1 Samuel 8:22

8:22 The Lord said to Samuel, “Do as they say ¹  and install a king over them.” Then Samuel said to the men of Israel, “Each of you go back to his own city.”

1 Samuel 9:10-12

9:10 So Saul said to his servant, “That’s a good idea! ²  Come on. Let’s go.” So they went to the town where the man of God was.

9:11 As they were going up the ascent to the town, they met some girls coming out to draw water. They said to them, “Is this where the seer is?” 9:12 They replied, “Yes, straight ahead! But hurry now, for he came to the town today, and the people are making a sacrifice at the high place.

1 Samuel 16:4

16:4 Samuel did what the Lord told him. ³  When he arrived in Bethlehem, ⁴  the elders of the city were afraid to meet him. They ⁵  said, “Do you come in peace?”

1 Samuel 20:40

20:40 Then Jonathan gave his equipment to the servant who was with him. He said to him, “Go, take these things back to the city.”

1 Samuel 22:19

22:19 As for Nob, the city of the priests, he struck down with the sword men and women, children and infants, oxen, donkeys, and sheep – all with the sword.

1 Samuel 23:7

23:7 When Saul was told that David had come to Keilah, Saul said, “God has delivered ⁶  him into my hand, for he has boxed himself into a corner by entering a city with two barred gates.” ⁷ 

1 Samuel 23:10

23:10 Then David said, “O Lord God of Israel, your servant has clearly heard that Saul is planning ⁸  to come to Keilah to destroy the city because of me.

1 Samuel 28:3

28:3 Now Samuel had died, and all Israel had lamented over him and had buried him in Ramah, his hometown. ⁹  In the meantime Saul had removed the mediums ¹⁰  and magicians ¹¹  from the land.

¹ tn Heb “listen to their voice.”

² tn Heb “your word is good.”

³ tn Heb “said.”

⁴ map For location see Map5-B1; Map7-E2; Map8-E2; Map10-B4.

⁵ tc In the MT the verb is singular (“he said”), but the translation follows many medieval Hebrew mss and ancient versions in reading the plural (“they said”).

⁴ tn The MT reading (“God has alienated him into my hand”) in v. 7 is a difficult and uncommon idiom. The use of this verb in Jer 19:4 is somewhat parallel, but not entirely so. Many scholars have therefore suspected a textual problem here, emending the word נִכַּר (nikkar, “alienated”) to סִכַּר (sikkar, “he has shut up [i.e., delivered]”). This is the idea reflected in the translations of the Syriac Peshitta and Vulgate, although it is not entirely clear whether they are reading something different from the MT or are simply paraphrasing what for them too may have been a difficult text. The LXX has “God has sold him into my hands,” apparently reading מַכַר (makar, “sold”) for MT’s נִכַּר. The present translation is a rather free interpretation.

⁵ tn Heb “with two gates and a bar.” Since in English “bar” could be understood as a saloon, it has been translated as an attributive: “two barred gates.”

⁵ tn Heb “seeking.”

⁶ tn Heb “in Ramah, even in his city.”

⁷ tn The Hebrew term translated “mediums” actually refers to a pit used by a magician to conjure up underworld spirits (see 2 Kgs 21:6). In v. 7 the witch of Endor is called the owner of a ritual pit. See H. Hoffner, “Second Millennium Antecedents to the Hebrew ’OñBù,” JBL 86 (1967): 385-401. Here the term refers by metonymy to the owner of such a pit (see H. A. Hoffner, TDOT 1:133).

⁸ sn See Isa 8:19 for another reference to magicians who attempted to conjure up underworld spirits.