2 Samuel 16:18

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. ¹ 

2 Samuel 23:11

23:11 Next in command ²  was Shammah son of Agee the Hararite. When the Philistines assembled at Lehi, ³  where there happened to be an area of a field that was full of lentils, the army retreated before the Philistines.

[16:18]  ¹ 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.

[23:11]  ² tn Heb “after him.”

[23:11]  ³ tn The Hebrew text is difficult here. The MT reads לַחַיָּה (lachayyah), which implies a rare use of the word חַיָּה (chayyah). The word normally refers to an animal, but if the MT is accepted it would here have the sense of a troop or community of people. BDB 312 s.v. II. חַיָּה, for example, understands the similar reference in v. 13 to be to “a group of allied families, making a raid together.” But this works better in v. 13 than it does in v. 11, where the context seems to suggest a particular staging location for a military operation. (See 1 Chr 11:15.) It therefore seems best to understand the word in v. 11 as a place name with ה (he) directive. In that case the Masoretes mistook the word for the common term for an animal and then tried to make sense of it in this context.