1 Samuel 2:5

2:5 Those who are well-fed hire themselves out to earn food,

but the hungry no longer lack.

Even ¹  the barren woman gives birth to seven, ² 

but the one with many children withers away. ³ 

1 Samuel 6:1

The Philistines Return the Ark

6:1 When the ark of the Lord had been in the land ⁴  of the Philistines for seven months, ⁵ 

1 Samuel 6:7

6:7 So now go and make a new cart. Get two cows that have calves and that have never had a yoke placed on them. Harness the cows to the cart and take their calves from them back to their stalls.

1 Samuel 6:19

6:19 But the Lord ⁶  struck down some of the people of Beth Shemesh because they had looked into the ark of the Lord; he struck down 50,070 ⁷  of the men. The people grieved because the Lord had struck the people with a hard blow.

1 Samuel 10:8

10:8 You will go down to Gilgal before me. I am going to join you there to offer burnt offerings and to make peace offerings. You should wait for seven days, until I arrive and tell you what to do.”

1 Samuel 11:3

11:3 The elders of Jabesh said to him, “Leave us alone for seven days so that we can send messengers throughout the territory of Israel. If there is no one who can deliver us, we will come out voluntarily to you.”

1 Samuel 13:8

13:8 He waited for seven days, the time period indicated by Samuel. ⁸  But Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the army began to abandon Saul. ⁹ 

1 Samuel 17:5

17:5 He had a bronze helmet on his head and was wearing scale body armor. The weight of his bronze body armor was five thousand shekels. ¹⁰ 

1 Samuel 17:7

17:7 The shaft ¹¹  of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and the iron point of his spear weighed six hundred shekels. ¹²  His shield bearer was walking before him.

1 Samuel 17:12

17:12 ¹³ Now David was the son of this Ephrathite named Jesse from Bethlehem ¹⁴  in Judah. He had eight sons, and in Saul’s days he was old and well advanced in years. ¹⁵ 

1 Samuel 25:18

25:18 So Abigail quickly took two hundred loaves of bread, two containers ¹⁶  of wine, five prepared sheep, five seahs ¹⁷  of roasted grain, a hundred bunches of raisins, and two hundred lumps of pressed figs. She loaded them on donkeys

1 Samuel 31:13

31:13 They took the bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree at Jabesh; then they fasted for seven days.

[2:5]  ¹ tc Against BHS but with the MT, the preposition (עַד, ’ad) should be taken with what follows rather than with what precedes. For this sense of the preposition see Job 25:5.

[2:5]  ² sn The number seven is used here in an ideal sense. Elsewhere in the OT having seven children is evidence of fertility as a result of God’s blessing on the family. See, for example, Jer 15:9, Ruth 4:15.

[2:5]  ³ tn Or “languishes.”

[6:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “field.”

[6:1]  ⁵ tc The LXX adds “and their land swarmed with mice.”

[6:19]  ⁶ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[6:19]  ⁷ tc The number 50,070 is surprisingly large, although it finds almost unanimous textual support in the MT and in the ancient versions. Only a few medieval Hebrew mss lack “50,000,” reading simply “70” instead. However, there does not seem to be sufficient external evidence to warrant reading 70 rather than 50,070, although that is done by a number of recent translations (e.g., NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT). The present translation (reluctantly) follows the MT and the ancient versions here.

[13:8]  ⁸ tn This apparently refers to the instructions given by Samuel in 1 Sam 10:8. If so, several years had passed. On the relationship between chs. 10 and 13, see V. P. Long, The Art of Biblical History (FCI), 201-23.

[13:8]  ⁹ tn Heb “dispersed from upon him”; NAB, NRSV “began to slip away.”

[17:5]  ¹⁰ sn Although the exact weight of Goliath’s defensive body armor is difficult to estimate in terms of modern equivalency, it was obviously quite heavy. Driver, following Kennedy, suggests a modern equivalent of about 220 pounds (100 kg); see S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel, 139. Klein, taking the shekel to be equal to .403 ounces, arrives at a somewhat smaller weight of about 126 pounds (57 kg); see R. W. Klein, 1 Samuel (WBC), 175. But by any estimate it is clear that Goliath presented himself as a formidable foe indeed.

[17:7]  ¹¹ tn The translation follows the Qere and many medieval Hebrew mss in reading “wood,” rather than the “arrow” (the reading of the Kethib).

[17:7]  ¹² sn That is, about fifteen or sixteen pounds.

[17:12]  ¹³ tc Some mss of the LXX lack vv. 12-31.

[17:12]  ¹⁴ map For location see Map5 B1; Map7 E2; Map8 E2; Map10 B4.

[17:12]  ¹⁵ tc The translation follows the Lucianic recension of the LXX and the Syriac Peshitta in reading “in years,” rather than MT “among men.”

[25:18]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “skins.”

[25:18]  ¹⁷ sn The seah was a dry measure equal to one-third of an ephah, or not quite eleven quarts.