1 Samuel 9:7

9:7 So Saul said to his servant, “All right, ¹  we can go. But what can we bring the man, since the food in our bags is used up? We have no gift to take to the man of God. What do we have?”

1 Samuel 13:13

13:13 Then Samuel said to Saul, “You have made a foolish choice! You have not obeyed ²  the commandment that the Lord your God gave ³  you. Had you done that, the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever!

1 Samuel 23:7

23:7 When Saul was told that David had come to Keilah, Saul said, “God has delivered ⁴  him into my hand, for he has boxed himself into a corner by entering a city with two barred gates.” ⁵ 

1 Samuel 23:23

23:23 Locate precisely all the places where he hides and return to me with dependable information. ⁶  Then I will go with you. If he is in the land, I will find him ⁷  among all the thousands of Judah.”

[9:7]  ¹ tn Heb “look.”

[13:13]  ² tn Or “kept.”

[13:13]  ³ tn Heb “commanded.”

[23:7]  ⁴ tn The MT reading (“God has alienated him into my hand”) in v. 7 is a difficult and uncommon idiom. The use of this verb in Jer 19:4 is somewhat parallel, but not entirely so. Many scholars have therefore suspected a textual problem here, emending the word נִכַּר (nikkar, “alienated”) to סִכַּר (sikkar, “he has shut up [i.e., delivered]”). This is the idea reflected in the translations of the Syriac Peshitta and Vulgate, although it is not entirely clear whether they are reading something different from the MT or are simply paraphrasing what for them too may have been a difficult text. The LXX has “God has sold him into my hands,” apparently reading מַכַר (makar, “sold”) for MT’s נִכַּר. The present translation is a rather free interpretation.

[23:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “with two gates and a bar.” Since in English “bar” could be understood as a saloon, it has been translated as an attributive: “two barred gates.”

[23:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “established.”

[23:23]  ⁷ tn Heb “I will search him out.”