1 Samuel 4:7

4:7 The Philistines were scared because they thought that gods had come to the camp. ¹  They said, “Too bad for ²  us! We’ve never seen anything like this!

1 Samuel 9:12

9:12 They replied, “Yes, straight ahead! But hurry now, for he came to the town today, and the people are making a sacrifice at the high place.

1 Samuel 12:12

12:12 “When you saw that King Nahash of the Ammonites was advancing against you, you said to me, ‘No! A king will rule over us’ – even though the Lord your God is your king!

1 Samuel 13:8

13:8 He waited for seven days, the time period indicated by Samuel. ³  But Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the army began to abandon Saul. ⁴ 

1 Samuel 17:43

17:43 The Philistine said to David, “Am I a dog, that you are coming after me with sticks?” ⁵  Then the Philistine cursed David by his gods.

1 Samuel 23:7

23:7 When Saul was told that David had come to Keilah, Saul said, “God has delivered ⁶  him into my hand, for he has boxed himself into a corner by entering a city with two barred gates.” ⁷ 

[4:7]  ¹ tn The Hebrew text has a direct quote, “because they said, ‘Gods have come to the camp.’” Even though the verb translated “have come” is singular, the following subject should be taken as plural (“gods”), as v. 8 indicates. Some emend the verb to a plural form.

[4:7]  ² tn Traditionally “woe to.” They thought disaster was imminent.

[13:8]  ³ tn This apparently refers to the instructions given by Samuel in 1 Sam 10:8. If so, several years had passed. On the relationship between chs. 10 and 13, see V. P. Long, The Art of Biblical History (FCI), 201-23.

[13:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “dispersed from upon him”; NAB, NRSV “began to slip away.”

[17:43]  ⁵ sn Sticks is a pejorative reference to David’s staff (v. 40); the same Hebrew word (מַקֵּל, maqqel) is used for both.

[23:7]  ⁷ tn The MT reading (“God has alienated him into my hand”) in v. 7 is a difficult and uncommon idiom. The use of this verb in Jer 19:4 is somewhat parallel, but not entirely so. Many scholars have therefore suspected a textual problem here, emending the word נִכַּר (nikkar, “alienated”) to סִכַּר (sikkar, “he has shut up [i.e., delivered]”). This is the idea reflected in the translations of the Syriac Peshitta and Vulgate, although it is not entirely clear whether they are reading something different from the MT or are simply paraphrasing what for them too may have been a difficult text. The LXX has “God has sold him into my hands,” apparently reading מַכַר (makar, “sold”) for MT’s נִכַּר. The present translation is a rather free interpretation.

[23:7]  ⁸ tn Heb “with two gates and a bar.” Since in English “bar” could be understood as a saloon, it has been translated as an attributive: “two barred gates.”