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 1 near the pool in Hebron. But they took the head of Ish-bosheth 2 and buried it in the tomb of Abner 3 in Hebron. 4
17:23 When Ahithophel realized that his advice had not been followed, he saddled his donkey and returned to his house in his hometown. After setting his household in order, he hanged himself. So he died and was buried in the grave 5 of his father.
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 6 that the king had commanded, God responded to their prayers 7 for the land.
1 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.”
2 tc 4QSama mistakenly reads “Mephibosheth” here.
3 tc The LXX adds “the son of Ner” by conformity with common phraseology elsewhere.
4 tc Some
5 tc The Greek recensions of Origen and Lucian have here “house” for “grave.”
6 tc Many medieval Hebrew
7 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).