1 Samuel 10:25

10:25 Then Samuel talked to the people about how the kingship would work. ¹  He wrote it all down on a scroll and set it before the Lord. Then Samuel sent all the people away to their homes.

1 Samuel 10:1

Samuel Anoints Saul

10:1 Then Samuel took a small container of olive oil and poured it on Saul’s ²  head. Samuel ³  kissed him and said, “The Lord has chosen you ⁴  to lead his people Israel! You will rule over the Lord’s people and you will deliver them from the power of the enemies who surround them. This will be your sign that the Lord has chosen ⁵  you as leader over his inheritance. ⁶ 

1 Raja-raja 12:4

12:4 “Your father made us work too hard. ⁷  Now if you lighten the demands he made and don’t make us work as hard, we will serve you.” ⁸ 

[10:25]  ¹ tn Heb “the regulation of the kingship.” This probably refers to the regulations pertaining to kingship given to Moses (see Deut 17:14-20).

[10:1]  ² tn Heb “his”; the referent (Saul) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[10:1]  ³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Samuel) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[10:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “Is it not that the Lord has anointed you?” The question draws attention to the fact and is a rhetorical way of affirming the Lord’s choice of Saul. The translation reflects the rhetorical force of the question.

[10:1]  ⁵ tn That is, “anointed.”

[10:1]  ⁶ tc The MT reads simply “Is it not that the Lord has anointed you over his inheritance for a leader?” The translation follows the LXX. The MT apparently suffers from parablepsis, whereby a scribe’s eye jumped from the first occurrence of the expression “the Lord has anointed you” to the second occurrence of this expression at the end of v. 1. This mistake caused the accidental omission of the intervening material in the LXX, which appears to preserve the original Hebrew text here.

[12:4]  ⁷ tn Heb “made our yoke burdensome.”

[12:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “but you, now, lighten the burdensome work of your father and the heavy yoke which he placed on us, and we will serve you.” In the Hebrew text the prefixed verbal form with vav (וְנַעַבְדֶךָ, [vÿna’avdekha] “and we will serve you”) following the imperative (הָקֵל [haqel], “lighten”) indicates purpose (or result). The conditional sentence used in the translation above is an attempt to bring out the logical relationship between these forms.