2 Samuel 22:10

22:10 He made the sky sink ¹  as he descended;

a thick cloud was under his feet.

2 Samuel 22:39

22:39 I wipe them out and beat them to death;

they cannot get up;

they fall at my feet.

2 Samuel 16:12

16:12 Perhaps the Lord will notice my affliction ²  and this day grant me good in place of his curse.” ³ 

2 Samuel 17:25

17:25 Absalom had made Amasa general in command of the army in place of Joab. (Now Amasa was the son of an Israelite man named Jether, who had married ⁴  Abigail the daughter of Nahash and sister of Zeruiah, Joab’s mother.)

2 Samuel 18:9

18:9 Then Absalom happened to come across David’s men. Now as Absalom was riding on his ⁵  mule, it ⁶  went under the branches of a large oak tree. His head got caught in the oak and he was suspended in midair, ⁷  while the mule he had been riding kept going.

2 Samuel 19:13

19:13 Say to Amasa, ‘Are you not my flesh and blood? ⁸  God will punish me severely, ⁹  if from this time on you are not the commander of my army in place of Joab!’”

¹ tn The verb נָטָה (natah) can carry the sense “[to cause to] bend; [to cause to] bow down” (see HALOT 693 s.v. נָטָה). For example, Gen 49:15 pictures Issachar as a donkey that “bends” its shoulder or back under a burden (cf. KJV, NASB, NRSV “He bowed the heavens”; NAB “He inclined the heavens”). Here the Lord causes the sky, pictured as a dome or vault, to bend or sink down as he descends in the storm.

² tc The Hebrew text is difficult here. It is probably preferable to read with the LXX, the Syriac Peshitta, and Vulgate בְּעוֹנִי (bÿ’onyi, “on my affliction”) rather than the Kethib of the MT בָּעַוֹנִי (ba’avoni, “on my wrongdoing”). While this Kethib reading is understandable as an objective genitive (i.e., “the wrong perpetrated upon me”), it does not conform to normal Hebrew idiom for this idea. The Qere of the MT בְּעֵינֵי (bÿ’eni, “on my eyes”), usually taken as synecdoche to mean “my tears,” does not commend itself as a likely meaning. The Hebrew word is one of the so-called tiqqune sopherim, or “emendations of the scribes.”

³ tn Heb “and the Lord will restore to me good in place of his curse this day.”

³ tn Heb “come to.”

⁴ tn Heb “the.”

⁵ tn Heb “the donkey.”

⁶ tn Heb “between the sky and the ground.”

⁵ tn Heb “my bone and my flesh.”

⁶ tn Heb “Thus God will do to me and thus he will add.”