2:10 The Lord shatters 1 his adversaries; 2
he thunders against them from 3 the heavens.
The Lord executes judgment to the ends of the earth.
He will strengthen 4 his king
and exalt the power 5 of his anointed one.” 6
went down to the desert of Ziph, accompanied by three thousand select men of Israel, to look for David in the desert of Ziph.
9:3 The donkeys of Saul’s father Kish wandered off, 11 so Kish said to his son Saul, “Take one of the servants with you and go 12 look for the donkeys.” 13 9:4 So Saul 14 crossed through the hill country of Ephraim, passing through the land of Shalisha, but they did not find them. So they crossed through the land of Shaalim, but they were not there. Then he crossed through the land of Benjamin, and still they did not find them.
9:5 When they came to the land of Zuph, Saul said to his servant who was with him, “Come on, let’s head back before my father quits worrying about the donkeys and becomes anxious about us!” 9:6 But the servant said to him, “Look, there is a man of God in this town. He is highly respected. Everything that he says really happens. 15 Now let’s go there. Perhaps he will tell us where we should go from here.” 16
1 tn The imperfect verbal forms in this line and in the next two lines are understood as indicating what is typically true. Another option is to translate them with the future tense. See v. 10b.
2 tc The present translation follows the Qere, many medieval Hebrew manuscripts, the Syriac Peshitta, and the Vulgate in reading the plural (“his adversaries,” similarly many other English versions) rather than the singular (“his adversary”) of the Kethib.
3 tn The Hebrew preposition here has the sense of “from within.”
4 tn The imperfect verbal forms in this and the next line are understood as indicating what is anticipated and translated with the future tense, because at the time of Hannah’s prayer Israel did not yet have a king.
5 tn Heb “the horn,” here a metaphor for power or strength. Cf. NCV “make his appointed king strong”; NLT “increases the might of his anointed one.”
6 tc The LXX greatly expands v. 10 with an addition that seems to be taken from Jer 9:23-24.
7 tn Heb “anoint.”
8 tn Heb “anointed.”
9 tn Or “for.”
10 tn Heb “anointed.”
11 tn Heb “became lost.”
12 tn Heb “and arise, go.”
13 tc The Syriac Peshitta includes the following words: “So Saul arose and went out. He took with him one of the boys and went out to look for his father’s donkeys.”
14 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Saul) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
15 tn The infinitive absolute precedes the verb for emphasis.
16 tn Heb “our way on which we have gone.”
17 tn The words “who ruled” are not in the Greek text, but are implied. They have been supplied as a clarification for the English reader. See Josephus, Ant. 6.14.9 (6.378).
18 tn Grk “fell down.” BDAG 815 s.v. πίπτω 1.b.α.ב. has “fall down, throw oneself to the ground as a sign of devotion or humility, before high-ranking persons or divine beings.”
19 tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.
20 sn This interpretive comment by the author forms a parenthesis in the narrative.