2 Samuel 17:12-13

17:12 We will come against him wherever he happens to be found. We will descend on him like the dew falls on the ground. Neither he nor any of the men who are with him will be spared alive – not one of them! 17:13 If he regroups in a city, all Israel will take up ropes to that city and drag it down to the valley, so that not a single pebble will be left there!”

2 Samuel 17:2

17:2 When I catch up with ¹  him he will be exhausted and worn out. ²  I will rout him, and the entire army that is with him will flee. I will kill only the king

2 Samuel 19:23-24

19:23 The king said to Shimei, “You won’t die.” The king vowed an oath ³  concerning this.

19:24 Now Mephibosheth, Saul’s grandson, ⁴  came down to meet the king. From the day the king had left until the day he safely ⁵  returned, Mephibosheth ⁶  had not cared for his feet ⁷  nor trimmed ⁸  his mustache nor washed his clothes.

Isaiah 10:13-14

10:13 For he says:

“By my strong hand I have accomplished this,

by my strategy that I devised.

I invaded the territory of nations, ⁹ 

and looted their storehouses.

Like a mighty conqueror, ¹⁰  I brought down rulers. ¹¹ 

10:14 My hand discovered the wealth of the nations, as if it were in a nest,

as one gathers up abandoned eggs,

I gathered up the whole earth.

There was no wing flapping,

or open mouth chirping.” ¹² 

Isaiah 37:24-25

37:24 Through your messengers you taunted the sovereign master, ¹³ 

‘With my many chariots I climbed up

the high mountains,

the slopes of Lebanon.

I cut down its tall cedars

and its best evergreens.

I invaded its most remote regions, ¹⁴ 

its thickest woods.

37:25 I dug wells

and drank water. ¹⁵ 

With the soles of my feet I dried up

all the rivers of Egypt.’

¹ tn Heb “and I will come upon him.”

² tn Heb “exhausted and slack of hands.”

³ tn Heb “swore to him.”

⁴ tn Heb “son.”

⁵ tn Heb “in peace.” So also in v. 31.

⁶ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Mephibosheth) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁷ tn Heb “done his feet.”

⁸ tn Heb “done.”

⁹ tn Heb “removed the borders of nations”; cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV “boundaries.”

¹⁰ tc The consonantal text (Kethib) has כְּאַבִּיר (kÿ’abir, “like a strong one”); the marginal reading (Qere) is כַּבִיר (kavir, “mighty one”).

¹¹ tn Heb “and I brought down, like a strong one, ones sitting [or “living”].” The participle יוֹשְׁבִים (yoshÿvim, “ones sitting”) could refer to the inhabitants of the nations, but the translation assumes that it refers to those who sit on thrones, i.e., rulers. See BDB 442 s.v. יָשַׁב and HALOT 444 s.v. ישׁב.

¹² sn The Assyrians’ conquests were relatively unopposed, like robbing a bird’s nest of its eggs when the mother bird is absent.

¹³ tn The Hebrew term translated “sovereign master” here is אֲדֹנָי (’adonay).

¹⁴ tn Heb “the height of its extremity”; ASV “its farthest height.”

¹⁵ tc The Hebrew text has simply, “I dug and drank water.” But the parallel text in 2 Kgs 19:24 has “foreign waters.” זָרִים (zarim, “foreign”) may have accidentally dropped out of the Isaianic text by homoioteleuton (cf. NCV, NIV, NLT). Note that the preceding word, מַיִם (mayim, “water) also ends in mem (ם). The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has “foreign waters” for this line. However, in several other passages the 1QIsa^a scroll harmonizes with 2 Kgs 19 against the MT (Isa 36:5; 37:9, 20). Since the addition of “foreign” to this text in Isaiah by a later scribe would be more likely than its deletion, the MT reading should be accepted.