Gender in I and II Samuel

(1) One day, Jonathan son of Saul said to the attendant who carried his arms, “Come, let us cross over to the Philistine garrison on the other side”; but he did not tell his father. (2) Now Saul was staying on the outskirts of Gibeah, under the pomegranate tree at Migron, and the troops with him numbered about 600. (3) Ahijah son of Ahitub brother of Ichabod son of Phinehas son of Eli, the priest of the Eternal at Shiloh, was there bearing an ephod.—The troops did not know that Jonathan had gone. (4) At the crossing by which Jonathan sought to reach the Philistine garrison, there was a rocky crag on one side, and another rocky crag on the other, the one called Bozez and the other Seneh. (5) One crag was located on the north, near Michmas, and the other on the south, near Geba. (6) Jonathan said to the attendant who carried his arms, “Come, let us cross over to the outpost of those uncircumcised fellows. Perhaps the Eternal will act in our behalf, for nothing prevents the Eternal from winning a victory by many or by few.” (7) His arms-bearer answered him, “Do whatever you like. You go first, I am with you, whatever you decide.” (8) Jonathan said, “We’ll cross over to those men and let them see us. (9) If they say to us, ‘Wait until we get to you,’ then we’ll stay where we are, and not go up to them. (10) But if they say, ‘Come up to us,’ then we will go up, for the Eternal is delivering them into our hands. That shall be our sign.” (11) They both showed themselves to the Philistine outpost and the Philistines said, “Look, some Hebrews are coming out of the holes where they have been hiding.” (12) The men of the outpost shouted to Jonathan and his arms-bearer, “Come up to us, and we’ll teach you a lesson.” Then Jonathan said to his arms-bearer, “Follow me, for the Eternal will deliver them into the hands of Israel.” (13) And Jonathan clambered up on his hands and feet, his arms-bearer behind him; [the Philistines] fell before Jonathan, and his arms-bearer finished them off behind him. (14) The initial attack that Jonathan and his arms-bearer made accounted for some twenty men, within a space about half a furrow long [in] an acre of land. (15) Terror broke out among all the troops both in the camp [and] in the field; the outposts and the raiders were also terrified. The very earth quaked, and a terror from God ensued. (16) Saul’s scouts in Gibeah of Benjamin saw that the multitude was scattering in all directions. (17) And Saul said to the troops with him, “Take a count and see who has left us.” They took a count and found that Jonathan and his arms-bearer were missing. (18) Thereupon Saul said to Ahijah, “Bring the Ark of God here”; for the Ark of God was at the time among the Israelites. (19) But while Saul was speaking to the priest, the confusion in the Philistine camp kept increasing; and Saul said to the priest, “Withdraw your hand.” (20) Saul and the troops with him assembled and rushed into battle; they found [the Philistines] in very great confusion, every man’s sword turned against his fellow. (21) And the Hebrews who had previously sided with the Philistines, who had come up with them in the army [from] round about—they too joined the Israelites who were with Saul and Jonathan.

(1) When [David] finished speaking with Saul, Jonathan’s soul became bound up with the soul of David; Jonathan loved David as himself. (2) Saul took him [into his service] that day and would not let him return to his father’s house.— (3) Jonathan and David made a covenant, because [Jonathan] loved him as himself. (4) Jonathan took off the cloak and tunic he was wearing and gave them to David, together with his sword, bow, and belt. (5) David went out [with the troops], and he was successful in every mission on which Saul sent him, and Saul put him in command of all the soldiers; this pleased all the troops and Saul’s courtiers as well.

