1 Samuel 2:4-6

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. 1 Samuel 2:4 tn Heb “stumblers have put on strength.” Because of the contrast between the prior and current condition, the participle has been translated with past tense. The Hebrew metaphor is a picture of getting dressed with (“putting on”) strength like clothing.
2. 1 Samuel 2:5 tn By implication these lines refer to those formerly well-fed and those formerly hungry.
3. 1 Samuel 2:5 tc Against BHS but with the MT, the preposition (עַד, ʿad) should be taken with what follows rather than with what precedes. For this sense of the preposition see Job 25:5.
4. 1 Samuel 2:5 sn The number seven is used here in an ideal sense. Elsewhere in the OT having seven children is evidence of fertility as a result of God’s blessing on the family. See, for example, Jer 15:9, Ruth 4:15.
5. 1 Samuel 2:5 tn Or “languished.”
6. 1 Samuel 2:6 tn Heb “Sheol”; NAB “the nether world”; CEV “the world of the dead.”
7. 1 Samuel 2:6 tn The first three verbs are participles; the last is a preterite which is normally past consecutive. It is rare, even in poetry, for a preterite verb to follow a participle. The English translations all render the last verb as a participle. They either reason that the preterite continues the force of the participle or assume that it should be repointed as a simple vav plus imperfect (which can be habitual present). If the participles are understood as substantival, then the latter half might mean “the Lord…is one who brings down to [the point of] the grave and then raised up.”