Discovery Box2 Samuel 3:29 
Context3:29 May his blood whirl over 1 the head of Joab and the entire house of his father! 2 May the males of Joab’s house 3 never cease to have 4 someone with a running sore or a skin disease or one who works at the spindle 5 or one who falls by the sword or one who lacks food!”
2 Samuel 10:3
Context10:3 the Ammonite officials said to their lord Hanun, “Do you really think David is trying to honor your father by sending these messengers to express his sympathy? 6 No, David has sent his servants to you to get information about the city and spy on it so they can overthrow it!” 7
2 Samuel 13:5
Context13:5 Jonadab replied to him, “Lie down on your bed and pretend to be sick. 8 When your father comes in to see you, say to him, ‘Please let my sister Tamar come in so she can fix some food for me. Let her prepare the food in my sight so I can watch. Then I will eat from her hand.’”
2 Samuel 15:34
Context15:34 But you will be able to counter the advice of Ahithophel if you go back to the city and say to Absalom, ‘I will be your servant, O king! Previously I was your father’s servant, and now I will be your servant.’
2 Samuel 17:23
Context17:23 When Ahithophel realized that his advice had not been followed, he saddled his donkey and returned to his house in his hometown. After setting his household in order, he hanged himself. So he died and was buried in the grave 9 of his father.
2 Samuel 19:37
Context19:37 Let me 10 return so that I may die in my own city near the grave of my father and my mother. But look, here is your servant Kimham. Let him cross over with my lord the king. Do for him whatever seems appropriate to you.”
2 Samuel 21:14
Context21:14 They buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the land of Benjamin at Zela in the grave of his father Kish. After they had done everything 11 that the king had commanded, God responded to their prayers 12 for the land.
1 tn Heb “and may they whirl over.” In the Hebrew text the subject of the plural verb is unexpressed. The most likely subject is Abner’s “shed blood” (v. 28), which is a masculine plural form in Hebrew. The verb חוּל (khul, “whirl”) is used with the preposition עַל (’al) only here and in Jer 23:19; 30:23.
2 tc 4QSama has “of Joab” rather than “of his father” read by the MT.
3 tn Heb “the house of Joab.” However, it is necessary to specify that David’s curse is aimed at Joab’s male descendants; otherwise it would not be clear that “one who works at the spindle” refers to a man doing woman’s work rather than a woman.
4 tn Heb “and may there not be cut off from the house of Joab.”
5 tn The expression used here is difficult. The translation “one who works at the spindle” follows a suggestion of S. R. Driver that the expression pejoratively describes an effeminate man who, rather than being a mighty warrior, is occupied with tasks that are normally fulfilled by women (S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel, 250-51; cf. NAB “one unmanly”; TEV “fit only to do a woman’s work”; CEV “cowards”). But P. K. McCarter, following an alleged Phoenician usage of the noun to refer to “crutches,” adopts a different view. He translates the phrase “clings to a crutch,” seeing here a further description of physical lameness (II Samuel [AB], 118). Such an idea fits the present context well and is followed by NIV, NCV, and NLT, although the evidence for this meaning is questionable. According to DNWSI 2:915-16, the noun consistently refers to a spindle in Phoenician, as it does in Ugaritic (see UT 468).
6 tn Heb “Is David honoring your father in your eyes when he sends to you ones consoling?”
7 tn Heb “Is it not to explore the city and to spy on it and to overthrow it [that] David has sent his servants to you?”
8 tn This verb is used in the Hitpael stem only in this chapter of the Hebrew Bible. With the exception of v. 2 it describes not a real sickness but one pretended in order to entrap Tamar. The Hitpael sometimes, as here, describes the subject making oneself appear to be of a certain character. On this use of the stem, see GKC 149-50 §54.e.
9 tc The Greek recensions of Origen and Lucian have here “house” for “grave.”
10 tn Heb “your servant.”
11 tc Many medieval Hebrew
12 tn Heb “was entreated.” The verb is an example of the so-called niphal tolerativum, with the sense that God allowed himself to be supplicated through prayer (cf. GKC 137 §51.c).
