¹ tn Heb “from God [was] the battle.”

² tn Heb “many slain fell.”

³ tn Heb “and they lived in place of them until the exile.” The referent of “them” (the Hagrites) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁴ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Ephraim) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁵ tn Heb “because in tragedy there had come to his house.” The preposition prefixed to רָעָה (ra’ah) should probably be omitted. The Hebrew noun רָעָה (“tragedy”) should be understood as the subject of the feminine verb form that follows.

⁶ tn Heb “and Saul died because of his unfaithfulness by which he acted unfaithfully against the Lord, concerning the word of the Lord which he did not keep, also to Saul, a ritual pit to seek.” The text alludes to the incident recorded in 1 Sam 28. The Hebrew term אוֹב (’ov, “ritual pit”) refers to a pit used by a magician to conjure up underworld spirits. In 1 Sam 28:7 the witch of Endor is called a בַּעֲלַת־אוֹב (ba’alat-’ov, “owner of a ritual pit”). See H. A. Hoffner, “Second Millennium Antecedents to the Hebrew áo‚b,” JBL 86 (1967): 385-401.

⁷ tn Or “to steady.”

⁸ tn Heb “and the anger of the Lord burned against Uzzah.”

⁹ tn Heb “because he stretched out his hand over the ark.”

¹⁰ sn The modern reader might think God seemed to overreact here, but Israel needed a vivid object lesson of God’s holiness. By loading the ark on a cart, David had violated the instructions in God’s law (Exod 25:12-14; Num 4:5-6, 15). Uzzah’s action, however innocent it may seem, betrayed a certain lack of reverence for God’s presence. God had to remind his people that his holiness could not under any circumstances be violated.

¹¹ tn Heb “because the Lord broke out [with] breaking out [i.e., an outburst] against Uzzah.”

¹² sn The name Perez Uzzah means in Hebrew “the outburst [against] Uzzah.”