2 Samuel 21:12-14

21:12 he ¹  went and took the bones of Saul and of his son Jonathan ²  from the leaders ³  of Jabesh Gilead. (They had secretly taken ⁴  them from the plaza at Beth Shan. It was there that Philistines ⁵  publicly exposed their corpses ⁶  after ⁷  they ⁸  had killed Saul at Gilboa.) 21:13 David ⁹  brought the bones of Saul and of Jonathan his son from there; they also gathered up the bones of those who had been executed.

21:14 They buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the land of Benjamin at Zela in the grave of his father Kish. After they had done everything ¹⁰  that the king had commanded, God responded to their prayers ¹¹  for the land.

[21:12]  ¹ tn Heb “David.” For stylistic reasons the name has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation.

[21:12]  ² tn Heb “the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son.” See also v. 13.

[21:12]  ³ tn Heb “lords.”

[21:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “stolen.”

[21:12]  ⁵ tc Against the MT, this word is better read without the definite article. The MT reading is probably here the result of wrong word division, with the letter ה (he) belonging with the preceding word שָׁם (sham) as the he directive (i.e., שָׁמָּה, samah, “to there”).

[21:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “had hung them.”

[21:12]  ⁷ tn Heb “in the day.”

[21:12]  ⁸ tn Heb “Philistines.”

[21:13]  ⁹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (David) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[21:14]  ¹⁰ tc Many medieval Hebrew mss have here כְּכֹל (kÿkhol, “according to all”).

[21:14]  ¹¹ tn Heb “was entreated.” The verb is an example of the so-called niphal tolerativum, with the sense that God allowed himself to be supplicated through prayer (cf. GKC 137 §51.c).