1 Samuel 4:3

4:3 When the army ¹  came back to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why did the Lord let us be defeated today by ²  the Philistines? Let’s take with us the ark of the covenant of the Lord from Shiloh. When it is with us, it will save us ³  from the hand of our enemies.

1 Samuel 4:17

4:17 The messenger replied, “Israel has fled from ⁴  the Philistines! The army has suffered a great defeat! Your two sons, Hophni and Phineas, are dead! The ark of God has been captured!”

1 Samuel 9:24

9:24 So the cook picked up the leg and brought it and set it in front of Saul. Samuel ⁵  said, “What was kept is now set before you! Eat, for it has been kept for you for this meeting time, from the time I said, ‘I have invited the people.’” So Saul ate with Samuel that day.

1 Samuel 14:6

14:6 Jonathan said to his armor bearer, “Come on, let’s go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised men. Perhaps the Lord will intervene ⁶  for us. Nothing can prevent the Lord from delivering, whether by many or by a few.”

1 Samuel 17:46

17:46 This very day the Lord will deliver you into my hand! I will strike you down and cut off your head. This day I will give the corpses of the Philistine army to the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the land. Then all the land will realize that Israel has a God

1 Samuel 18:17

18:17 ⁷ Then Saul said to David, “Here’s my oldest daughter, Merab. I want to give her to you in marriage. Only be a brave warrior ⁸  for me and fight the battles of the Lord.” For Saul thought, “There’s no need for me to raise my hand against him. Let it be the hand of the Philistines!”

1 Samuel 18:21

18:21 Saul said, “I will give her to him so that she may become a snare to him and the hand of the Philistines may be against him.” So Saul said to David, “Today is the second time for you to become my son-in-law.” ⁹ 

1 Samuel 18:27

18:27 when David, along with his men, went out ¹⁰  and struck down two hundred Philistine men. David brought their foreskins and presented all of them to the king so he could become the king’s son-in-law. Saul then gave him his daughter Michal in marriage.

1 Samuel 19:11

19:11 Saul sent messengers to David’s house to guard it and to kill him in the morning. Then David’s wife Michal told him, “If you do not save yourself ¹¹  tonight, tomorrow you will be dead!”

1 Samuel 20:29

20:29 He said, ‘Permit me to go, ¹²  for we are having a family sacrifice in the city, and my brother urged ¹³  me to be there. So now, if I have found favor with you, let me go ¹⁴  to see my brothers.’ For that reason he has not come to the king’s table.”

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.’ ¹⁵  I have told my soldiers ¹⁶  to wait at a certain place. ¹⁷ 

1 Samuel 21:6

21:6 So the priest gave him holy bread, for there was no bread there other than the bread of the Presence. It had been removed from before the Lord in order to replace it with hot bread on the day it had been taken away.

1 Samuel 23:14

23:14 David stayed in the strongholds that were in the desert and in the hill country of the desert of Ziph. Saul looked for him all the time, ¹⁸  but God did not deliver David ¹⁹  into his hand.

1 Samuel 25:17

25:17 Now be aware of this, and see what you can do. For disaster has been planned for our lord and his entire household. ²⁰  He is such a wicked person ²¹  that no one tells him anything!”

1 Samuel 25:26

25:26 “Now, my lord, as surely as the Lord lives and as surely as you live, it is the Lord who has kept you from shedding blood and taking matters into your own hands. Now may your enemies and those who seek to harm my lord be like Nabal.

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. ²² 

1 Samuel 30:13

30:13 David said to him, “To whom do you belong, and where are you from?” The young man said, “I am an Egyptian, the servant of an Amalekite man. My master abandoned me when I was ill for three days.

1 Samuel 30:17

30:17 But David struck them down from twilight until the following evening. None of them escaped, with the exception of four hundred young men who got away on camels. ²³ 

1 Samuel 31:7

31:7 When the men of Israel who were in the valley and across the Jordan saw that the men of Israel had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they abandoned the cities and fled. The Philistines came and occupied them.

[4:3]  ¹ tn Or “people.”

[4:3]  ² tn Heb “before.”

[4:3]  ³ tn Heb “and it will come in our midst and it will save.” After the cohortative (see “let’s take”), the prefixed verbal forms with the prefixed conjunction indicate purpose or result. The translation understands the ark to be the subject of the third masculine singular verbs, although it is possible to understand the Lord as the subject. In the latter case, one should translate, “when he is with us, he will save us.”

[4:17]  ⁴ tn Heb “before.”

[9:24]  ⁵ tn Heb “he” (also in v. 25); the referent (Samuel) has been specified in both places in the translation for clarity.

[14:6]  ⁶ tn Heb “act.”

[18:17]  ⁷ tc Much of the ms evidence for the LXX lacks vv. 17-19.

[18:17]  ⁸ tn Heb “son of valor.”

[18:21]  ⁹ tc The final sentence of v. 21 is absent in most LXX mss.

[18:27]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “arose and went.”

[19:11]  ¹¹ tn Heb “your life.”

[20:29]  ¹² tn Heb “send me.”

[20:29]  ¹³ tn Heb “commanded.”

[20:29]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “be released [from duty].”

[21:2]  ¹⁵ 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]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “servants.”

[21:2]  ¹⁷ 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.

[23:14]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “all the days.”

[23:14]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “him”; the referent (David) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[25:17]  ²⁰ tn Heb “all his house” (so ASV, NRSV); NAB, NLT “his whole family.”

[25:17]  ²¹ tn Heb “he is a son of worthlessness.”

[30:1]  ²² tn The Hebrew text adds “with fire.”

[30:17]  ²³ tn Heb “who rode on camels and fled.”