Hakim-hakim 15:15

15:15 He happened to see ¹  a solid ²  jawbone of a donkey. He grabbed it ³  and struck down ⁴  a thousand men.

Hakim-hakim 15:1

Samson Versus the Philistines

15:1 Sometime later, during the wheat harvest, ⁵  Samson took a young goat as a gift and went to visit his bride. ⁶  He said to her father, ⁷  “I want to have sex with my bride in her bedroom!” ⁸  But her father would not let him enter.

1 Samuel 13:19-22

13:19 A blacksmith could not be found in all the land of Israel, for the Philistines had said, “This will prevent the Hebrews from making swords and spears.” 13:20 So all Israel had to go down to the Philistines in order to get their plowshares, cutting instruments, axes, and sickles ⁹  sharpened. 13:21 They charged ¹⁰  two-thirds of a shekel ¹¹  to sharpen plowshares and cutting instruments, and a third of a shekel ¹²  to sharpen picks and axes, and to set ox goads. 13:22 So on the day of the battle no sword or spear was to be found in the hand of anyone in the army that was with Saul and Jonathan. No one but Saul and his son Jonathan had them.

1 Samuel 17:47

17:47 and all this assembly will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves! For the battle is the Lord’s, and he will deliver you into our hand.”

1 Samuel 17:50

17:50 ¹³ David prevailed over the Philistine with just the sling and the stone. He struck down the Philistine and killed him. David did not even have a sword in his hand. ¹⁴ 

1 Samuel 17:1

David Kills Goliath

17:1 ¹⁵ The Philistines gathered their troops ¹⁶  for battle. They assembled at Socoh in Judah. They camped in Ephes Dammim, between Socoh and Azekah.

Kolose 1:17

1:17 He himself is before all things and all things are held together ¹⁷  in him.

[15:15]  ¹ tn Heb “he found.”

[15:15]  ² tn Heb “fresh,” i.e., not decayed and brittle.

[15:15]  ³ tn Heb “he reached out his hand and took it.”

[15:15]  ⁴ tn The Hebrew text adds “with it.” This has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[15:1]  ⁵ sn The wheat harvest took place during the month of May. See O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 37, 88.

[15:1]  ⁶ tn Heb “Samson visited his wife with a young goat.”

[15:1]  ⁷ tn The words “to her father” are supplied in the translation (see the end of the verse).

[15:1]  ⁸ tn Heb “I will go to my wife in the bedroom.” The Hebrew idiom בּוֹא אֶל (bo’ ’el, “to go to”) often has sexual connotations. The cohortative form used by Samson can be translated as indicating resolve (“I want to go”) or request (“let me go”).

[13:20]  ⁹ tc The translation follows the LXX (“their sickle”) here, rather than the MT “plowshares,” which is due to dittography from the word earlier in the verse.

[13:21]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the price was.” The meaning of the Hebrew word פְּצִירָה (pÿtsirah) is uncertain. This is the only place it occurs in the OT. Some propose the meaning “sharpening,” but “price” is a more likely meaning if the following term refers to a weight (see the following note on the word “shekel”). See P. K. McCarter, I Samuel (AB), 238.

[13:21]  ¹¹ tn This word, which appears only here in the OT, probably refers to a stone weight. Stones marked פִּים (pim) have been found in excavations of Palestinian sites. The average weight of such stones is 0.268 ounces, which is equivalent to about two-thirds of a shekel. This probably refers to the price charged by the Philistines for the services listed. See P. K. McCarter, I Samuel (AB), 238; DNWSI 2:910; and G. I. Davies, Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions, 259.

[13:21]  ¹² tc Heb “and for a third, a pick.” The Hebrew text suffers from haplography at this point. The translation follows the textual reconstruction offered by P. K. McCarter, I Samuel (AB), 235.

[17:50]  ¹³ tc Most LXX mss lack v. 50.

[17:50]  ¹⁴ tn Verse 50 is a summary statement; v. 51 gives a more detailed account of how David killed the Philistine.

[17:1]  ¹⁵ 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]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “camps.”

[1:17]  ¹⁷ tn BDAG 973 s.v. συνίστημι B.3 suggests “continue, endure, exist, hold together” here.