(17) Saul said to David, “Here is my older daughter, Merab; I will give her to you in marriage; in return, you be my warrior and fight the battles of the LORD.” Saul thought: “Let not my hand strike him; let the hand of the Philistines strike him.” (18) David replied to Saul, “Who am I and what is my life—my father’s family in Israel—that I should become Your Majesty’s son-in-law?” (19) But at the time that Merab, daughter of Saul, should have been given to David, she was given in marriage to Adriel the Meholathite. (20) Now Michal daughter of Saul had fallen in love with David; and when this was reported to Saul, he was pleased. (21) Saul thought: “I will give her to him, and she can serve as a snare for him, so that the Philistines may kill him.” So Saul said to David, “You can become my son-in-law even now through the second one.” (22) And Saul instructed his courtiers to say to David privately, “The king is fond of you and all his courtiers like you. So why not become the king’s son-in-law?” (23) When the king’s courtiers repeated these words to David, David replied, “Do you think that becoming the son-in-law of a king is a small matter, when I am but a poor man of no consequence?” (24) Saul’s courtiers reported to him, “This is what David answered.” (25) And Saul said, “Say this to David: ‘The king desires no other bride-price than the foreskins of a hundred Philistines, as vengeance on the king’s enemies.’”—Saul intended to bring about David’s death at the hands of the Philistines.— (26) When his courtiers told this to David, David was pleased with the idea of becoming the king’s son-in-law. Before the time had expired, (27) David went out with his men and killed two hundred Philistines; David brought their foreskins and they were counted out for the king, that he might become the king’s son-in-law. Saul then gave him his daughter Michal in marriage. (28) When Saul realized that the LORD was with David and that Michal daughter of Saul loved him, (29) Saul grew still more afraid of David; and Saul was David’s enemy ever after.

(16) As the Ark of the Eternal entered the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and whirling before the Eternal; and she despised him for it. (17) They brought in the Ark of the Eternal and set it up in its place inside the tent which David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and offerings of well-being before the Eternal. (18) When David finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and the offerings of well-being, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of Hosts. (19) And he distributed among all the people—the entire multitude of Israel, man and woman alike—to each a loaf of bread, a cake made in a pan, and a raisin cake. Then all the people left for their homes. (20) David went home to greet his household. And Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet David and said, “Didn’t the king of Israel do himself honor today—exposing himself today in the sight of the slavegirls of his subjects, as one of the riffraff might expose himself!” (21) David answered Michal, “It was before the Eternal who chose me instead of your father and all his family and appointed me ruler over the Eternal’s people Israel! I will dance before the Eternal (22) and dishonor myself even more, and be low in my own esteem; but among the slavegirls that you speak of I will be honored.” (23) So to her dying day Michal daughter of Saul had no children.

(1) This happened sometime afterward: Absalom son of David had a beautiful sister named Tamar, and Amnon son of David loved her...

(14) But he would not listen to her; he overpowered her and lay with her by force. (15) Then Amnon felt a very great loathing for her; indeed, his loathing for her was greater than the passion he had felt for her. And Amnon said to her, “Get out!”

(11) Saul sent messengers to David’s home to keep watch on him and to kill him in the morning. But David’s wife Michal told him, “Unless you run for your life tonight, you will be killed tomorrow.” (12) Michal let David down from the window and he escaped and fled. (13) Michal then took the household idol, laid it on the bed, and covered it with a cloth; and at its head she put a net of goat’s hair. (14) Saul sent messengers to seize David; but she said, “He is sick.” (15) Saul, however, sent back the messengers to see David for themselves. “Bring him up to me in the bed,” he ordered, “that he may be put to death.” (16) When the messengers came, they found the household idol in the bed, with the net of goat’s hair at its head. (17) Saul said to Michal, “Why did you play that trick on me and let my enemy get away safely?” “Because,” Michal answered Saul, “he said to me: ‘Help me get away or I’ll kill you.’”

