2 Samuel 18:6

18:6 Then the army marched out to the field to fight against Israel. The battle took place in the forest of Ephraim.

2 Samuel 2:17

2:17 Now the battle was very severe that day; Abner and the men of Israel were overcome by David’s soldiers. ¹ 

2 Samuel 3:1

3:1 However, the war was prolonged between the house of Saul and the house of David. David was becoming steadily stronger, while the house of Saul was becoming increasingly weaker.

2 Samuel 8:6

8:6 David placed garrisons in the territory of the Arameans of Damascus; the Arameans became David’s subjects and brought tribute. The Lord protected ²  David wherever he campaigned. ³ 

2 Samuel 18:7-8

18:7 The army of Israel was defeated there by David’s men. ⁴  The slaughter there was great that day – 20,000 soldiers were killed. 18:8 The battle there was spread out over the whole area, and the forest consumed more soldiers than the sword devoured that day.

2 Samuel 19:2

19:2 So the victory of that day was turned to mourning as far as all the people were concerned. For the people heard on that day, “The king is grieved over his son.”

2 Samuel 21:15

Israel Engages in Various Battles with the Philistines

21:15 Another battle was fought between the Philistines and Israel. So David went down with his soldiers ⁵  and fought the Philistines. David became exhausted.

2 Samuel 21:18

21:18 Later there was another battle with the Philistines, this time in Gob. On that occasion Sibbekai the Hushathite killed Saph, who was one of the descendants of Rapha.

2 Samuel 23:11

23:11 Next in command ⁶  was Shammah son of Agee the Hararite. When the Philistines assembled at Lehi, ⁷  where there happened to be an area of a field that was full of lentils, the army retreated before the Philistines.

2 Samuel 8:2

8:2 He defeated the Moabites. He made them lie on the ground and then used a rope to measure them off. He put two-thirds of them to death and spared the other third. ⁸  The Moabites became David’s subjects and brought tribute. ⁹ 

2 Samuel 11:27

11:27 When the time of mourning passed, David had her brought to his palace. ¹⁰  She became his wife and she bore him a son. But what David had done upset the Lord. ¹¹ 

2 Samuel 12:3

12:3 But the poor man had nothing except for a little lamb he had acquired. He raised it, and it grew up alongside him and his children. ¹²  It used to ¹³  eat his food, ¹⁴  drink from his cup, and sleep in his arms. ¹⁵  It was just like a daughter to him.

2 Samuel 12:30

12:30 He took the crown of their king ¹⁶  from his head – it was gold, weighed about seventy-five pounds, ¹⁷  and held a precious stone – and it was placed on David’s head. He also took from the city a great deal of plunder.

2 Samuel 21:19-20

21:19 Yet another battle occurred with the Philistines in Gob. On that occasion Elhanan the son of Jair ¹⁸  the Bethlehemite killed the brother of Goliath the Gittite, ¹⁹  the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam. 21:20 Yet another battle occurred in Gath. On that occasion there was a large man ²⁰  who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in all! He too was a descendant of Rapha.

2 Samuel 24:9

24:9 Joab reported the number of warriors ²¹  to the king. In Israel there were 800,000 sword-wielding warriors, and in Judah there were 500,000 soldiers.

[2:17]  ¹ tn Heb “servants.” So also elsewhere.

[8:6]  ² tn Or “delivered.”

[8:6]  ³ tn Or “wherever he went.”

[18:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “servants” (also in v. 9).

[21:15]  ⁵ tn Heb “his servants.”

[23:11]  ⁶ tn Heb “after him.”

[23:11]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew text is difficult here. The MT reads לַחַיָּה (lachayyah), which implies a rare use of the word חַיָּה (chayyah). The word normally refers to an animal, but if the MT is accepted it would here have the sense of a troop or community of people. BDB 312 s.v. II. חַיָּה, for example, understands the similar reference in v. 13 to be to “a group of allied families, making a raid together.” But this works better in v. 13 than it does in v. 11, where the context seems to suggest a particular staging location for a military operation. (See 1 Chr 11:15.) It therefore seems best to understand the word in v. 11 as a place name with ה (he) directive. In that case the Masoretes mistook the word for the common term for an animal and then tried to make sense of it in this context.

[8:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “and he measured [with] two [lengths] of rope to put to death and [with] the fullness of the rope to keep alive.”

[8:2]  ⁹ tn Heb “and the Moabites were servants of David, carriers of tribute.”

[11:27]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “David sent and gathered her to his house.”

[11:27]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and the thing which David had done was evil in the eyes of the Lord.” Note the verbal connection with v. 25. Though David did not regard the matter as evil, the Lord certainly did.

[12:3]  ¹² tn Heb “his sons.”

[12:3]  ¹³ tn The three Hebrew imperfect verbal forms in this sentence have a customary nuance; they describe past actions that were repeated or typical.

[12:3]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “from his morsel.”

[12:3]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and on his chest [or perhaps, “lap”] it would lay.”

[12:30]  ¹⁶ tn Part of the Greek tradition wrongly understands Hebrew מַלְכָּם (malkam, “their king”) as a proper name (“Milcom”). Some English versions follow the Greek here, rendering the phrase “the crown of Milcom” (so NRSV; cf. also NAB, CEV). TEV takes this as a reference not to the Ammonite king but to “the idol of the Ammonite god Molech.”

[12:30]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and its weight [was] a talent of gold.” The weight of this ornamental crown was approximately 75 lbs (34 kg). See P. K. McCarter, II Samuel (AB), 313.

[21:19]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “Jaare-Oregim,” but the second word, which means “weavers,” is probably accidentally included. It appears at the end of the verse. The term is omitted in the parallel account in 1 Chr 20:5, which has simply “Jair.”

[21:19]  ¹⁹ sn The Hebrew text as it stands reads, “Elhanan son of Jaare-Oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite.” Who killed Goliath the Gittite? According to 1 Sam 17:4-58 it was David who killed Goliath, but according to the MT of 2 Sam 21:19 it was Elhanan who killed him. Many scholars believe that the two passages are hopelessly at variance with one another. Others have proposed various solutions to the difficulty, such as identifying David with Elhanan or positing the existence of two Goliaths. But in all likelihood the problem is the result of difficulties in the textual transmission of the Samuel passage; in fact, from a text-critical point of view the books of Samuel are the most poorly preserved of all the books of the Hebrew Bible. The parallel passage in 1 Chr 20:5 reads, “Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath.” Both versions are textually corrupt. The Chronicles text has misread “Bethlehemite” (בֵּית הַלַּחְמִי, bet hallakhmi) as the accusative sign followed by a proper name אֶת לַחְמִי (’et lakhmi). (See the note at 1 Chr 20:5.) The Samuel text misread the word for “brother” (אַח, ’akh) as the accusative sign (אֵת, ’et), thereby giving the impression that Elhanan, not David, killed Goliath. Thus in all probability the original text read, “Elhanan son of Jair the Bethlehemite killed the brother of Goliath.”

[21:20]  ²⁰ tn Heb “a man of stature.”

[24:9]  ²¹ tn Heb “and Joab gave the number of the numbering of the people.”