2 Samuel 14:2

14:2 So Joab sent to Tekoa and brought from there a wise woman. He told her, “Pretend to be in mourning ¹  and put on garments for mourning. Don’t anoint yourself with oil. Instead, act like a woman who has been mourning for the dead for some time. ² 

2 Samuel 19:6

19:6 You seem to love your enemies and hate your friends! For you have as much as declared today that leaders and servants don’t matter to you. I realize now ³  that if ⁴  Absalom were alive and all of us were dead today, ⁵  it would be all right with you.

2 Samuel 21:12

21:12 he ⁶  went and took the bones of Saul and of his son Jonathan ⁷  from the leaders ⁸  of Jabesh Gilead. (They had secretly taken ⁹  them from the plaza at Beth Shan. It was there that Philistines ¹⁰  publicly exposed their corpses ¹¹  after ¹²  they ¹³  had killed Saul at Gilboa.)

¹ tn The Hebrew Hitpael verbal form here indicates pretended rather than genuine action.

² tn Heb “these many days.”

³ tn Heb “today.”

⁴ tc The translation follows the Qere, 4QSam^a, and many medieval Hebrew mss in reading לוּ (lu, “if”) rather than MT לֹא (lo’, “not”).

⁵ tc The Lucianic Greek recension and Syriac Peshitta lack “today.”

⁵ tn Heb “David.” For stylistic reasons the name has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation.

⁶ tn Heb “the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son.” See also v. 13.

⁷ tn Heb “lords.”

⁸ tn Heb “stolen.”

⁹ tc Against the MT, this word is better read without the definite article. The MT reading is probably here the result of wrong word division, with the letter ה (he) belonging with the preceding word שָׁם (sham) as the he directive (i.e., שָׁמָּה, samah, “to there”).

¹⁰ tn Heb “had hung them.”

¹¹ tn Heb “in the day.”

¹² tn Heb “Philistines.”