1 Samuel 15:12

15:12 Then Samuel got up early to meet Saul the next morning. But Samuel was informed, “Saul has gone to Carmel where ¹  he is setting up a monument for himself. Then Samuel left ²  and went down to Gilgal.” ³ 

1 Samuel 17:8

17:8 Goliath ⁴  stood and called to Israel’s troops, ⁵  “Why do you come out to prepare for battle? Am I not the Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose ⁶  for yourselves a man so he may come down ⁷  to me!

¹ tn Heb “and look.”

² tn Heb “and he turned and crossed over.”

³ tc At the end of v. 12 the LXX and one Old Latin ms include the following words not found in the MT: “to Saul. And behold, he was offering as a burnt offering to the Lord the best of the spoils that he had brought from the Amalekites.”

⁴ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Goliath) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁵ tn The Hebrew text adds “and said to them.”

⁶ tc The translation follows the ancient versions in reading “choose,” (from the root בחר, bkhr), rather than the MT. The verb in MT (ברה, brh) elsewhere means “to eat food”; the sense of “to choose,” required here by the context, is not attested for this root. The MT apparently reflects an early scribal error.

⁷ tn Following the imperative, the prefixed verbal form (either an imperfect or jussive) with the prefixed conjunction indicates purpose/result here.