Bilangan 13:25

13:25 They returned from investigating the land after forty days.

Ulangan 9:9

9:9 When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained there ¹  forty days and nights, eating and drinking nothing.

Ulangan 9:1

Theological Justification of the Conquest

9:1 Listen, Israel: Today you are about to cross the Jordan so you can dispossess the nations there, people greater and stronger than you who live in large cities with extremely high fortifications. ² 

1 Samuel 17:16

17:16 Meanwhile for forty days the Philistine approached every morning and evening and took his position.

1 Samuel 17:1

David Kills Goliath

17:1 ³ The Philistines gathered their troops ⁴  for battle. They assembled at Socoh in Judah. They camped in Ephes Dammim, between Socoh and Azekah.

1 Raja-raja 19:8

19:8 So he got up and ate and drank. That meal gave him the strength to travel forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.

[9:9]  ¹ tn Heb “in the mountain.” The demonstrative pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[9:1]  ² tn Heb “fortified to the heavens” (so NRSV); NLT “cities with walls that reach to the sky.” This is hyperbole.

[17:1]  ³ 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]  ⁴ tn Heb “camps.”