1 Samuel 2:13

2:13 Now the priests would always treat the people in the following way: ¹  Whenever anyone was making a sacrifice, while the meat was boiling, the priest’s attendant would come with a three-pronged fork ²  in his hand.

1 Samuel 5:4

5:4 But when they got up early the following day, Dagon was again lying on the ground before the ark of the Lord. The head of Dagon and his two hands were sheared off and were lying at the threshold. Only Dagon’s body was left intact. ³ 

1 Samuel 5:11

5:11 So they assembled ⁴  all the leaders of the Philistines and said, “Get the ark of the God of Israel out of here! Let it go back to its own place so that it won’t kill us ⁵  and our ⁶  people!” The terror ⁷  of death was throughout the entire city; God was attacking them very severely there. ⁸ 

1 Samuel 6:17

6:17 These are the gold sores that the Philistines brought as a guilt offering to the Lord – one for each of the following cities: Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron.

1 Samuel 9:6

9:6 But the servant said to him, “Look, there is a man of God in this town. He is highly respected. Everything that he says really happens. ⁹  Now let’s go there. Perhaps he will tell us where we should go from here.” ¹⁰ 

1 Samuel 9:20

9:20 Don’t be concerned ¹¹  about the donkeys that you lost three days ago, for they have been found. Whom does all Israel desire? Is it not you, and all your father’s family?” ¹² 

1 Samuel 12:17

12:17 Is this not the time of the wheat harvest? I will call on the Lord so that he makes it thunder and rain. Realize and see what a great sin you have committed before the Lord by asking for a king for yourselves.”

1 Samuel 20:8

20:8 You must be loyal ¹³  to your servant, for you have made a covenant with your servant in the Lord’s name. ¹⁴  If I am guilty, ¹⁵  you yourself kill me! Why bother taking me to your father?”

1 Samuel 20:30

20:30 Saul became angry with Jonathan ¹⁶  and said to him, “You stupid traitor! ¹⁷  Don’t I realize that to your own disgrace and to the disgrace of your mother’s nakedness you have chosen this son of Jesse?

1 Samuel 21:2

21:2 David replied to Ahimelech the priest, “The king instructed me to do something, but he said to me, ‘Don’t let anyone know the reason I am sending you or the instructions I have given you.’ ¹⁸  I have told my soldiers ¹⁹  to wait at a certain place. ²⁰ 

1 Samuel 21:11

21:11 The servants of Achish said to him, “Isn’t this David, the king of the land? Isn’t he the one that they sing about when they dance, saying,

‘Saul struck down his thousands,

But David his tens of thousands’?”

1 Samuel 22:22

22:22 Then David said to Abiathar, “I knew that day when Doeg the Edomite was there that he would certainly tell Saul! I am guilty ²¹  of all the deaths in your father’s house!

1 Samuel 23:7

23:7 When Saul was told that David had come to Keilah, Saul said, “God has delivered ²²  him into my hand, for he has boxed himself into a corner by entering a city with two barred gates.” ²³ 

1 Samuel 24:3

24:3 He came to the sheepfolds by the road, where there was a cave. Saul went into it to relieve himself. ²⁴ 

Now David and his men were sitting in the recesses of the cave.

1 Samuel 24:6

24:6 He said to his men, “May the Lord keep me far away from doing such a thing to my lord, who is the Lord’s chosen one, ²⁵  by extending my hand against him. After all, ²⁶  he is the Lord’s chosen one.” ²⁷ 

1 Samuel 25:8

25:8 Ask your own servants; they can tell you! May my servants find favor in your sight, for we have come ²⁸  at the time of a holiday. Please provide us – your servants ²⁹  and your son David – with whatever you can spare.” ³⁰ 

1 Samuel 25:13

25:13 Then David instructed his men, “Each of you strap on your sword!” So each one strapped on his sword, and David also strapped on his sword. About four hundred men followed David up, while two hundred stayed behind with the equipment.

1 Samuel 27:5

27:5 David said to Achish, “If I have found favor with you, let me be given a place in one of the country towns so that I can live there. Why should your servant settle in the royal city with you?”

1 Samuel 28:1

The Witch of Endor

28:1 In those days the Philistines gathered their troops ³¹  for war in order to fight Israel. Achish said to David, “You should fully understand that you and your men must go with me into the battle.” ³² 

1 Samuel 28:8

28:8 So Saul disguised himself and put on other clothing and left, accompanied by two of his men. They came to the woman at night and said, “Use your ritual pit to conjure up for me the one I tell you.” ³³ 

1 Samuel 30:1

David Defeats the Amalekites

30:1 On the third day David and his men came to Ziklag. Now the Amalekites had raided the Negev and Ziklag. They attacked Ziklag and burned it. ³⁴ 

1 Samuel 30:8

30:8 David inquired of the Lord, saying, “Should I pursue this raiding band? Will I overtake them?” He said to him, “Pursue, for you will certainly overtake them and carry out a rescue!”

1 Samuel 30:21

30:21 Then David approached the two hundred men who had been too exhausted to go with him, ³⁵  those whom they had left at the Wadi Besor. They went out to meet David and the people who were with him. When David approached the people, he asked how they were doing.

[2:13]  ¹ tn Heb “the habit of the priests with the people [was this].”

[2:13]  ² sn The Hebrew word occurs only twice in the OT, here and again in v. 14. Its exact meaning is not entirely clear, although from the context it appears to be a sacrificial tool used for retrieving things from boiling water.

