1 Samuel 28:24

28:24 Now the woman ¹  had a well-fed calf ²  at her home that she quickly slaughtered. Taking some flour, she kneaded bread and baked it without leaven.

1 Samuel 1:24

1:24 Once she had weaned him, she took him up with her, along with three bulls, an ephah ³  of flour, and a container ⁴  of wine. She brought him to the Lord’s house at Shiloh, even though he was young. ⁵ 

[28:24]  ¹ sn Masoretic mss of the Hebrew Bible mark this word as the half-way point in the book of Samuel, treating 1 and 2 Samuel as a single book. Similar notations are found at the midway point for all of the books of the Hebrew Bible.

[28:24]  ² tn Heb “a calf of the stall.”

[1:24]  ³ sn The ephah was a standard dry measure in OT times; it was the equivalent of one-tenth of the OT measure known as a homer. The ephah was equal to approximately one-half to two-thirds of a bushel.

[1:24]  ⁴ tn The Hebrew term translated “container” may denote either a clay storage jar (cf. CEV “a clay jar full of wine”) or a leather container (cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV “a skin of wine”; NCV “a leather bag filled with (full of TEV) wine.”

[1:24]  ⁵ tc Heb “and the boy was a boy.” If the MT is correct the meaning apparently is that the boy was quite young at the time of these events. On the other hand, some scholars have suspected a textual problem, emending the text to read either “and the boy was with them” (so LXX) or “and the boy was with her” (a conjectural emendation). In spite of the difficulty it seems best to stay with the MT here.