1 Samuel 25:38

25:38 After about ten days the Lord struck Nabal down and he died.

1 Samuel 17:17-18

17:17 Jesse said to his son David, “Take your brothers this ephah of roasted grain and these ten loaves of bread; go quickly ¹  to the camp to your brothers. 17:18 Also take these ten portions of cheese to their commanding officer. ²  Find out how your brothers are doing ³  and bring back their pledge that they received the goods. ⁴ 

1 Samuel 25:5

25:5 he ⁵  sent ten servants, ⁶  saying to them, ⁷  “Go up to Carmel to see Nabal and give him greetings in my name. ⁸ 

1 Samuel 18:7

18:7 The women who were playing the music sang,

“Saul has struck down his thousands,

but David his tens of thousands!”

1 Samuel 15:4

15:4 So Saul assembled ⁹  the army ¹⁰  and mustered them at Telaim. There were 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 men of Judah.

1 Samuel 1:8

1:8 Finally her husband Elkanah said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep and not eat? Why are you so sad? ¹¹  Am I not better to you than ten ¹²  sons?”

1 Samuel 29:5

29:5 Isn’t this David, of whom they sang as they danced, ¹³ 

‘Saul has struck down his thousands,

but David his tens of thousands’?”

1 Samuel 18:8

18:8 This made Saul very angry. The statement displeased him and he thought, ¹⁴  “They have attributed to David tens of thousands, but to me they have attributed only thousands. What does he lack, except the kingdom?”

1 Samuel 21:11

21:11 The servants of Achish said to him, “Isn’t this David, the king of the land? Isn’t he the one that they sing about when they dance, saying,

‘Saul struck down his thousands,

But David his tens of thousands’?”

1 Samuel 14:23

14:23 So the Lord delivered Israel that day, and the battle shifted over to Beth Aven. ¹⁵ 

1 Samuel 17:4

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 

1 Samuel 6:19

6:19 But the Lord ¹⁸  struck down some of the people of Beth Shemesh because they had looked into the ark of the Lord; he struck down 50,070 ¹⁹  of the men. The people grieved because the Lord had struck the people with a hard blow.

[17:17]  ¹ tn Heb “run.”

[17:18]  ¹ tn Heb “officer of the thousand.”

[17:18]  ² tn Heb “and your brothers, observe with respect to welfare.”

[17:18]  ³ tn Heb “and their pledge take.” This probably refers to some type of confirmation that the goods arrived safely. See R. W. Klein, 1 Samuel (WBC), 177. Cf. NIV “bring back some assurance”; NCV “some proof to show me they are all right”; NLT “bring me back a letter from them.”

[25:5]  ¹ tn Heb “David”; for stylistic reasons the pronoun has been used in the translation.

[25:5]  ² tn Or “young men.”

[25:5]  ³ tn Heb “and David said to the young men.”

[25:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “and inquire concerning him in my name in regard to peace.”

[15:4]  ¹ tn Heb “caused the people to hear.”

[15:4]  ² tn Heb “people.”

[1:8]  ¹ tn Heb “why is your heart displeased?”

[1:8]  ² sn Like the number seven, the number ten is sometimes used in the OT as an ideal number (see, for example, Dan 1:20, Zech 8:23).

[29:5]  ¹ tn Heb “in dances.”

[18:8]  ¹ tn Heb “said.” So also in vv. 11, 17.

[14:23]  ¹ tc The LXX includes the following words: “And all the people were with Saul, about ten thousand men. And the battle extended to the entire city on mount Ephraim.”

[17:4]  ¹ tn Heb “the man of the space between the two [armies].” See v. 23.

[17:4]  ² 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.

[6:19]  ¹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[6:19]  ² tc The number 50,070 is surprisingly large, although it finds almost unanimous textual support in the MT and in the ancient versions. Only a few medieval Hebrew mss lack “50,000,” reading simply “70” instead. However, there does not seem to be sufficient external evidence to warrant reading 70 rather than 50,070, although that is done by a number of recent translations (e.g., NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT). The present translation (reluctantly) follows the MT and the ancient versions here.