (with the exception of the recensions of Origen and Lucian) repeats the description as follows: “Just as a female bear bereft of cubs in a field.”
14 tn Heb “the people said.”
15 tn Heb “march out.”
16 tn Heb “they will not place to us heart.”
17 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”).
18 tn Heb “all the people.”
19 tn The Hebrew text has simply “Israel” (see 18:16-17).
20 tn Heb “had fled, each to his tent.”
21 tn Heb “him”; the referent (Amasa) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
22 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the man who spoke up in v. 11) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
23 tn Heb “Amasa.” For stylistic reasons the name has been replaced by the pronoun (“him”) in the translation.
24 tn Heb “they.” The following context makes it clear that this refers to Joab and his army.
25 tc The LXX has here ἐνοοῦσαν (enoousan, “were devising”), which apparently presupposes the Hebrew word מַחֲשָׁבִים (makhashavim) rather than the MT מַשְׁחִיתִם (mashkhitim, “were destroying”). With a number of other scholars Driver thinks that the Greek variant may preserve the original reading, but this seems to be an unnecessary conclusion (but see S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel, 346).