(1) David fled from Naioth in Ramah; he came to Jonathan and said, “What have I done, what is my crime and my guilt against your father, that he seeks my life?” (2) He replied, “Heaven forbid! You shall not die. My father does not do anything, great or small, without disclosing it to me; why should my father conceal this matter from me? It cannot be!” (3) David swore further, “Your father knows well that you are fond of me and has decided: Jonathan must not learn of this or he will be grieved. But, as the Eternal lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death.” (4) Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you want, I will do it for you.” (5) David said to Jonathan, “Tomorrow is the new moon, and I am to sit with the king at the meal. Instead, let me go and I will hide in the countryside until the third evening. (6) If your father notes my absence, you say, ‘David asked my permission to run down to his home town, Bethlehem, for the whole family has its annual sacrifice there.’ (7) If he says ‘Good,’ your servant is safe; but if his anger flares up, know that he is resolved to do [me] harm. (8) Deal faithfully with your servant, since you have taken your servant into a covenant of the Eternal with you. And if I am guilty, kill me yourself, but don’t make me go back to your father.” (9) Jonathan replied, “Don’t talk like that! If I learn that my father has resolved to kill you, I will surely tell you about it.” (10) David said to Jonathan, “Who will tell me if your father answers you harshly?” (11) Jonathan said to David, “Let us go into the open”; and they both went out into the open. (12) Then Jonathan said to David, “By the Eternal, the God of Israel! I will sound out my father at this time tomorrow, [or] on the third day; and if [his response] is favorable for David, I will send a message to you at once and disclose it to you. (13) But if my father intends to do you harm, may the Eternal do thus to Jonathan and more if I do [not] disclose it to you and send you off to escape unharmed. May the Eternal be with you, as He used to be with my father. (14) Nor shall you fail to show me the Eternal’s faithfulness, while I am alive; nor, when I am dead, (15) shall you ever discontinue your faithfulness to my house—not even after the Eternal has wiped out every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth. (16) Thus has Jonathan covenanted with the house of David; and may the Eternal requite the enemies of David!” (17) Jonathan, out of his love for David, adjured him again, for he loved him as himself. (18) Jonathan said to him, “Tomorrow will be the new moon; and you will be missed when your seat remains vacant. (19) So the day after tomorrow, go down all the way to the place where you hid the other time, and stay close to the Ezel stone. (20) Now I will shoot three arrows to one side of it, as though I were shooting at a mark, (21) and I will order the boy to go and find the arrows. If I call to the boy, ‘Hey! the arrows are on this side of you,’ be reassured and come, for you are safe and there is no danger—as the Eternal lives! (22) But if, instead, I call to the lad, ‘Hey! the arrows are beyond you,’ then leave, for the Eternal has sent you away. (23) As for the promise we made to each other, may the Eternal be [witness] between you and me forever.”

