1 Samuel 19:10-17

19:10 Saul tried to nail David to the wall with the spear, but he escaped from Saul’s presence and the spear drove into the wall. ¹  David escaped quickly ²  that night.

19:11 Saul sent messengers to David’s house to guard it and to kill him in the morning. Then David’s wife Michal told him, “If you do not save yourself ³  tonight, tomorrow you will be dead!” 19:12 So Michal lowered David through the window, and he ran away and escaped.

19:13 Then Michal took a household idol ⁴  and put it on the bed. She put a quilt ⁵  made of goat’s hair over its head ⁶  and then covered the idol with a garment. 19:14 When Saul sent messengers to arrest David, she said, “He’s sick.”

19:15 Then Saul sent the messengers back to see David, saying, “Bring him up to me on his bed so I can kill him.” 19:16 When the messengers came, they found only the idol on the bed and the quilt made of goat’s hair at its head.

19:17 Saul said to Michal, “Why have you deceived me this way by sending my enemy away? Now he has escaped!” Michal replied to Saul, “He said to me, ‘Help me get away or else I will kill you!’” ⁷ 

1 Samuel 20:33

20:33 Then Saul threw his spear at Jonathan ⁸  in order to strike him down. So Jonathan was convinced ⁹  that his father had decided to kill David.

1 Samuel 23:19-20

23:19 Then the Ziphites went up to Saul at Gibeah and said, “Isn’t David hiding among us in the strongholds at Horesh on the hill of Hakilah, south of Jeshimon? 23:20 Now at your own discretion, ¹⁰  O king, come down. Delivering him into the king’s hand will be our responsibility.”

1 Samuel 23:2

23:2 So David asked the Lord, “Should I go and strike down these Philistines?” The Lord said to David, “Go, strike down the Philistines and deliver Keilah.”

1 Samuel 17:1-4

David Kills Goliath

17:1 ¹¹ The Philistines gathered their troops ¹²  for battle. They assembled at Socoh in Judah. They camped in Ephes Dammim, between Socoh and Azekah. 17:2 Saul and the Israelite army ¹³  assembled and camped in the valley of Elah, where they arranged their battle lines to fight against ¹⁴  the Philistines. 17:3 The Philistines were standing on one hill, and the Israelites ¹⁵  on another hill, with the valley between them.

17:4 Then a champion ¹⁶  came out from the camp of the Philistines. His name was Goliath; he was from Gath. He was close to seven feet tall. ¹⁷ 

Jeremiah 11:19

11:19 Before this I had been like a docile lamb ready to be led to the slaughter.

I did not know they were making plans to kill me. ¹⁸ 

I did not know they were saying, ¹⁹ 

“Let’s destroy the tree along with its fruit! ²⁰ 

Let’s remove Jeremiah ²¹  from the world of the living

so people will not even be reminded of him any more.” ²² 

Matthew 26:3-4

26:3 Then the chief priests and the elders of the people met together in the palace of the high priest, who was named Caiaphas. 26:4 They ²³  planned to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him.

Matthew 26:59

26:59 The ²⁴  chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were trying to find false testimony against Jesus so that they could put him to death.

Matthew 27:1

Jesus Brought Before Pilate

27:1 When ²⁵  it was early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people plotted against Jesus to execute him.

[19:10]  ¹ tn Heb “and he drove the spear into the wall.”

[19:10]  ² tn Heb “fled and escaped.”

[19:11]  ³ tn Heb “your life.”

[19:13]  ⁴ tn Heb “teraphim” (also a second time in this verse and once in v. 16). These were statues that represented various deities. According to 2 Kgs 23:24 they were prohibited during the time of Josiah’s reform movement in the seventh century. The idol Michal placed under the covers was of sufficient size to give the mistaken impression that David lay in the bed, thus facilitating his escape.

[19:13]  ⁵ tn The exact meaning of the Hebrew word כָּבִיר (kavir) is uncertain; it is found in the Hebrew Bible only here and in v. 16. It probably refers to a quilt made of goat’s hair, perhaps used as a fly net while one slept. See HALOT 458 s.v. *כָּבִיר. Cf. KJV, TEV “pillow”; NLT “cushion”; NAB, NRSV “net.”