[5:4]  ³ tc Heb “only Dagon was left.” We should probably read the word גֵּו (gev, “back”) before Dagon, understanding it to have the sense of the similar word גְּוִיָּה (gÿviyyah, “body”). This variant is supported by the following evidence: The LXX has ἡ ῥάχις (Jh rJacis, “the back” or “trunk”); the Syriac Peshitta has wegusmeh (“and the body of”); the Targum has gupyeh (“the body of”); the Vulgate has truncus (“the trunk of,” cf. NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT). On the strength of this evidence the present translation employs the phrase “Dagon’s body.”

[5:11]  ⁴ tn Heb “and they sent and gathered.”

[5:11]  ⁵ tn Heb “me.”

[5:11]  ⁶ tn Heb “my.”

[5:11]  ⁷ tn Or “panic.”

[5:11]  ⁸ tn Heb “the hand of God was very heavy there.”

[9:6]  ⁹ tn The infinitive absolute precedes the verb for emphasis.

[9:6]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “our way on which we have gone.”

[9:20]  ¹¹ tn Heb “do not fix your heart.”

[9:20]  ¹² tn Heb “and all the house of your father.”

[20:8]  ¹³ tn Heb “and you must do loyalty.”

[20:8]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “for into a covenant of the Lord you have brought your servant with you.”

[20:8]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and if there is in me guilt.”

[20:30]  ¹⁶ tc Many medieval Hebrew mss include the words “his son” here.

[20:30]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “son of a perverse woman of rebelliousness.” But such an overly literal and domesticated translation of the Hebrew expression fails to capture the force of Saul’s unrestrained reaction. Saul, now incensed and enraged over Jonathan’s liaison with David, is actually hurling very coarse and emotionally charged words at his son. The translation of this phrase suggested by Koehler and Baumgartner is “bastard of a wayward woman” (HALOT 796 s.v. עוה), but this is not an expression commonly used in English. A better English approximation of the sentiments expressed here by the Hebrew phrase would be “You stupid son of a bitch!” However, sensitivity to the various public formats in which the Bible is read aloud has led to a less startling English rendering which focuses on the semantic value of Saul’s utterance (i.e., the behavior of his own son Jonathan, which he viewed as both a personal and a political betrayal [= “traitor”]). But this concession should not obscure the fact that Saul is full of bitterness and frustration. That he would address his son Jonathan with such language, not to mention his apparent readiness even to kill his own son over this friendship with David (v. 33), indicates something of the extreme depth of Saul’s jealousy and hatred of David.

[21:2]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “let not a man know anything about the matter [for] which I am sending you and [about] which I commanded you.”

[21:2]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “servants.”

[21:2]  ²⁰ tn The Hebrew expression here refers to a particular, but unnamed, place. It occurs in the OT only here, in 2 Kgs 6:8, and in Ruth 4:1, where Boaz uses it to refer to Naomi’s unnamed kinsman-redeemer. A contracted form of the expression appears in Dan 8:13.

[22:22]  ²¹ tc The translation follows the LXX, which reads “I am guilty,” rather than the MT, which has “I have turned.”

[23:7]  ²² tn The MT reading (“God has alienated him into my hand”) in v. 7 is a difficult and uncommon idiom. The use of this verb in Jer 19:4 is somewhat parallel, but not entirely so. Many scholars have therefore suspected a textual problem here, emending the word נִכַּר (nikkar, “alienated”) to סִכַּר (sikkar, “he has shut up [i.e., delivered]”). This is the idea reflected in the translations of the Syriac Peshitta and Vulgate, although it is not entirely clear whether they are reading something different from the MT or are simply paraphrasing what for them too may have been a difficult text. The LXX has “God has sold him into my hands,” apparently reading מַכַר (makar, “sold”) for MT’s נִכַּר. The present translation is a rather free interpretation.

[23:7]  ²³ tn Heb “with two gates and a bar.” Since in English “bar” could be understood as a saloon, it has been translated as an attributive: “two barred gates.”

[24:3]  ²⁴ tn Heb “to cover his feet,” an idiom (euphemism) for relieving oneself (cf. NAB “to ease nature”).

[24:6]  ²⁵ tn Heb “anointed.”

[24:6]  ²⁶ tn Or “for.”

[24:6]  ²⁷ tn Heb “anointed.”

[25:8]  ²⁸ tc The translation follows many medieval Hebrew mss in reading בָּאנוּ (ba’nu, “we have come”) rather than the MT’s בָּנוּ (banu, “we have built”).

[25:8]  ²⁹ tn This refers to the ten servants sent by David.

[25:8]  ³⁰ tn Heb “whatever your hand will find.”

[28:1]  ³¹ tn Heb “their camps.”

[28:1]  ³² tc The translation follows the LXX (εἰς πόλεμον, eis polemon) and a Qumran ms מלחמה במלחמה ([m]lkhmh) bammilkhamah (“in the battle”) rather than the MT’s בַמַּחֲנֶה (bammakhaneh, “in the camp”; cf. NASB). While the MT reading is not impossible here, and although admittedly it is the harder reading, the variant fits the context better. The MT can be explained as a scribal error caused in part by the earlier occurrence of “camp” in this verse.

[28:8]  ³³ tn Heb “Use divination for me with the ritual pit and bring up for me the one whom I say to you.”

[30:1]  ³⁴ tn The Hebrew text adds “with fire.”

[30:21]  ³⁵ tn Heb “David.” The pronoun (“him”) has been substituted for the proper name in the translation for stylistic reasons.