2 Samuel 9:10

9:10 You will cultivate ¹  the land for him – you and your sons and your servants. You will bring its produce ²  and it will be ³  food for your master’s grandson to eat. ⁴  But Mephibosheth, your master’s grandson, will be a regular guest at my table.” (Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants.)

2 Samuel 17:12

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!

2 Samuel 14:7

14:7 Now the entire family has risen up against your servant, saying, ‘Turn over the one who struck down his brother, so that we can execute him and avenge the death ⁵  of his brother whom he killed. In so doing we will also destroy the heir.’ They want to extinguish my remaining coal, ⁶  leaving no one on the face of the earth to carry on the name of my husband.”

¹ tn Heb “work.”

² tn The Hebrew text implies, but does not actually contain, the words “its produce” here.

³ tc The words “it will be,” though present in the MT, are absent from the LXX, the Syriac Peshitta, and Vulgate.

⁴ tn Heb “and he will eat it.”

⁵ tn Heb “in exchange for the life.” The Hebrew preposition בְּ (bÿ, “in”) here is the so-called bet pretii, or bet (בְּ) of price, defining the value attached to someone or something.

⁶ sn My remaining coal is here metaphorical language, describing the one remaining son as her only source of lingering hope for continuing the family line.