Mazmur 17:8-9

17:8 Protect me as you would protect the pupil of your eye! ¹ 

Hide me in the shadow of your wings! ² 

17:9 Protect me from ³  the wicked men who attack ⁴  me,

my enemies who crowd around me for the kill. ⁵ 

Mazmur 17:13

17:13 Rise up, Lord!

Confront him! ⁶  Knock him down! ⁷ 

Use your sword to rescue me from the wicked man! ⁸ 

Mazmur 59:1-2

Psalm 59 ⁹ 

For the music director; according to the al-tashcheth style; ¹⁰  a prayer ¹¹  of David, written when Saul sent men to surround his house and murder him. ¹² 

59:1 Deliver me from my enemies, my God!

Protect me ¹³  from those who attack me! ¹⁴ 

59:2 Deliver me from evildoers! ¹⁵ 

Rescue me from violent men! ¹⁶ 

Mazmur 140:1-4

Psalm 140 ¹⁷ 

For the music director; a psalm of David.

140:1 O Lord, rescue me from wicked men! ¹⁸ 

Protect me from violent men, ¹⁹ 

140:2 who plan ways to harm me. ²⁰ 

All day long they stir up conflict. ²¹ 

140:3 Their tongues wound like a serpent; ²² 

a viper’s ²³  venom is behind ²⁴  their lips. (Selah)

140:4 O Lord, shelter me from the power ²⁵  of the wicked!

Protect me from violent men,

who plan to knock me over. ²⁶ 

Mazmur 140:2

140:2 who plan ways to harm me. ²⁷ 

All day long they stir up conflict. ²⁸ 

1 Samuel 16:21-22

16:21 David came to Saul and stood before him. Saul liked him a great deal, ²⁹  and he became his armor bearer. 16:22 Then Saul sent word to Jesse saying, “Let David be my servant, for I really like him.” ³⁰ 

1 Samuel 17:1-2

David Kills Goliath

17:1 ³¹ The Philistines gathered their troops ³²  for battle. They assembled at Socoh in Judah. They camped in Ephes Dammim, between Socoh and Azekah. 17:2 Saul and the Israelite army ³³  assembled and camped in the valley of Elah, where they arranged their battle lines to fight against ³⁴  the Philistines.

1 Samuel 17:12-14

17:12 ³⁵ Now David was the son of this Ephrathite named Jesse from Bethlehem ³⁶  in Judah. He had eight sons, and in Saul’s days he was old and well advanced in years. ³⁷  17:13 Jesse’s three oldest sons had followed Saul to war. The names of the ³⁸  three sons who went to war were Eliab, his firstborn, Abinadab, the second oldest, and Shammah, the third oldest. 17:14 Now David was the youngest. While the three oldest sons followed Saul,

1 Samuel 17:21

17:21 Israel and the Philistines drew up their battle lines opposite one another.

[17:8]  ¹ tc Heb “Protect me like the pupil, a daughter of an eye.” The noun בַּת (bat, “daughter”) should probably be emended to בָּבַת (bavat, “pupil”). See Zech 2:12 HT (2:8 ET) and HALOT 107 s.v. *בָּבָה.

[17:8]  ² sn Your wings. The metaphor compares God to a protective mother bird.

[17:9]  ³ tn Heb “from before”; or “because.” In the Hebrew text v. 9 is subordinated to v. 8. The words “protect me” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[17:9]  ⁴ tn Heb “destroy.” The psalmist uses the perfect verbal form to emphasize the degree of danger. He describes the wicked as being already in the process of destroying him.

[17:9]  ⁵ tn Heb “my enemies, at the risk of life they surround me.” The Hebrew phrase בְּנֶפֶשׁ (bÿnefesh) sometimes has the nuance “at the risk of [one’s] life” (see 1 Kgs 2:23; Prov 7:23; Lam 5:9).

[17:13]  ⁶ tn Heb “Be in front of his face.”

[17:13]  ⁷ tn Or “bring him to his knees.”

[17:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “rescue my life from the wicked [one] [by] your sword.”

[59:1]  ⁹ sn Psalm 59. The psalmist calls down judgment on his foreign enemies, whom he compares to ravenous wild dogs.

[59:1]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “do not destroy.” Perhaps this refers to a particular style of music, a tune title, or a musical instrument. These words also appear in the superscription to Pss 57-58, 75.

[59:1]  ¹¹ tn The precise meaning of the Hebrew word מִכְתָּם (miktam), which also appears in the heading to Pss 16, 56-58, 60 is uncertain. HALOT 582-83 s.v. defines it as “inscription.”

[59:1]  ¹² tn Heb “when Saul sent and they watched his house in order to kill him.”

