18:20 Now Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved David. When they told Saul about this, it 1 pleased him. 18:21 Saul said, “I will give her to him so that she may become a snare to him and the hand of the Philistines may be against him.” So Saul said to David, “Today is the second time for you to become my son-in-law.” 2
23:21 Saul replied, “May you be blessed by the Lord, for you have had compassion on me.
5:14 Haman’s 3 wife Zeresh and all his friends said to him, “Have a gallows seventy-five feet 4 high built, and in the morning tell the king that Mordecai should be hanged on it. Then go with the king to the banquet contented.” 5
It seemed like a good idea to Haman, so he had the gallows built.
1 tn Heb “the matter.”
2 tc The final sentence of v. 21 is absent in most LXX
3 tn Heb “his”; the referent (Haman) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
4 tn Heb “fifty cubits.” Assuming a standard length for the cubit of about 18 inches (45 cm), this would be about seventy-five feet (22.5 meters), which is a surprisingly tall height for the gallows. Perhaps the number assumes the gallows was built on a large supporting platform or a natural hill for visual effect, in which case the structure itself may have been considerably smaller. Cf. NCV “a seventy-five foot platform”; CEV “a tower built about seventy-five feet high.”
5 tn Or “joyful”; NRSV “in good spirits”; TEV “happy.”
6 tn Grk “who, knowing…, not only do them but also approve…” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.
7 tn Grk “are worthy of death.”
8 sn “Vice lists” like vv. 28-32 can be found elsewhere in the NT in Matt 15:19; Gal 5:19-21; 1 Tim 1:9-10; and 1 Pet 4:3. An example from the intertestamental period can be found in Wis 14:25-26.