2 Samuel 1:9

He said to me, ‘Stand over me and finish me off! ¹  I’m very dizzy, ²  even though I’m still alive.’ ³ 

"Then he said to me, ‘Stand over me and kill me! I am in the throes of death, but I’m still alive.’

"Then he said to me, ‘Please stand beside me and kill me, for agony has seized me because my life still lingers in me.’

Then he begged me, ‘Come over here and put me out of my misery, for I am in terrible pain and want to die.’

"Come here," he said, "and put me out of my misery. I'm nearly dead already, but my life hangs on."

Then he said to me, Come here to my side, and put me to death, for the pain of death has me in its grip but my life is still strong in me.

He said to me, ‘Come, stand over me and kill me; for convulsions have seized me, and yet my life still lingers.’

"He said to me again, ‘Please stand over me and kill me, for anguish has come upon me, but my life still remains in me.’

He said to me, ‘Stand over me and finish me off! ¹  I’m very dizzy, ²  even though I’m still alive.’ ³ 

¹ tn As P. K. McCarter (II Samuel [AB], 59) points out, the Polel of the verb מוּת (mut, “to die”) “refers to dispatching or ‘finishing off’ someone already wounded and near death.” Cf. NLT “put me out of my misery.”

² tn Heb “the dizziness has seized me.” On the meaning of the Hebrew noun translated “dizziness,” see P. K. McCarter, II Samuel (AB), 59-60. The point seems to be that he is unable to kill himself because he is weak and disoriented.

³ tn The Hebrew text here is grammatically very awkward (Heb “because all still my life in me”). Whether the broken construct phrase is due to the fact that the alleged speaker is in a confused state of mind as he is on the verge of dying, or whether the MT has sustained corruption in the transmission process, is not entirely clear. The former seems likely, although P. K. McCarter understands the MT to be the result of conflation of two shorter forms of text (P. K. McCarter, II Samuel [AB], 57, n. 9). Early translators also struggled with the verse, apparently choosing to leave part of the Hebrew text untranslated. For example, the Lucianic recension of the LXX lacks “all,” while other witnesses (namely, one medieval Hebrew ms, codices A and B of the LXX, and the Syriac Peshitta) lack “still.”