[19:13]  ⁶ tn Heb “at the place of its head.”

[19:17]  ⁷ tn Heb “Send me away! Why should I kill you?” The question has the force of a threat in this context. See P. K. McCarter, I Samuel (AB), 325, 26.

[20:33]  ⁸ tn Heb “him”; the referent (Jonathan) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[20:33]  ⁹ tn Heb “knew.”

[23:20]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “to all the desire of your soul.”

[17:1]  ¹¹ tc The content of 1 Sam 17–18, which includes the David and Goliath story, differs considerably in the LXX as compared to the MT, suggesting that this story circulated in ancient times in more than one form. The LXX for chs. 17–18 is much shorter than the MT, lacking almost half of the material (39 of a total of 88 verses). Many scholars (e.g., McCarter, Klein) think that the shorter text of the LXX is preferable to the MT, which in their view has been expanded by incorporation of later material. Other scholars (e.g., Wellhausen, Driver) conclude that the shorter Greek text (or the Hebrew text that underlies it) reflects an attempt to harmonize certain alleged inconsistencies that appear in the longer version of the story. Given the translation characteristics of the LXX elsewhere in this section, it does not seem likely that these differences are due to deliberate omission of these verses on the part of the translator. It seems more likely that the Greek translator has faithfully rendered here a Hebrew text that itself was much shorter than the MT in these chapters. Whether or not the shorter text represented by the LXX is to be preferred over the MT in 1 Sam 17–18 is a matter over which textual scholars are divided. For a helpful discussion of the major textual issues in this unit see D. Barthélemy, D. W. Gooding, J. Lust, and E. Tov, The Story of David and Goliath (OBO). Overall it seems preferable to stay with the MT, at least for the most part. However, the major textual differences between the LXX and the MT will be mentioned in the notes that accompany the translation so that the reader may be alert to the major problem passages.

[17:1]  ¹² tn Heb “camps.”

[17:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “the men of Israel” (so KJV, NASB); NAB, NIV, NRSV “the Israelites.”

[17:2]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “to meet.”

[17:3]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “Israel.”

[17:4]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “the man of the space between the two [armies].” See v. 23.

[17:4]  ¹⁷ tc Heb “his height was six cubits and a span” (cf. KJV, NASB, NRSV). A cubit was approximately eighteen inches, a span nine inches. So, according to the Hebrew tradition, Goliath was about nine feet, nine inches tall (cf. NIV, CEV, NLT “over nine feet”; NCV “nine feet, four inches”; TEV “nearly 3 metres”). However, some Greek witnesses, Josephus, and a manuscript of 1 Samuel from Qumran read “four cubits and a span” here, that is, about six feet, nine inches (cf. NAB “six and a half feet”). This seems more reasonable; it is likely that Goliath’s height was exaggerated as the story was retold. See P. K. McCarter, I Samuel (AB), 286, 291.

[11:19]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “against me.” The words “to kill me” are implicit from the context and are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[11:19]  ¹⁹ tn The words “I did not know that they were saying” are not in the text. The quote is without formal introduction in the original. These words are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[11:19]  ²⁰ tn This word and its pronoun (לַחְמוֹ, lakhmo, “its bread”) is often emended to read “in/with its sap” = “in its prime” (either לֵחוֹ [lekho] or לֵחְמוֹ [lekhÿmo]); the latter would be more likely and the מוֹ (mo) could be explained as a rare use of the old poetic third plural suffix for the third singular; cf. GKC 258 §91.l for general use and Ps 11:7 and Job 27:23 for third singular use. Though this fits the context nicely the emendation is probably unnecessary since the word “bread” is sometimes used of other foodstuff than grain or its products (cf. BDB 537 s.v. לֶחֶם 2.a).

[11:19]  ²¹ tn Heb “cut it [or him] off.” The metaphor of the tree may be continued, though the verb “cut off” is used also of killing people. The rendering clarifies the meaning of the metaphor.

[11:19]  ²² tn Heb “so that his name will not be remembered any more.”

[26:4]  ²³ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated.

[26:59]  ²⁴ tn Grk “Now the.” Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[27:1]  ²⁵ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.