¹ tn Heb “No.”

² tn Heb “I am a woman difficult of spirit.” The LXX has “for whom the day is difficult,” apparently mistaking the Hebrew word for “spirit” רוּחַ (ruakh) to be the word for “day” יוֹם (yom).

³ tn Heb “before.”

⁴ tn Heb “Listen to the voice of the people, to all which they say to you.”

⁵ tc The translation follows many medieval Hebrew mss, the LXX, the Syriac Peshitta, and Vulgate in reading לֹא (lo’, “not”) rather than the MT לוֹ (lo; “to him”). Some witnesses combine the variants, resulting in a conflated text. For example, a few medieval Hebrew mss have לֹא לוֹ (lo lo’; “to him, ‘No.’”). A few others have לֹא לִי (li lo’; “to me, ‘No.’”).

⁶ tn Heb “the mouth of the Lord.”

⁷ tn Heb “and your words.”

⁸ tn Heb “and I listened to their voice.”

⁹ tn Heb “said.” So also in vv. 11, 17.

¹⁰ tn Heb “and he came and said before Jonathan.”

¹¹ tn Heb “What is my guilt?”

¹² tn Heb “servants.”

¹³ tn Heb “have kept themselves from women” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “haven’t had sexual relations recently”; NLT “have not slept with any women recently.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “gods.” The modifying participle (translated “coming up”) is plural, suggesting that underworld spirits are the referent. But in the following verse Saul understands the plural word to refer to a singular being. The reference is to the spirit of Samuel.