2 Samuel 3:29

3:29 May his blood whirl over ¹  the head of Joab and the entire house of his father! ²  May the males of Joab’s house ³  never cease to have ⁴  someone with a running sore or a skin disease or one who works at the spindle ⁵  or one who falls by the sword or one who lacks food!”

2 Samuel 9:10

9:10 You will cultivate ⁶  the land for him – you and your sons and your servants. You will bring its produce ⁷  and it will be ⁸  food for your master’s grandson to eat. ⁹  But Mephibosheth, your master’s grandson, will be a regular guest at my table.” (Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants.)

2 Samuel 12:3

12:3 But the poor man had nothing except for a little lamb he had acquired. He raised it, and it grew up alongside him and his children. ¹⁰  It used to ¹¹  eat his food, ¹²  drink from his cup, and sleep in his arms. ¹³  It was just like a daughter to him.

2 Samuel 12:20

12:20 So David got up from the ground, bathed, put on oil, and changed his clothes. He went to the house of the Lord and worshiped. Then, when he entered his palace, he requested that food be brought to him, and he ate.

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¹ tn Heb “and may they whirl over.” In the Hebrew text the subject of the plural verb is unexpressed. The most likely subject is Abner’s “shed blood” (v. 28), which is a masculine plural form in Hebrew. The verb חוּל (khul, “whirl”) is used with the preposition עַל (’al) only here and in Jer 23:19; 30:23.

² tc 4QSam^a has “of Joab” rather than “of his father” read by the MT.

³ tn Heb “the house of Joab.” However, it is necessary to specify that David’s curse is aimed at Joab’s male descendants; otherwise it would not be clear that “one who works at the spindle” refers to a man doing woman’s work rather than a woman.

⁴ tn Heb “and may there not be cut off from the house of Joab.”

⁵ tn The expression used here is difficult. The translation “one who works at the spindle” follows a suggestion of S. R. Driver that the expression pejoratively describes an effeminate man who, rather than being a mighty warrior, is occupied with tasks that are normally fulfilled by women (S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel, 250-51; cf. NAB “one unmanly”; TEV “fit only to do a woman’s work”; CEV “cowards”). But P. K. McCarter, following an alleged Phoenician usage of the noun to refer to “crutches,” adopts a different view. He translates the phrase “clings to a crutch,” seeing here a further description of physical lameness (II Samuel [AB], 118). Such an idea fits the present context well and is followed by NIV, NCV, and NLT, although the evidence for this meaning is questionable. According to DNWSI 2:915-16, the noun consistently refers to a spindle in Phoenician, as it does in Ugaritic (see UT 468).

⁶ tn Heb “work.”

⁷ tn The Hebrew text implies, but does not actually contain, the words “its produce” here.

⁸ tc The words “it will be,” though present in the MT, are absent from the LXX, the Syriac Peshitta, and Vulgate.

⁹ tn Heb “and he will eat it.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “his sons.”

¹¹ tn The three Hebrew imperfect verbal forms in this sentence have a customary nuance; they describe past actions that were repeated or typical.

¹² tn Heb “from his morsel.”

¹³ tn Heb “and on his chest [or perhaps, “lap”] it would lay.”