2 Samuel 15:2-7

15:2 Now Absalom used to get up early and stand beside the road that led to the city gate. Whenever anyone came by who had a complaint to bring to the king for arbitration, Absalom would call out to him, “What city are you from?” The person would answer, “I, your servant, ¹  am from one of the tribes of Israel.” 15:3 Absalom would then say to him, “Look, your claims are legitimate and appropriate. ²  But there is no representative of the king who will listen to you.” 15:4 Absalom would then say, “If only they would make me ³  a judge in the land! Then everyone who had a judicial complaint ⁴  could come to me and I would make sure he receives a just settlement.”

15:5 When someone approached to bow before him, Absalom ⁵  would extend his hand and embrace him and kiss him. 15:6 Absalom acted this way toward everyone in Israel who came to the king for justice. In this way Absalom won the loyalty ⁶  of the citizens ⁷  of Israel.

15:7 After four ⁸  years Absalom said to the king, “Let me go and repay my vow that I made to the Lord while I was in Hebron.

2 Samuel 16:16-19

16:16 When David’s friend Hushai the Arkite came to Absalom, Hushai said to him, ⁹  “Long live the king! Long live the king!”

16:17 Absalom said to Hushai, “Do you call this loyalty to your friend? Why didn’t you go with your friend?” 16:18 Hushai replied to Absalom, “No, I will be loyal to the one whom the Lord, these people, and all the men of Israel have chosen. ¹⁰  16:19 Moreover, whom should I serve? Should it not be his son? Just as I served your father, so I will serve you.” ¹¹ 

2 Samuel 17:7-13

17:7 Hushai replied to Absalom, “Ahithophel’s advice is not sound this time.” ¹²  17:8 Hushai went on to say, “You know your father and his men – they are soldiers and are as dangerous as a bear out in the wild that has been robbed of her cubs. ¹³  Your father is an experienced soldier; he will not stay overnight with the army. 17:9 At this very moment he is hiding out in one of the caves or in some other similar place. If it should turn out that he attacks our troops first, ¹⁴  whoever hears about it will say, ‘Absalom’s army has been slaughtered!’ 17:10 If that happens even the bravest soldier – one who is lion-hearted – will virtually melt away. For all Israel knows that your father is a warrior and that those who are with him are brave. 17:11 My advice therefore is this: Let all Israel from Dan to Beer Sheba – in number like the sand by the sea! – be mustered to you, and you lead them personally into battle. 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! 17:13 If he regroups in a city, all Israel will take up ropes to that city and drag it down to the valley, so that not a single pebble will be left there!”

2 Samuel 17:1

The Death of Ahithophel

17:1 Ahithophel said to Absalom, “Let me pick out twelve thousand men. Then I will go and pursue David this very night.

2 Samuel 22:6

22:6 The ropes of Sheol ¹⁵  tightened around me; ¹⁶ 

the snares of death trapped me. ¹⁷ 

2 Samuel 22:13

22:13 From the brightness in front of him

came coals of fire. ¹⁸ 

Jeremiah 28:2-4

28:2 “The Lord God of Israel who rules over all ¹⁹  says, ‘I will break the yoke of servitude ²⁰  to the king of Babylon. 28:3 Before two years are over, I will bring back to this place everything that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took from it and carried away to Babylon. 28:4 I will also bring back to this place Jehoiakim’s son King Jeconiah of Judah and all the exiles who were taken to Babylon.’ Indeed, the Lord affirms, ²¹  ‘I will break the yoke of servitude to the king of Babylon.’”

Acts 12:22-23

12:22 But the crowd ²²  began to shout, ²³  “The voice of a god, ²⁴  and not of a man!” 12:23 Immediately an angel of the Lord ²⁵  struck ²⁶  Herod ²⁷  down because he did not give the glory to God, and he was eaten by worms and died. ²⁸ 

[15:2]  ¹ tn Heb “your servant.” So also in vv. 8, 15, 21.

[15:3]  ² tn Heb “good and straight.”

[15:4]  ³ tn Heb “Who will make me?”

[15:4]  ⁴ tn Heb “a complaint and a judgment.” The expression is a hendiadys.

[15:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Absalom) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[15:6]  ⁶ tn Heb “stole the heart.”

[15:6]  ⁷ tn Heb “the men.”

[15:7]  ⁸ tc The MT has here “forty,” but this is presumably a scribal error for “four.” The context will not tolerate a period of forty years prior to the rebellion of Absalom. The Lucianic Greek recension (τέσσαρα ἔτη, tessara ete), the Syriac Peshitta (’arba’ sanin), and Vulgate (post quattuor autem annos) in fact have the expected reading “four years.” Most English translations follow the versions in reading “four” here, although some (e.g. KJV, ASV, NASB, NKJV), following the MT, read “forty.”

[16:16]  ⁹ tn Heb “to Absalom.” The proper name has been replaced by the pronoun “him” in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[16:18]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “No for with the one whom the Lord has chosen, and this people, and all the men of Israel, I will be and with him I will stay.” The translation follows the Qere and several medieval Hebrew mss in reading לוֹ (lo, “[I will be] to him”) rather than the MT לֹא (lo’, “[I will] not be”), which makes very little sense here.

