1 Samuel 3:1

The Call of Samuel

3:1 Now the boy Samuel continued serving the Lord under Eli’s supervision. ¹  Word from the Lord was rare in those days; revelatory visions were infrequent.

1 Samuel 3:18

3:18 So Samuel told him everything. He did not hold back anything from him. Eli ²  said, “The Lord will do what he pleases.” ³ 

1 Samuel 6:13

6:13 Now the residents of Beth Shemesh were harvesting wheat in the valley. When they looked up and saw the ark, they were pleased at the sight.

1 Samuel 7:17

7:17 Then he would return to Ramah, because his home was there. He also judged ⁴  Israel there and built an altar to the Lord there.

1 Samuel 10:27

10:27 But some wicked men ⁵  said, “How can this man save us?” They despised him and did not even bring him a gift. But Saul said nothing about it. ⁶ 

1 Samuel 12:22

12:22 The Lord will not abandon his people because he wants to uphold his great reputation. ⁷  The Lord was pleased to make you his own people.

1 Samuel 14:10

14:10 But if they say, ‘Come up against us,’ we will go up. For in that case the Lord has given them into our hand – it will be a sign to us.”

1 Samuel 14:14

14:14 In this initial skirmish Jonathan and his armor bearer struck down about twenty men in an area that measured half an acre.

1 Samuel 14:20

14:20 Saul and all the army that was with him assembled and marched into battle, where they found ⁸  the Philistines in total panic killing one another with their swords. ⁹ 

1 Samuel 14:38

14:38 Then Saul said, “All you leaders of the army come here. Find out ¹⁰  how this sin occurred today.

1 Samuel 15:18

15:18 The Lord sent you on a campaign ¹¹  saying, ‘Go and exterminate those sinful Amalekites! Fight against them until you ¹²  have destroyed them.’

1 Samuel 17:1

David Kills Goliath

17:1 ¹³ The Philistines gathered their troops ¹⁴  for battle. They assembled at Socoh in Judah. They camped in Ephes Dammim, between Socoh and Azekah.

1 Samuel 17:3

17:3 The Philistines were standing on one hill, and the Israelites ¹⁵  on another hill, with the valley between them.

1 Samuel 21:7

21:7 (One of Saul’s servants was there that day, detained before the Lord. His name was Doeg the Edomite, who was in charge of Saul’s shepherds.)

1 Samuel 23:5

23:5 So David and his men went to Keilah and fought the Philistines. He took away their cattle and thoroughly defeated them. ¹⁶  David delivered the inhabitants of Keilah.

1 Samuel 25:28

25:28 Please forgive the sin of your servant, for the Lord will certainly establish the house of my lord, because my lord fights the battles of the Lord. May no evil be found in you all your days!

1 Samuel 26:10

26:10 David went on to say, “As the Lord lives, the Lord himself will strike him down. Either his day will come and he will die, or he will go down into battle and be swept away.

[3:1]  ¹ tn Heb “before Eli.”

[3:18]  ² tn Heb “he”; the referent (Eli) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[3:18]  ³ tn Heb “what is good in his eyes.”

[7:17]  ⁴ tn Or perhaps “settled disputes for” (cf. NLT “would hear cases there”; NRSV “administered justice there”).

[10:27]  ⁵ tn Heb “sons of worthlessness” (see 2:12).

[10:27]  ⁶ tc In place of the MT (“and it was like one being silent”) the LXX has “after about a month,” taking the expression with the first part of the following chapter rather than with 10:27. Some Hebrew support for this reading appears in the corrected hand of a Qumran ms of Samuel, which has here “about a month.” However, it seems best to stay with the MT here even though it is difficult.

[12:22]  ⁷ tn Heb “on account of his great name.”

[14:20]  ⁸ tn Heb “and look, there was”

[14:20]  ⁹ tn Heb “the sword of a man against his companion, a very great panic.”

[14:38]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “know and see.”

[15:18]  ¹¹ tn Heb “journey.”

[15:18]  ¹² tc The translation follows the LXX, the Syriac Peshitta, and the Targum in reading the second person singular suffix (“you”) rather than the third person plural suffix of the MT (“they”).

[17:1]  ¹³ tc The content of 1 Sam 17–18, which includes the David and Goliath story, differs considerably in the LXX as compared to the MT, suggesting that this story circulated in ancient times in more than one form. The LXX for chs. 17–18 is much shorter than the MT, lacking almost half of the material (39 of a total of 88 verses). Many scholars (e.g., McCarter, Klein) think that the shorter text of the LXX is preferable to the MT, which in their view has been expanded by incorporation of later material. Other scholars (e.g., Wellhausen, Driver) conclude that the shorter Greek text (or the Hebrew text that underlies it) reflects an attempt to harmonize certain alleged inconsistencies that appear in the longer version of the story. Given the translation characteristics of the LXX elsewhere in this section, it does not seem likely that these differences are due to deliberate omission of these verses on the part of the translator. It seems more likely that the Greek translator has faithfully rendered here a Hebrew text that itself was much shorter than the MT in these chapters. Whether or not the shorter text represented by the LXX is to be preferred over the MT in 1 Sam 17–18 is a matter over which textual scholars are divided. For a helpful discussion of the major textual issues in this unit see D. Barthélemy, D. W. Gooding, J. Lust, and E. Tov, The Story of David and Goliath (OBO). Overall it seems preferable to stay with the MT, at least for the most part. However, the major textual differences between the LXX and the MT will be mentioned in the notes that accompany the translation so that the reader may be alert to the major problem passages.

[17:1]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “camps.”

[17:3]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “Israel.”

[23:5]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and struck them down with a great blow.”