20:1 Now a wicked man 2 named Sheba son of Bicri, a Benjaminite, 3 happened to be there. He blew the trumpet 4 and said,
“We have no share in David;
we have no inheritance in this son of Jesse!
Every man go home, 5 O Israel!”
2:1 Afterward David inquired of the Lord, “Should I go up to one of the cities of Judah?” The Lord told him, “Go up.” David asked, “Where should I go?” The Lord replied, 6 “To Hebron.”
11:1 In the spring of the year, at the time when kings 7 normally conduct wars, 8 David sent out Joab with his officers 9 and the entire Israelite army. 10 They defeated the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed behind in Jerusalem. 11
1 tn Heb “priest for David.” KJV (“a chief ruler about David”) and ASV (“chief minister unto David”) regarded this office as political.
2 tn Heb “a man of worthlessness.”
3 tn The expression used here יְמִינִי (yÿmini) is a short form of the more common “Benjamin.” It appears elsewhere in 1 Sam 9:4 and Esth 2:5. Cf. 1 Sam 9:1.
4 tn Heb “the shophar” (the ram’s horn trumpet). So also v. 22.
5 tc The MT reads לְאֹהָלָיו (lÿ’ohalav, “to his tents”). For a similar idiom, see 19:9. An ancient scribal tradition understands the reading to be לְאלֹהָיו (le’lohav, “to his gods”). The word is a tiqqun sopherim, and the scribes indicate that they changed the word from “gods” to “tents” so as to soften its theological implications. In a consonantal Hebrew text the change involved only the metathesis of two letters.
6 tn Heb “he said.” The referent (the
7 tc Codex Leningrad (B19A), on which BHS is based, has here “messengers” (הַמַּלְאכִים, hammal’khim), probably as the result of contamination from the occurrence of that word in v. 4. The present translation follows most Hebrew
8 tn Heb “go out.”
9 tn Heb “and his servants with him.”
10 tn Heb “all Israel.”
11 tn The disjunctive clause contrasts David’s inactivity with the army’s activity.