2 Samuel 3:39

3:39 Today I am weak, even though I am anointed as king. These men, the sons of Zeruiah, are too much for me to bear! ¹  May the Lord punish appropriately the one who has done this evil thing!” ² 

2 Samuel 6:21

6:21 David replied to Michal, “It was before the Lord! I was celebrating before the Lord, who chose me over your father and his entire family ³  and appointed me as leader over the Lord’s people Israel.

2 Samuel 7:29

7:29 Now be willing to bless your servant’s dynasty ⁴  so that it may stand permanently before you, for you, O sovereign Lord, have spoken. By your blessing may your servant’s dynasty be blessed on into the future!” ⁵ 

2 Samuel 14:6

14:6 Your servant ⁶  has two sons. When the two of them got into a fight in the field, there was no one present who could intervene. One of them struck the other and killed him.

2 Samuel 14:30

14:30 So he said to his servants, “Look, Joab has a portion of field adjacent to mine and he has some barley there. Go and set it on fire.” ⁷  So Absalom’s servants set Joab’s ⁸  portion of the field on fire.

2 Samuel 15:27

15:27 The king said to Zadok the priest, “Are you a seer? ⁹  Go back to the city in peace! Your son Ahimaaz and Abiathar’s son Jonathan may go with you and Abiathar. ¹⁰ 

2 Samuel 18:20

18:20 But Joab said to him, “You will not be a bearer of good news today. You will bear good news some other day, but not today, ¹¹  for the king’s son is dead.”

2 Samuel 20:6

20:6 Then David said to Abishai, “Now Sheba son of Bicri will cause greater disaster for us than Absalom did! Take your lord’s servants and pursue him. Otherwise he will secure ¹²  fortified cities for himself and get away from us.”

¹ tn Heb “are hard from me.”

² tn Heb “May the Lord repay the doer of the evil according to his evil” (NASB similar).

³ tn Heb “all his house”; CEV “anyone else in your family.”

⁵ tn Heb “house” (again later in this verse). See the note on “dynastic house” in v. 27.

⁶ tn Or “permanently”; cf. NLT “it is an eternal blessing.”

⁷ tn Here and elsewhere (vv. 7, 12, 15a, 17, 19) the woman uses a term which suggests a lower level female servant. She uses the term to express her humility before the king. However, she uses a different term in vv. 15b-16. See the note at v. 15 for a discussion of the rhetorical purpose of this switch in terminology.

⁹ tc The LXX adds here the following words: “And the servants of Absalom burned them up. And the servants of Joab came to him, rending their garments. They said….”

¹⁰ tn The word “Joab’s” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

¹¹ tn The Greek tradition understands the Hebrew word as an imperative (“see”). Most Greek mss have ἴδετε (idete); the Lucianic recension has βλέπε (blepe). It could just as well be taken as a question: “Don’t you see what is happening?” The present translation takes the word as a question, with the implication that Zadok is a priest and not a prophet (i.e., “seer”) and therefore unable to know what the future holds.

¹² tn Heb “And Ahimaaz your son, and Jonathan the son of Abiathar, two of your sons, with you.” The pronominal suffix on the last word is plural, referring to Zadok and Abiathar.

¹³ tn Heb “but this day you will not bear good news.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “find.” The perfect verbal form is unexpected with the preceding word “otherwise.” We should probably read instead the imperfect. Although it is possible to understand the perfect here as indicating that the feared result is thought of as already having taken place (cf. BDB 814 s.v. פֶּן 2), it is more likely that the perfect is simply the result of scribal error. In this context the imperfect would be more consistent with the following verb וְהִצִּיל (vÿhitsil, “and he will get away”).