11:22 Benaiah son of Jehoiada was a brave warrior from Kabzeel who performed great exploits. He struck down the two sons of Ariel of Moab; 4 he also went down and killed a lion inside a cistern on a snowy day. 11:23 He even killed an Egyptian who was seven and a half feet 5 tall. The Egyptian had a spear as big as the crossbeam of a weaver’s loom; Benaiah attacked 6 him with a club. He grabbed the spear out of the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with his own spear.
1 tn Heb “they”; the referent (the army) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
2 tn Heb “arose and carried away the corpse of Saul and the corpses of his sons.”
3 tn Heb “their bones.”
3 tc Heb “the two of Ariel, Moab.” The precise meaning of אֲרִיאֵל (’ari’el) is uncertain; some read “warrior.” The present translation assumes that the word is a proper name and that בְּנֵי (bÿney, “sons of”) has accidentally dropped from the text by homoioarcton (note the preceding שְׁנֵי, shÿney).
4 tn Heb “five cubits.” Assuming a length of 18 inches for the standard cubit, this individual would be 7.5 feet (2.3 m) tall.
5 tn Heb “went down to.”
5 tn Or “horsemen.”
6 tn Heb “his”; the referent (Hadadezer) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
7 tn Heb “and David cut the hamstrings of all the chariot horses, and he left from them one hundred chariot horses.”
6 tn The name is spelled “Joram” in the parallel text in 2 Sam 8:10.
7 tn Heb “to ask concerning him for peace.”
8 tn Heb “and to bless him because he fought with Hadadezer and defeated him, for Hadadezer was a man of battles with Tou.”
9 tn Heb “[along with] all items of gold and silver and bronze.”
7 tc The parallel text of 2 Sam 10:18 has “seven hundred.”
8 tn The parallel text of 2 Sam 10:18 has the variant spelling “Shobach.”
8 tn Heb “man of rest.”
9 tn Heb “his enemies all around.”
10 sn The name Solomon (שְׁלֹמֹה, shÿlomoh) sounds like (and may be derived from) the Hebrew word for “peace” (שָׁלוֹם, shalom).
11 tn Heb “in his days.”