2 Samuel 4:7

4:7 They had entered ¹  the house while Ish-bosheth ²  was resting on his bed in his bedroom. They mortally wounded him ³  and then cut off his head. ⁴  Taking his head, ⁵  they traveled on the way of the Arabah all that night.

2 Samuel 4:12

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 ⁶  near the pool in Hebron. But they took the head of Ish-bosheth ⁷  and buried it in the tomb of Abner ⁸  in Hebron. ⁹ 

2 Samuel 8:2

8:2 He defeated the Moabites. He made them lie on the ground and then used a rope to measure them off. He put two-thirds of them to death and spared the other third. ¹⁰  The Moabites became David’s subjects and brought tribute. ¹¹ 

2 Samuel 20:22

20:22 Then the woman went to all the people with her wise advice and they cut off Sheba’s head and threw it out to Joab. Joab ¹²  blew the trumpet, and his men ¹³  dispersed from the city, each going to his own home. ¹⁴  Joab returned to the king in Jerusalem.

---

¹ tn After the concluding disjunctive clause at the end of v. 6, the author now begins a more detailed account of the murder and its aftermath.

² tn Heb “he”; the referent (Ish-bosheth) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

³ tn Heb “they struck him down and killed him.” The expression is a verbal hendiadys.

⁴ tn Heb “and they removed his head.” The Syriac Peshitta and Vulgate lack these words.

⁵ tc The Lucianic Greek recension lacks the words “his head.”

⁶ 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.”

⁷ tc 4QSam^a mistakenly reads “Mephibosheth” here.

⁸ tc The LXX adds “the son of Ner” by conformity with common phraseology elsewhere.

⁹ tc Some mss of the LXX lack the phrase “in Hebron.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “and he measured [with] two [lengths] of rope to put to death and [with] the fullness of the rope to keep alive.”

¹¹ tn Heb “and the Moabites were servants of David, carriers of tribute.”

¹² tn Heb “he”; the referent (Joab) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹³ tn Heb “they”; the referent (Joab’s men) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹⁴ tn Heb “his tents.”