2 Samuel 7:1

The Lord Establishes a Covenant with David

7:1 The king settled into his palace, ¹  for the Lord gave him relief ²  from all his enemies on all sides. ³ 

2 Samuel 7:1

The Lord Establishes a Covenant with David

7:1 The king settled into his palace, ⁴  for the Lord gave him relief ⁵  from all his enemies on all sides. ⁶ 

2 Samuel 1:1

David Learns of the Deaths of Saul and Jonathan

1:1 After the death of Saul, ⁷  when David had returned from defeating the Amalekites, ⁸  he stayed at Ziklag ⁹  for two days.

Daniel 4:4

Nebuchadnezzar Dreams of a Tree Chopped Down

4:4 (4:1) ¹⁰  I, Nebuchadnezzar, was relaxing in my home, ¹¹  living luxuriously ¹²  in my palace.

[7:1]  ¹ tn Heb “house” (also in the following verse).

[7:1]  ² tn Or “rest.”

[7:1]  ³ tn The translation understands the disjunctive clause in v. 1b as circumstantial-causal.

[7:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “house” (also in the following verse).

[7:1]  ⁵ tn Or “rest.”

[7:1]  ⁶ tn The translation understands the disjunctive clause in v. 1b as circumstantial-causal.

[1:1]  ⁷ sn This chapter is closely linked to 1 Sam 31. It should be kept in mind that 1 and 2 Samuel were originally a single book, not separate volumes. Whereas in English Bible tradition the books of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah are each regarded as two separate books, this was not the practice in ancient Hebrew tradition. Early canonical records, for example, counted them as single books respectively. The division into two books goes back to the Greek translation of the OT and was probably initiated because of the cumbersome length of copies due to the Greek practice (unlike that of Hebrew) of writing vowels. The present division into two books can be a little misleading in terms of perceiving the progression of the argument of the book; in some ways it is preferable to treat the books of 1-2 Samuel in a unified fashion.

[1:1]  ⁸ sn The Amalekites were a nomadic people who inhabited Judah and the Transjordan. They are mentioned in Gen 36:15-16 as descendants of Amalek who in turn descended from Esau. In Exod 17:8-16 they are described as having acted in a hostile fashion toward Israel as the Israelites traveled to Canaan from Egypt. In David’s time the Amalekites were viewed as dangerous enemies who raided, looted, and burned Israelite cities (see 1 Sam 30).

[1:1]  ⁹ sn Ziklag was a city in the Negev which had been given to David by Achish king of Gath. For more than a year David used it as a base from which he conducted military expeditions (see 1 Sam 27:5-12). According to 1 Sam 30:1-19, Ziklag was destroyed by the Amalekites while Saul fought the Philistines.

[4:4]  ¹⁰ sn This verse marks the beginning of chap. 4 in the Aramaic text of Daniel (see the note on 4:1). The Greek OT (LXX) has the following addition: “In the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign he said.” This date would suggest a link to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. In general, the LXX of chapters 4-6 is very different from the MT, so much so that the following notes will call attention only to selected readings. In Daniel 4 the LXX lacks sizable portions of material in the MT (e.g., vv. 3-6, 31-32), includes sizable portions of material not in the MT (e.g., v. 14a, parts of vv. 16, 28), has a different order of some material (e.g., v. 8 after v. 9), and in some instances is vastly different from the MT (e.g., vv. 30, 34). Whether these differences are due to an excessively paraphrastic translation technique adopted for these chapters in the LXX, or are due to differences in the underlying Vorlage of the LXX, is a disputed matter. The latter seems more likely. There is a growing trend in modern scholarship to take the LXX of chapters 4-6 much more seriously than was the case in most earlier text-critical studies that considered this issue.

[4:4]  ¹¹ tn Aram “my house.”

[4:4]  ¹² tn Aram “happy.”