2 Samuel 5:1

David Is Anointed King Over Israel

5:1 All the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron saying, “Look, we are your very flesh and blood! ¹ 

2 Samuel 19:12-13

19:12 You are my brothers – my very own flesh and blood! ²  Why should you delay any further in bringing the king back?’ 19:13 Say to Amasa, ‘Are you not my flesh and blood? ³  God will punish me severely, ⁴  if from this time on you are not the commander of my army in place of Joab!’”

2 Samuel 20:1

Sheba’s Rebellion

20:1 Now a wicked man ⁵  named Sheba son of Bicri, a Benjaminite, ⁶  happened to be there. He blew the trumpet ⁷  and said,

“We have no share in David;

we have no inheritance in this son of Jesse!

Every man go home, ⁸  O Israel!”

[5:1]  ¹ tn Heb “look we are your bone and your flesh.”

[19:12]  ² tn Heb “my bone and my flesh.”

[19:13]  ³ tn Heb “my bone and my flesh.”

[19:13]  ⁴ tn Heb “Thus God will do to me and thus he will add.”

[20:1]  ⁵ tn Heb “a man of worthlessness.”

[20:1]  ⁶ 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.

[20:1]  ⁷ tn Heb “the shophar” (the ram’s horn trumpet). So also v. 22.

[20:1]  ⁸ 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.