1:3 Year after year 1 this man would go up from his city to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh. It was there that the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phineas, served as the Lord’s priests.
1:9 On one occasion in Shiloh, after they had finished eating and drinking, Hannah got up. 2 (Now at the time Eli the priest was sitting in his chair 3 by the doorpost of the Lord’s temple.)
1:1 There was a man from Ramathaim Zophim, 4 from the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah. He was the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite.
21:4 The priest replied to David, “I don’t have any ordinary bread at my disposal. Only holy bread is available, and then only if your soldiers 10 have abstained from sexual relations with women.” 11 21:5 David said to the priest, “Certainly women have been kept away from us, just as on previous occasions when I have set out. The soldiers’ 12 equipment is holy, even on an ordinary journey. How much more so will they be holy today, along with their equipment!”
21:6 So the priest gave him holy bread, for there was no bread there other than the bread of the Presence. It had been removed from before the Lord in order to replace it with hot bread on the day it had been taken away. 21:7 (One of Saul’s servants was there that day, detained before the Lord. His name was Doeg the Edomite, who was in charge of Saul’s shepherds.) 21:8 David said to Ahimelech, “Is there no sword or spear here at your disposal? I don’t have my own sword or equipment in hand due to the urgency of the king’s instructions.”
21:9 The priest replied, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you struck down in the valley of Elah, is wrapped in a garment behind the ephod. If you wish, take it for yourself. Other than that, there’s nothing here.” David said, “There’s nothing like it! Give it to me!” 21:10 So on that day David arose and fled from Saul. He went to King Achish of Gath. 21:11 The servants of Achish said to him, “Isn’t this David, the king of the land? Isn’t he the one that they sing about when they dance, saying,
‘Saul struck down his thousands,
But David his tens of thousands’?”
21:12 David thought about what they said 13 and was very afraid of King Achish of Gath. 21:13 He altered his behavior in their presence. 14 Since he was in their power, 15 he pretended to be insane, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting his saliva run down his beard.
21:14 Achish said to his servants, “Look at this madman! Why did you bring him to me? 21:15 Do I have a shortage of fools, that you have brought me this man to display his insanity in front of me? Should this man enter my house?”
1 tn Heb “from days to days.”
2 tc The LXX adds “and stood before the Lord,” but this is probably a textual expansion due to the terseness of the statement in the Hebrew text.
3 tn Or perhaps, “on his throne.” See Joüon 2:506-7 §137.f.
3 tc The translation follows the MT. The LXX reads “a man from Ramathaim, a Zuphite”; this is followed by a number of recent English translations. It is possible the MT reading צוֹפִים (tsofim) arose from dittography of the mem (מ) at the beginning of the following word.
4 tn Heb “trembled to meet.”
5 tn Heb “let not a man know anything about the matter [for] which I am sending you and [about] which I commanded you.”
6 tn Heb “servants.”
7 tn The Hebrew expression here refers to a particular, but unnamed, place. It occurs in the OT only here, in 2 Kgs 6:8, and in Ruth 4:1, where Boaz uses it to refer to Naomi’s unnamed kinsman-redeemer. A contracted form of the expression appears in Dan 8:13.
6 tn Heb “under your hand.”
7 tn Heb “servants.”
8 tn Heb “have kept themselves from women” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “haven’t had sexual relations recently”; NLT “have not slept with any women recently.”
8 tn Heb “servants’.”
9 tn Heb “placed these matters in his heart.”
10 tn Heb “in their eyes.”
11 tn Heb “in their hand.”