9:8 “The trees were determined to go out 2 and choose a king for themselves. 3 They said to the olive tree, ‘Be our king!’ 4
1 tn Heb “and he gathered to him.”
2 tn Heb “Going they went, the trees.” The precise emphatic force of the infinitive absolute (“Going”) is not entirely clear. Perhaps here it indicates determination, as in Gen 31:30, where one might translate, “You have insisted on going away.”
3 tn Heb “to anoint [with oil] over them a king.”
4 tn Or “Rule over us!”
5 tn Heb “Should I stop my sweetness and my good fruit and go to sway over the trees? The negative sentence in the translation reflects the force of the rhetorical question.