(2) There was a man in Maon whose possessions were in Carmel. The man was very wealthy; he owned three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. At the time, he was shearing his sheep in Carmel. (3) The man’s name was Nabal, and his wife’s name was Abigail. The woman was intelligent and beautiful, but the man, a Calebite, was a hard man and an evildoer. (4) David was in the wilderness when he heard that Nabal was shearing his sheep. (5) David dispatched ten young men, and David instructed the young men, “Go up to Carmel. When you come to Nabal, greet him in my name. (6) Say as follows: ‘To life! Greetings to you and to your household and to all that is yours! (7) I hear that you are now doing your shearing. As you know, your shepherds have been with us; we did not harm them, and nothing of theirs was missing all the time they were in Carmel. (8) Ask your young men and they will tell you. So receive these young men graciously, for we have come on a festive occasion. Please give your servants and your son David whatever you can.’” (9) David’s young men went and delivered this message to Nabal in the name of David. When they stopped speaking, (10) Nabal answered David’s servants, “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many slaves nowadays who run away from their masters. (11) Should I then take my bread and my water, and the meat that I slaughtered for my own shearers, and give them to men who come from I don’t know where?” (12) Thereupon David’s young men retraced their steps; and when they got back, they told him all this. (13) And David said to his men, “Gird on your swords.” Each girded on his sword; David too girded on his sword. About four hundred men went up after David, while two hundred remained with the baggage. (14) One of [Nabal’s] young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, that David had sent messengers from the wilderness to greet their master, and that he had spurned them. (15) “But the men had been very friendly to us; we were not harmed, nor did we miss anything all the time that we went about with them while we were in the open. (16) They were a wall about us both by night and by day all the time that we were with them tending the flocks. (17) So consider carefully what you should do, for harm threatens our master and all his household; he is such a nasty fellow that no one can speak to him.” (18) Abigail quickly got together two hundred loaves of bread, two jars of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs of parched corn, one hundred cakes of raisin, and two hundred cakes of pressed figs. She loaded them on asses, (19) and she told her young men, “Go on ahead of me, and I’ll follow you”; but she did not tell her husband Nabal. (20) She was riding on the ass and going down a trail on the hill, when David and his men appeared, coming down toward her; and she met them.— (21) Now David had been saying, “It was all for nothing that I protected that fellow’s possessions in the wilderness, and that nothing he owned is missing. He has paid me back evil for good. (22) May God do thus and more to the enemies of David if, by the light of morning, I leave a single male of his.”— (23) When Abigail saw David, she quickly dismounted from the ass and threw herself face down before David, bowing to the ground. (24) Prostrate at his feet, she pleaded, “Let the blame be mine, my lord, but let your handmaid speak to you; hear your maid’s plea. (25) Please, my lord, pay no attention to that wretched fellow Nabal. For he is just what his name says: His name means ‘boor’ and he is a boor. “Your handmaid did not see the young men whom my lord sent. (26) I swear, my lord, as the Eternal lives and as you live—the Eternal who has kept you from seeking redress by blood with your own hands—let your enemies and all who would harm my lord fare like Nabal! (27) Here is the present which your maidservant has brought to my lord; let it be given to the young men who are the followers of my lord. (28) Please pardon your maid’s boldness. For the Eternal will grant my lord an enduring house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Eternal, and no wrong is ever to be found in you. (29) And if anyone sets out to pursue you and seek your life, the life of my lord will be bound up in the bundle of life in the care of the Eternal; but He will fling away the lives of your enemies as from the hollow of a sling. (30) And when the Eternal has accomplished for my lord all the good He has promised you, and has appointed you ruler of Israel, (31) do not let this be a cause of stumbling and of faltering courage to my lord that you have shed blood needlessly and that my lord sought redress with his own hands. And when the Eternal has prospered my lord, remember your maid.” (32) David said to Abigail, “Praised be the Eternal, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me! (33) And blessed be your prudence, and blessed be you yourself for restraining me from seeking redress in blood by my own hands. (34) For as sure as the Eternal, the God of Israel, lives—who has kept me from harming you—had you not come quickly to meet me, not a single male of Nabal’s line would have been left by daybreak.” (35) David then accepted from her what she had brought him, and he said to her, “Go up to your home safely. See, I have heeded your plea and respected your wish.” (36) When Abigail came home to Nabal, he was having a feast in his house, a feast fit for a king; Nabal was in a merry mood and very drunk, so she did not tell him anything at all until daybreak. (37) The next morning, when Nabal had slept off the wine, his wife told him everything that had happened; and his courage died within him, and he became like a stone. (38) About ten days later the Eternal struck Nabal and he died. (39) When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Praised be the Eternal who championed my cause against the insults of Nabal and held back His servant from wrongdoing; the Eternal has brought Nabal’s wrongdoing down on his own head.” David sent messengers to propose marriage to Abigail, to take her as his wife. (40) When David’s servants came to Abigail at Carmel and told her that David had sent them to her to make her his wife, (41) she immediately bowed low with her face to the ground and said, “Your handmaid is ready to be your maidservant, to wash the feet of my lord’s servants.” (42) Then Abigail rose quickly and mounted an ass, and with five of her maids in attendance she followed David’s messengers; and she became his wife.

