1 Samuel 1:19

1:19 They got up early the next morning and after worshiping the Lord, they returned to their home at Ramah. Elkanah had marital relations with ¹  his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered ²  her.

1 Samuel 4:3

4:3 When the army ³  came back to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why did the Lord let us be defeated today by ⁴  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 ⁵  from the hand of our enemies.

1 Samuel 5:4

5:4 But when they got up early the following day, Dagon was again lying on the ground before the ark of the Lord. The head of Dagon and his two hands were sheared off and were lying at the threshold. Only Dagon’s body was left intact. ⁶ 

1 Samuel 5:8

5:8 So they assembled ⁷  all the leaders of the Philistines and asked, “What should we do with the ark of the God of Israel?” They replied, “The ark of the God of Israel should be moved to Gath.” So they moved the ark of the God of Israel.

1 Samuel 6:3-4

6:3 They replied, “If you are going to send the ark of ⁸  the God of Israel back, don’t send it away empty. Be sure to return it with a guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and you will understand why his hand is not removed from you.” 6:4 They inquired, “What is the guilt offering that we should send to him?”

They replied, “The Philistine leaders number five. So send five gold sores and five gold mice, for it is the same plague that has afflicted both you and your leaders.

1 Samuel 6:8

6:8 Then take the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart, and put in a chest beside it the gold objects you are sending to him as a guilt offering. You should then send it on its way.

1 Samuel 9:2

9:2 He had a son named Saul, a handsome young man. There was no one among the Israelites more handsome than he was; he stood head and shoulders above all the people.

1 Samuel 9:12

9:12 They replied, “Yes, straight ahead! But hurry now, for he came to the town today, and the people are making a sacrifice at the high place.

1 Samuel 9:20

9:20 Don’t be concerned ⁹  about the donkeys that you lost three days ago, for they have been found. Whom does all Israel desire? Is it not you, and all your father’s family?” ¹⁰ 

1 Samuel 9:24

9:24 So the cook picked up the leg and brought it and set it in front of Saul. Samuel ¹¹  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 9:26

9:26 They got up at dawn and Samuel called to Saul on the roof, “Get up, so I can send you on your way.” So Saul got up and the two of them – he and Samuel – went outside.

1 Samuel 11:9

11:9 They said to the messengers who had come, “Here’s what you should say to the men of Jabesh Gilead: ‘Tomorrow deliverance will come to you when the sun is fully up.’” When the messengers went and told the men of Jabesh Gilead, they were happy.

1 Samuel 14:24

Jonathan Violates Saul’s Oath

14:24 Now the men of Israel were hard pressed that day, for Saul had made the army agree to this oath: “Cursed be the man who eats food before evening! I will get my vengeance on my enemies!” So no one in the army ate anything.

1 Samuel 15:12

15:12 Then Samuel got up early to meet Saul the next morning. But Samuel was informed, “Saul has gone to Carmel where ¹²  he is setting up a monument for himself. Then Samuel left ¹³  and went down to Gilgal.” ¹⁴ 

1 Samuel 16:7

16:7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t be impressed by ¹⁵  his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. God does not view things the way men do. ¹⁶  People look on the outward appearance, ¹⁷  but the Lord looks at the heart.”

1 Samuel 18:25

18:25 Saul replied, “Here is what you should say to David: ‘There is nothing that the king wants as a price for the bride except a hundred Philistine foreskins, so that he can be avenged of his ¹⁸  enemies.’” (Now Saul was thinking that he could kill David by the hand of the Philistines.)

1 Samuel 22:6

Saul Executes the Priests

22:6 But Saul found out the whereabouts of David and the men who were with him. ¹⁹  Now Saul was sitting at Gibeah under the tamarisk tree at an elevated location with his spear in hand and all his servants stationed around him.

1 Samuel 23:7

23:7 When Saul was told that David had come to Keilah, Saul said, “God has delivered ²⁰  him into my hand, for he has boxed himself into a corner by entering a city with two barred gates.” ²¹ 

1 Samuel 23:23

23:23 Locate precisely all the places where he hides and return to me with dependable information. ²²  Then I will go with you. If he is in the land, I will find him ²³  among all the thousands of Judah.”

