2 Samuel 4:12

4:12 So David issued orders to the soldiers and they put them to death. Then they cut off their hands and feet and hung them ¹  near the pool in Hebron. But they took the head of Ish-bosheth ²  and buried it in the tomb of Abner ³  in Hebron. ⁴ 

2 Samuel 14:11

14:11 She replied, “In that case, ⁵  let the king invoke the name of ⁶  the Lord your God so that the avenger of blood may not kill! Then they will not destroy my son!” He replied, “As surely as the Lord lives, not a single hair of your son’s head ⁷  will fall to the ground.”

2 Samuel 16:11

16:11 Then David said to Abishai and to all his servants, “My own son, my very own flesh and blood, ⁸  is trying to take my life. So also now this Benjaminite! Leave him alone so that he can curse, for the Lord has spoken to him.

2 Samuel 23:16

23:16 So the three elite warriors broke through the Philistine forces and drew some water from the cistern in Bethlehem near the gate. They carried it back to David, but he refused to drink it. He poured it out as a drink offering to the Lord

¹ tn The antecedent of the pronoun “them” (which is not present in the Hebrew text, but implied) is not entirely clear. Presumably it is the corpses that were hung and not merely the detached hands and feet; cf. NIV “hung the (their NRSV, NLT) bodies”; the alternative is represented by TEV “cut off their hands and feet, which they hung up.”

² tc 4QSam^a mistakenly reads “Mephibosheth” here.

³ tc The LXX adds “the son of Ner” by conformity with common phraseology elsewhere.

⁴ tc Some mss of the LXX lack the phrase “in Hebron.”

⁵ tn The words “in that case” are not in the Hebrew text, but may be inferred from the context. They are supplied in the translation for the sake of clarification.

⁶ tn Heb “let the king remember.”

⁷ tn Heb “of your son.”

⁹ tn Heb “who came out from my entrails.” David’s point is that is his own son, his child whom he himself had fathered, was now wanting to kill him.