Discovery Box2 Samuel 13:28 
Context13:28 Absalom instructed his servants, “Look! When Amnon is drunk 1 and I say to you, ‘Strike Amnon down,’ kill him then and there. Don’t fear! Is it not I who have given you these instructions? Be strong and courageous!” 2
2 Samuel 17:2
Context17:2 When I catch up with 3 him he will be exhausted and worn out. 4 I will rout him, and the entire army that is with him will flee. I will kill only the king
2 Samuel 21:16
Context21:16 Now Ishbi-Benob, one of the descendants of Rapha, 5 had a spear 6 that weighed three hundred bronze shekels, 7 and he was armed with a new weapon. 8 He had said that he would kill David.
1 tn Heb “when good is the heart of Amnon with wine.”
2 tn Heb “and become sons of valor.”
3 tn Heb “and I will come upon him.”
4 tn Heb “exhausted and slack of hands.”
5 tn This name has the definite article and may be intended to refer to a group of people rather than a single individual with this name.
6 tn This is the only occurrence of this Hebrew word in the OT. Its precise meaning is therefore somewhat uncertain. As early as the LXX the word was understood to refer to a “spear,” and this seems to be the most likely possibility. Some scholars have proposed emending the text of 2 Sam 21:16 to כוֹבַעוֹ (khova’o; “his helmet”), but in spite of the fact that the word “helmet” appears in 1 Sam 17:5, there is not much evidence for reading that word here.
7 tn Either the word “shekels” should be supplied here, or the Hebrew word מִשְׁקַל (mishqal, “weight”) right before “bronze” is a corrupted form of the word for shekel. If the latter is the case the problem probably resulted from another occurrence of the word מִשְׁקַל just four words earlier in the verse.
sn Three hundred bronze shekels would have weighed about 7.5 pounds (3.4 kg).
8 tn The Hebrew text reads simply “a new [thing],” prompting one to ask “A new what?” Several possibilities have been proposed to resolve the problem: perhaps a word has dropped out of the Hebrew text here; or perhaps the word “new” is the result of misreading a different, less common, word; or perhaps a word (e.g., “sword,” so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, CEV, NLT) is simply to be inferred. The translation generally follows the latter possibility, while at the same time being deliberately nonspecific (“weapon”).
