2 Samuel 16:1

David Receives Gifts from Ziba

16:1 When David had gone a short way beyond the summit, Ziba the servant of Mephibosheth was there to meet him. He had a couple of donkeys that were saddled, and on them were two hundred loaves of bread, a hundred raisin cakes, a hundred baskets of summer fruit, ¹  and a container of wine.

2 Samuel 18:9

18:9 Then Absalom happened to come across David’s men. Now as Absalom was riding on his ²  mule, it ³  went under the branches of a large oak tree. His head got caught in the oak and he was suspended in midair, ⁴  while the mule he had been riding kept going.

2 Samuel 20:1

Sheba’s Rebellion

20:1 Now a wicked man ⁵  named Sheba son of Bicri, a Benjaminite, ⁶  happened to be there. He blew the trumpet ⁷  and said,

“We have no share in David;

we have no inheritance in this son of Jesse!

Every man go home, ⁸  O Israel!”

[16:1]  ¹ tn Heb “a hundred summer fruit.”

[18:9]  ² tn Heb “the.”

[18:9]  ³ tn Heb “the donkey.”

[18:9]  ⁴ tn Heb “between the sky and the ground.”

[20:1]  ³ tn Heb “a man of worthlessness.”

[20:1]  ⁴ tn The expression used here יְמִינִי (yÿmini) is a short form of the more common “Benjamin.” It appears elsewhere in 1 Sam 9:4 and Esth 2:5. Cf. 1 Sam 9:1.

[20:1]  ⁵ tn Heb “the shophar” (the ram’s horn trumpet). So also v. 22.

[20:1]  ⁶ tc The MT reads לְאֹהָלָיו (lÿ’ohalav, “to his tents”). For a similar idiom, see 19:9. An ancient scribal tradition understands the reading to be לְאלֹהָיו (le’lohav, “to his gods”). The word is a tiqqun sopherim, and the scribes indicate that they changed the word from “gods” to “tents” so as to soften its theological implications. In a consonantal Hebrew text the change involved only the metathesis of two letters.