[59:1]  sn According to the superscription, David wrote this psalm on the occasion when Saul sent assassins to surround David’s house and kill him in the morning (see 1 Sam 19:11). However, the psalm itself mentions foreign enemies (vv. 5, 8). Perhaps these references reflect a later adaptation of an original Davidic psalm.

[59:1]  ¹³ tn Or “make me secure”; Heb “set me on high.”

[59:1]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “from those who raise themselves up [against] me.”

[59:2]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “from the workers of wickedness.”

[59:2]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “from men of bloodshed.”

[140:1]  ¹⁷ sn Psalm 140. The psalmist asks God to deliver him from his deadly enemies, calls judgment down upon them, and affirms his confidence in God’s justice.

[140:1]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “from a wicked man.” The Hebrew uses the singular in a representative or collective sense (note the plural verbs in v. 2).

[140:1]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “a man of violent acts.” The Hebrew uses the singular in a representative or collective sense (note the plural verbs in v. 2).

[140:2]  ²⁰ tn Heb “they devise wicked [plans] in [their] mind.”

[140:2]  ²¹ tc Heb “they attack [for] war.” Some revocalize the verb (which is a Qal imperfect from גּוּר, gur, “to attack”) as יְגָרוּ (yÿgaru), a Piel imperfect from גָרָה (garah, “stir up strife”). This is followed in the present translation.

[140:3]  ²² tn Heb “they sharpen their tongue like a serpent.” Ps 64:3 reads, “they sharpen their tongues like sword.” Perhaps Ps 140:3 uses a mixed metaphor, the point being that “they sharpen their tongues [like a sword],” as it were, so that when they speak, their words wound like a serpent’s bite. Another option is that the language refers to the pointed or forked nature of a serpent’s tongue, which is viewed metaphorically as “sharpened.”

[140:3]  ²³ tn The Hebrew term is used only here in the OT.

[140:3]  ²⁴ tn Heb “under.”

[140:4]  ²⁵ tn Heb “hands.”

[140:4]  ²⁶ tn Heb “to push down my steps.”

[140:2]  ²⁷ tn Heb “they devise wicked [plans] in [their] mind.”

[140:2]  ²⁸ tc Heb “they attack [for] war.” Some revocalize the verb (which is a Qal imperfect from גּוּר, gur, “to attack”) as יְגָרוּ (yÿgaru), a Piel imperfect from גָרָה (garah, “stir up strife”). This is followed in the present translation.

[16:21]  ²⁹ tn Heb “he loved him.”

[16:22]  ³⁰ tn Heb “Let David stand before me, for he has found favor in my eyes.”

[17:1]  ³¹ tc The content of 1 Sam 17–18, which includes the David and Goliath story, differs considerably in the LXX as compared to the MT, suggesting that this story circulated in ancient times in more than one form. The LXX for chs. 17–18 is much shorter than the MT, lacking almost half of the material (39 of a total of 88 verses). Many scholars (e.g., McCarter, Klein) think that the shorter text of the LXX is preferable to the MT, which in their view has been expanded by incorporation of later material. Other scholars (e.g., Wellhausen, Driver) conclude that the shorter Greek text (or the Hebrew text that underlies it) reflects an attempt to harmonize certain alleged inconsistencies that appear in the longer version of the story. Given the translation characteristics of the LXX elsewhere in this section, it does not seem likely that these differences are due to deliberate omission of these verses on the part of the translator. It seems more likely that the Greek translator has faithfully rendered here a Hebrew text that itself was much shorter than the MT in these chapters. Whether or not the shorter text represented by the LXX is to be preferred over the MT in 1 Sam 17–18 is a matter over which textual scholars are divided. For a helpful discussion of the major textual issues in this unit see D. Barthélemy, D. W. Gooding, J. Lust, and E. Tov, The Story of David and Goliath (OBO). Overall it seems preferable to stay with the MT, at least for the most part. However, the major textual differences between the LXX and the MT will be mentioned in the notes that accompany the translation so that the reader may be alert to the major problem passages.

[17:1]  ³² tn Heb “camps.”

[17:2]  ³³ tn Heb “the men of Israel” (so KJV, NASB); NAB, NIV, NRSV “the Israelites.”

[17:2]  ³⁴ tn Heb “to meet.”

[17:12]  ³⁵ tc Some mss of the LXX lack vv. 12-31.

[17:12]  ³⁶ map For location see Map5 B1; Map7 E2; Map8 E2; Map10 B4.

[17:12]  ³⁷ tc The translation follows the Lucianic recension of the LXX and the Syriac Peshitta in reading “in years,” rather than MT “among men.”

[17:13]  ³⁸ tn Heb “his.”