1 Samuel 25:14

25:14 But one of the servants told Nabal’s wife Abigail, “David sent messengers from the desert to greet ²⁴  our lord, but he screamed at them.

1 Samuel 27:1

David Aligns Himself with the Philistines

27:1 David thought to himself, ²⁵  “One of these days I’m going to be swept away by the hand of Saul! There is nothing better for me than to escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will despair of searching for me through all the territory of Israel and I will escape from his hand.”

1 Samuel 27:11

27:11 Neither man nor woman would David leave alive so as to bring them back to Gath. He was thinking, “This way they can’t tell on us, saying, ‘This is what David did.’” Such was his practice the entire time ²⁶  that he lived in the country of the Philistines.

1 Samuel 30:6

30:6 David was very upset, for the men ²⁷  were thinking of stoning him; ²⁸  each man grieved bitterly ²⁹  over his sons and daughters. But David drew strength from the Lord his God.

1 Samuel 30:16

30:16 So he took David ³⁰  down, and they found them spread out over the land. They were eating and drinking and enjoying themselves because of all the loot ³¹  they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from the land of Judah.

1 Samuel 31:12

31:12 all their warriors set out and traveled throughout the night. They took Saul’s corpse and the corpses of his sons from the city wall of Beth Shan and went ³²  to Jabesh, where they burned them.

[1:19]  ¹ tn Heb “Elkanah knew his wife.” The Hebrew expression is a euphemism for sexual relations.

[1:19]  ² sn The Lord “remembered” her in the sense of granting her earlier request for a child. The Hebrew verb is often used in the OT for considering the needs or desires of people with favor and kindness.

[4:3]  ³ tn Or “people.”

[4:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “before.”

[4:3]  ⁵ 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.”

[5:4]  ⁶ tc Heb “only Dagon was left.” We should probably read the word גֵּו (gev, “back”) before Dagon, understanding it to have the sense of the similar word גְּוִיָּה (gÿviyyah, “body”). This variant is supported by the following evidence: The LXX has ἡ ῥάχις (Jh rJacis, “the back” or “trunk”); the Syriac Peshitta has wegusmeh (“and the body of”); the Targum has gupyeh (“the body of”); the Vulgate has truncus (“the trunk of,” cf. NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT). On the strength of this evidence the present translation employs the phrase “Dagon’s body.”

[5:8]  ⁷ tn Heb “and they sent and gathered.”

[6:3]  ⁸ tc The LXX and a Qumran ms add “the covenant of the Lord.”

[9:20]  ⁹ tn Heb “do not fix your heart.”

[9:20]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and all the house of your father.”

[9:24]  ¹¹ tn Heb “he” (also in v. 25); the referent (Samuel) has been specified in both places in the translation for clarity.

[15:12]  ¹² tn Heb “and look.”

[15:12]  ¹³ tn Heb “and he turned and crossed over.”

[15:12]  ¹⁴ tc At the end of v. 12 the LXX and one Old Latin ms include the following words not found in the MT: “to Saul. And behold, he was offering as a burnt offering to the Lord the best of the spoils that he had brought from the Amalekites.”

[16:7]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “don’t look toward.”

[16:7]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “for not that which the man sees.” The translation follows the LXX, which reads, “for not as man sees does God see.” The MT has suffered from homoioteleuton or homoioarcton. See P. K. McCarter, I Samuel (AB), 274.

[16:7]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “to the eyes.”

[18:25]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the king’s.”

[22:6]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “and Saul heard that David and the men who were with him were known.”

[23:7]  ²⁰ 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]  ²¹ 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]  ²² tn Heb “established.”

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

[25:14]  ²⁴ tn Heb “bless.”

[27:1]  ²⁵ tn Heb “said to his heart.”

[27:11]  ²⁶ tn Heb “all the days.”

[30:6]  ²⁷ tn Heb “people.”

[30:6]  ²⁸ tn Heb “said to stone him.”

[30:6]  ²⁹ tn Heb “for bitter was the soul of all the people, each one.”

[30:16]  ³⁰ tn Heb “him”; the referent (David) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[30:16]  ³¹ tn Heb “because of all the large plunder.”

[31:12]  ³² tc The translation follows the MT, which vocalizes the verb as a Qal. The LXX, however, treats the verb as a Hiphil, “they brought.”