1 Samuel 2:36

2:36 Everyone who remains in your house will come to bow before him for a little money ¹  and for a scrap of bread. Each will say, ‘Assign me to a priestly task so I can eat a scrap of bread.’”

1 Samuel 6:17-18

6:17 These are the gold sores that the Philistines brought as a guilt offering to the Lord – one for each of the following cities: Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron. 6:18 The gold mice corresponded in number to all the Philistine cities of the five leaders, from the fortified cities to hamlet villages, to greater Abel, ²  where they positioned the ark of the Lord until this very day in the field of Joshua who was from Beth Shemesh.

1 Samuel 7:3

7:3 Samuel said to all the people of Israel, “If you are really turning to the Lord with all your hearts, remove from among you the foreign gods and the images of Ashtoreth. ³  Give your hearts to the Lord and serve only him. Then he will deliver you ⁴  from the hand of the Philistines.”

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 15:3

15:3 So go now and strike down the Amalekites. Destroy everything that they have. Don’t spare ⁵  them. Put them to death – man, woman, child, infant, ox, sheep, camel, and donkey alike.’”

1 Samuel 17:25

17:25 The men of Israel said, “Have you seen this man who is coming up? He does so ⁶  to defy Israel. But the king will make the man who can strike him down very wealthy! He will give him his daughter in marriage, and he will make his father’s house exempt from tax obligations in Israel.”

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 18:25

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 ⁹  enemies.’” (Now Saul was thinking that he could kill David by the hand of the Philistines.)

1 Samuel 20:42

20:42 Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, for the two of us have sworn together in the name of the Lord saying, ‘The Lord will be between me and you and between my descendants and your descendants forever.’”

David Goes to Nob

(21:1)

¹⁰ Then David ¹¹  got up and left, while Jonathan went back to the city.

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.’ ¹²  I have told my soldiers ¹³  to wait at a certain place. ¹⁴ 

1 Samuel 22:7

22:7 Saul said to his servants who were stationed around him, “Listen up, you Benjaminites! Is Jesse’s son giving fields and vineyards to all of you? Or is he making all of you ¹⁵  commanders and officers? ¹⁶ 

1 Samuel 25:29

25:29 When someone sets out to chase you and to take your life, the life of my lord will be wrapped securely in the bag ¹⁷  of the living by the Lord your God. But he will sling away the lives of your enemies from the sling’s pocket!

1 Samuel 26:5

26:5 So David set out and went to the place where Saul was camped. David saw the place where Saul and Abner son of Ner, the general in command of his army, were sleeping. Now Saul was lying in the entrenchment, and the army was camped all around him.

1 Samuel 28:1

The Witch of Endor

28:1 In those days the Philistines gathered their troops ¹⁸  for war in order to fight Israel. Achish said to David, “You should fully understand that you and your men must go with me into the battle.” ¹⁹ 

1 Samuel 28:3

28:3 Now Samuel had died, and all Israel had lamented over him and had buried him in Ramah, his hometown. ²⁰  In the meantime Saul had removed the mediums ²¹  and magicians ²²  from the land.

[2:36]  ¹ tn Heb “a piece of silver” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[6:18]  ² tc A few Hebrew mss and the LXX read “villages; the large rock…[is witness] until this very day.”

[7:3]  ³ tn Heb “the Ashtarot” (plural; also in the following verse). The words “images of” are supplied for clarity.

[7:3]  sn The Semitic goddess Astarte was associated with love and war in the ancient Near East. The presence of Ashtarot in Israel is a sign of pervasive pagan and idolatrous influences; hence Samuel calls for their removal. See 1 Sam 31:10, where the Philistines deposit the armor of the deceased Saul in the temple of the Ashtarot, and 1 Kgs 11:5, 33; 2 Kgs 23:13, where Solomon is faulted for worshiping the Ashtarot.

[7:3]  ⁴ tn Following imperatives, the jussive verbal form with the prefixed conjunction indicates purpose/result.

[15:3]  ⁵ tn Or perhaps “don’t take pity on” (cf. CEV).

[17:25]  ⁶ tn Heb “he is coming up.”

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

[18:17]  ⁸ tn Heb “son of valor.”

[18:25]  ⁹ tn Heb “the king’s.”

[20:42]  ¹⁰ sn Beginning with 20:42b, the verse numbers through 21:15 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 20:42b ET = 21:1 HT, 21:1 ET = 21:2 HT, 21:2 ET = 21:3 HT, etc., through 21:15 ET = 21:16 HT. With 22:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.

[20:42]  ¹¹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (David) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[21:2]  ¹² 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]  ¹³ tn Heb “servants.”

[21:2]  ¹⁴ 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.

[22:7]  ¹⁵ tc The MT has “to all of you.” If this reading is correct, we have here an example of a prepositional phrase functioning as the equivalent of a dative of advantage, which is not impossible from a grammatical point of view. However, the LXX, the Syriac Peshitta, and Vulgate all have “and.” A conjunction rather than a preposition should probably be read on the front of this phrase.

[22:7]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “officers of a thousand and officers of a hundred.”

[25:29]  ¹⁷ tn Cf. KJV, NAB, NIV, NRSV “bundle”; NLT “treasure pouch.”

[28:1]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “their camps.”

[28:1]  ¹⁹ tc The translation follows the LXX (εἰς πόλεμον, eis polemon) and a Qumran ms מלחמה במלחמה ([m]lkhmh) bammilkhamah (“in the battle”) rather than the MT’s בַמַּחֲנֶה (bammakhaneh, “in the camp”; cf. NASB). While the MT reading is not impossible here, and although admittedly it is the harder reading, the variant fits the context better. The MT can be explained as a scribal error caused in part by the earlier occurrence of “camp” in this verse.

[28:3]  ²⁰ tn Heb “in Ramah, even in his city.”

[28:3]  ²¹ tn The Hebrew term translated “mediums” actually refers to a pit used by a magician to conjure up underworld spirits (see 2 Kgs 21:6). In v. 7 the witch of Endor is called the owner of a ritual pit. See H. Hoffner, “Second Millennium Antecedents to the Hebrew ’OñBù,” JBL 86 (1967): 385-401. Here the term refers by metonymy to the owner of such a pit (see H. A. Hoffner, TDOT 1:133).

[28:3]  ²² sn See Isa 8:19 for another reference to magicians who attempted to conjure up underworld spirits.