[16:19]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Just as I served before your father, so I will be before you.”

[17:7]  ¹² tn Heb “Not good is the advice which Ahithophel has advised at this time.”

[17:8]  ¹³ tc The LXX (with the exception of the recensions of Origen and Lucian) repeats the description as follows: “Just as a female bear bereft of cubs in a field.”

[17:9]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “that he falls on them [i.e., Absalom’s troops] at the first [encounter]; or “that some of them [i.e., Absalom’s troops] fall at the first [encounter].”

[22:6]  ¹⁵ tn “Sheol,” personified here as David’s enemy, is the underworld, place of the dead in primitive Hebrew cosmology.

[22:6]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “surrounded me.”

[22:6]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “confronted me.”

[22:13]  ¹⁸ tc The parallel text in Ps 18:12 reads “from the brightness in front of him his clouds came, hail and coals of fire.” The Lucianic family of texts within the Greek tradition of 2 Sam 22:13 seems to assume the underlying Hebrew text: מִנֹּגַהּ נֶגְדּוֹ עָבְרוּ בָּרָד וְגַחֲלֵי אֵשׁ (minnogah negdo ’avru barad vÿgakhale ’esh, “from the brightness in front of him came hail and coals of fire”) which is the basis for the present translation. The textual situation is perplexing and the identity of the original text uncertain. The verbs עָבְרוּ (’avÿru; Ps 18:12) and בָּעֲרוּ (ba’aru, 2 Sam 22:13) appear to be variants involving a transposition of the first two letters. The noun עָבָיו (’avav, “his clouds”; Ps 18:12) may be virtually dittographic (note the following עָבְרוּ), or it could have accidentally dropped from the text of 2 Sam 22:13 by virtual haplography (note the preceding בָּעֲרוּ [ba’aru], which might have originally read עָבְרוּ). The term בָּרָד (barad, “hail”; Ps 18:12) may be virtually dittographic (note the preceding עָבְרוּ), or it could have dropped from 2 Sam 22:13 by virtual haplography (note the preceding בָּעֲרוּ, which might have originally read עָבְרוּ). For a fuller discussion of the text, see R. B. Chisholm, “An Exegetical and Theological Study of Psalm 18/2 Samuel 22” (Th.D. diss., Dallas Theological Seminary, 1983), 74-76.

[28:2]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.” See the study notes on 2:19 and 7:3 for the explanation of this title.

[28:2]  ²⁰ sn See the study note on 27:2 for this figure. Hananiah is given the same title “the prophet” as Jeremiah throughout the chapter and claims to speak with the same authority (compare v. 2a with 27:21a). He even speaks like the true prophet; the verb form “I will break” is in the “prophetic perfect” emphasizing certitude. His message here is a contradiction of Jeremiah’s message recorded in the preceding chapter (compare especially v. 3 with 27:16, 19-22 and v. 4 with 22:24-28). The people and the priests are thus confronted with a choice of whom to believe. Who is the “true” prophet and who is the “false” one? Only fulfillment of their prophecies will prove which is which (see Deut 18:21-22).

[28:4]  ²¹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[12:22]  ²² tn The translation “crowd” is given by BDAG 223 s.v. δῆμος; the word often means a gathering of citizens to conduct public business. Here it is simply the group of people gathered to hear the king’s speech.

[12:22]  ²³ tn The imperfect verb ἐπεφώνει (epefwnei) is taken ingressively in the sequence of events. Presumably the king had started his speech when the crowd began shouting.

[12:22]  ²⁴ sn The voice of a god. Contrast the response of Paul and Barnabas in Acts 14:13-15.

[12:23]  ²⁵ tn Or “the angel of the Lord.” See the note on the word “Lord” in 5:19.

[12:23]  ²⁶ sn On being struck…down by an angel, see Acts 23:3; 1 Sam 25:28; 2 Sam 12:15; 2 Kgs 19:35; 2 Chr 13:20; 2 Macc 9:5.

[12:23]  ²⁷ tn Grk “him”; the referent (Herod) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[12:23]  ²⁸ sn He was eaten by worms and died. Josephus, Ant. 19.8.2 (19.343-352), states that Herod Agrippa I died at Caesarea in a.d. 44. The account by Josephus, while not identical to Luke’s account, is similar in many respects: On the second day of a festival, Herod Agrippa appeared in the theater with a robe made of silver. When it sparkled in the sun, the people cried out flatteries and declared him to be a god. The king, carried away by the flattery, saw an owl (an omen of death) sitting on a nearby rope, and immediately was struck with severe stomach pains. He was carried off to his house and died five days later. The two accounts can be reconciled without difficulty, since while Luke states that Herod was immediately struck down by an angel, his death could have come several days later. The mention of worms with death adds a humiliating note to the scene. The formerly powerful ruler had been thoroughly reduced to nothing (cf. Jdt 16:17; 2 Macc 9:9; cf. also Josephus, Ant. 17.6.5 [17.168-170], which details the sickness which led to Herod the Great’s death).