(1) Joab son of Zeruiah could see that the king’s mind was on Absalom; (2) so Joab sent to Tekoa and brought a wise-woman from there. He said to her, “Pretend you are in mourning; put on mourning clothes and don’t anoint yourself with oil; and act like a woman who has grieved a long time over a departed one. (3) Go to the king and say to him thus and thus.” And Joab told her what to say. (4) The woman of Tekoa came to the king, flung herself face down to the ground, and prostrated herself. She cried out, “Help, O king!” (5) The king asked her, “What troubles you?” And she answered, “Alas, I am a widow, my husband is dead. (6) Your maidservant had two sons. The two of them came to blows out in the fields where there was no one to stop them, and one of them struck the other and killed him. (7) Then the whole clan confronted your maidservant and said, ‘Hand over the one who killed his brother, that we may put him to death for the slaying of his brother, even though we wipe out the heir.’ Thus they would quench the last ember remaining to me, and leave my husband without name or remnant upon the earth.” (8) The king said to the woman, “Go home. I will issue an order in your behalf.” (9) And the woman of Tekoa said to the king, “My lord king, may the guilt be on me and on my ancestral house; Your Majesty and his throne are guiltless.” (10) The king said, “If anyone says anything more to you, have him brought to me, and he will never trouble you again.” (11) She replied, “Let Your Majesty be mindful of the Eternal your God and restrain the blood avenger bent on destruction, so that my son may not be killed.” And he said, “As the Eternal lives, not a hair of your son shall fall to the ground.” (12) Then the woman said, “Please let your maidservant say another word to my lord the king.” “Speak on,” said the king. (13) And the woman said, “Why then have you planned the like against God’s people? In making this pronouncement, Your Majesty condemns himself in that Your Majesty does not bring back his own banished one. (14) We must all die; we are like water that is poured out on the ground and cannot be gathered up. God will not take away the life of one who makes plans so that no one may be kept banished. (15) And the reason I have come to say these things to the king, my lord, is that the people have frightened me. Your maidservant thought I would speak to Your Majesty; perhaps Your Majesty would act on his handmaid’s plea. (16) For Your Majesty would surely agree to deliver his handmaid from the hands of anyone [who would seek to] cut off both me and my son from the heritage of God. (17) Your maidservant thought, ‘Let the word of my lord the king provide comfort; for my lord the king is like an angel of God, understanding everything, good and bad.’ May the Eternal your God be with you.” (18) In reply, the king said to the woman, “Do not withhold from me anything I ask you!” The woman answered, “Let my lord the king speak.” (19) The king asked, “Is Joab in league with you in all this?” The woman replied, “As you live, my lord the king, it is just as my lord the king says. Yes, your servant Joab was the one who instructed me, and it was he who told your maidservant everything she was to say. (20) It was to conceal the real purpose of the matter that your servant Joab did this thing. My lord is as wise as an angel of God, and he knows all that goes on in the land.”

(15) [Joab’s men] came and besieged him in Abel of Beth-maacah; they threw up a siegemound against the city and it stood against the rampart. All the troops with Joab were engaged in battering the wall, (16) when a wise-woman shouted from the city, “Listen! Listen! Tell Joab to come over here so I can talk to him.” (17) He approached her, and the woman asked, “Are you Joab?” “Yes,” he answered; and she said to him, “Listen to what your handmaid has to say.” “I’m listening,” he replied. (18) And she continued, “In olden times people used to say, ‘Let them inquire of Abel,’ and that was the end of the matter. (19) I am one of those who seek the welfare of the faithful in Israel. But you seek to bring death upon a mother city in Israel! Why should you destroy the Eternal’s possession?” (20) Joab replied, “Far be it, far be it from me to destroy or to ruin! (21) Not at all! But a certain man from the hill country of Ephraim, named Sheba son of Bichri, has rebelled against King David. Just hand him alone over to us, and I will withdraw from the city.” The woman assured Joab, “His head shall be thrown over the wall to you.” (22) The woman came to all the people with her clever plan; and they cut off the head of Sheba son of Bichri and threw it down to Joab. He then sounded the horn; all the men dispersed to their homes, and Joab returned to the king in Jerusalem.