Then the Israelites went out to fight the Philistines. 2 They camped at Ebenezer, 3 and the Philistines camped at Aphek. 4:2 The Philistines arranged their forces to fight 4 Israel. As the battle spread out, 5 Israel was defeated by 6 the Philistines, who 7 killed about four thousand men in the battle line in the field.
14:20 Saul and all the army that was with him assembled and marched into battle, where they found 9 the Philistines in total panic killing one another with their swords. 10
14:52 There was fierce war with the Philistines all the days of Saul. So whenever Saul saw anyone who was a warrior or a brave individual, he would conscript him.
17:1 11 The Philistines gathered their troops 12 for battle. They assembled at Socoh in Judah. They camped in Ephes Dammim, between Socoh and Azekah.
19:8 Now once again there was war. So David went out to fight the Philistines. He defeated them thoroughly 13 and they ran away from him.
1 tn Heb “and the word of Samuel was.” The present translation understands Samuel to be the speaker of the divine word (“Samuel” is a subjective genitive in this case), although the statement could mean that he was the recipient of the divine word (“Samuel” is an objective genitive in this case) who in turn reported it to Israel.
2 tn Heb “and Israel went out to meet the Philistines for battle.”
3 tn Heb “the stone, the help.” The second noun is in apposition to the first one and apparently is the name by which the stone was known. Contrast the expression used in 5:1 and 7:12, where the first word lacks the definite article, unlike 4:1.
4 tn Heb “to meet.”
5 tn The MT has וַתִּטֹּשׁ (vattittosh), from the root נטשׁ (ntsh). This verb normally means “to leave,” “to forsake,” or “to permit,” but such an idea does not fit this context very well. Many scholars have suspected that the text originally read either וַתֵּט (vattet, “and it spread out”), from the root נטה (nth), or וַתִּקֶשׁ (vattiqesh, “and it grew fierce”), from the root קשׂה (qsh). The former suggestion is apparently supported by the LXX ἔκλινεν (eklinen, “it inclined”) and is adopted in the translation.
6 tn Heb “before.”
7 tn Heb “the Philistines, and they killed.” The pronoun “they” has been translated as a relative pronoun (“who”) to make it clear to the English reader that the Philistines were the ones who did the killing.
7 tc The numbers of v. 12 are confused in the Greek and Syriac versions. For “fifties” the LXX has “hundreds.” The Syriac Peshitta has “heads of thousands and heads of hundreds and heads of fifties and heads of tens,” perhaps reflecting influence from Deut 1:15.
10 tn Heb “and look, there was”
11 tn Heb “the sword of a man against his companion, a very great panic.”
13 tc The content of 1 Sam 17–18, which includes the David and Goliath story, differs considerably in the LXX as compared to the MT, suggesting that this story circulated in ancient times in more than one form. The LXX for chs. 17–18 is much shorter than the MT, lacking almost half of the material (39 of a total of 88 verses). Many scholars (e.g., McCarter, Klein) think that the shorter text of the LXX is preferable to the MT, which in their view has been expanded by incorporation of later material. Other scholars (e.g., Wellhausen, Driver) conclude that the shorter Greek text (or the Hebrew text that underlies it) reflects an attempt to harmonize certain alleged inconsistencies that appear in the longer version of the story. Given the translation characteristics of the LXX elsewhere in this section, it does not seem likely that these differences are due to deliberate omission of these verses on the part of the translator. It seems more likely that the Greek translator has faithfully rendered here a Hebrew text that itself was much shorter than the MT in these chapters. Whether or not the shorter text represented by the LXX is to be preferred over the MT in 1 Sam 17–18 is a matter over which textual scholars are divided. For a helpful discussion of the major textual issues in this unit see D. Barthélemy, D. W. Gooding, J. Lust, and E. Tov, The Story of David and Goliath (OBO). Overall it seems preferable to stay with the MT, at least for the most part. However, the major textual differences between the LXX and the MT will be mentioned in the notes that accompany the translation so that the reader may be alert to the major problem passages.
14 tn Heb “camps.”
16 tn Heb “and he struck them down with a great blow.”
19 tn Heb “So Saul mustered all his army for battle to go down to Keilah to besiege against David and his men.”