2 Samuel 20:1

Now a wicked man ¹  named Sheba son of Bicri, a Benjaminite, ²  happened to be there. He blew the trumpet ³  and said, “We have no share in David; we have no inheritance in this son of Jesse! Every man go home, ⁴  O Israel!”

De 13:13; Jud 3:27; Jud 19:22; 1Sa 2:12; 1Sa 30:22; 2Sa 15:10; 2Sa 19:41-43; 2Sa 19:43; 2Sa 23:6; 1Ki 12:16; 2Ch 10:6; Ps 17:13; Ps 34:19; Pr 24:21,22; Pr 25:8; Pr 26:21; Hab 1:12,13; Lu 19:14,27

¹ tn Heb “a man of worthlessness.”

² tn The expression used here יְמִינִי (yÿmini) is a short form of the more common “Benjamin.” It appears elsewhere in 1 Sam 9:4 and Esth 2:5. Cf. 1 Sam 9:1.

³ tn Heb “the shophar” (the ram’s horn trumpet). So also v. 22.

⁴ tc The MT reads לְאֹהָלָיו (lÿ’ohalav, “to his tents”). For a similar idiom, see 19:9. An ancient scribal tradition understands the reading to be לְאלֹהָיו (le’lohav, “to his gods”). The word is a tiqqun sopherim, and the scribes indicate that they changed the word from “gods” to “tents” so as to soften its theological implications. In a consonantal Hebrew text the change involved only the metathesis of two letters.