1st Sam 13 1

Can I get some help from those who can read Hebrew? I was looking at the ESV and it seems the Hebrew is different than the BHS. If I read NIV I see Saul was 30 years old and reigned for 42 years. I see there is a few more that renders the same. If I look at Tanakh I get something else....

Would someone give me as close a rendering as possible. I am not requesting a translation....just the vocabulary words used.

I hope that is clear.

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Comments

MJ. Smith

If you look at the NRSV notes you will find that there are missing numbers in at least some texts.

R. Mansfield

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/78220#Comment_78220

The NET Bible has a good explanation in its notes:

tc The MT does not have “thirty.” A number appears to have dropped out of the Hebrew text here, since as it stands the MT (literally, “a son of a year”) must mean that Saul was only one year old when he began to reign! The KJV, attempting to resolve this, reads “Saul reigned one year,” but that is not the normal meaning of the Hebrew text represented by the MT. Although most LXX MSS lack the entire verse, some Greek MSS have “thirty years” here (while others have “one year” like the MT). The Syriac Peshitta has Saul’s age as twenty-one. But this seems impossible to harmonize with the implied age of Saul’s son Jonathan in the following verse. Taking into account the fact that in v. 2 Jonathan was old enough to be a military leader, some scholars prefer to supply in v. 1 the number forty (cf. ASV, NASB). The present translation (“thirty”) is a possible but admittedly uncertain proposal based on a few Greek MSS and followed by a number of English versions (e.g., NIV, NCV, NLT). Other English versions simply supply ellipsis marks for the missing number (e.g., NAB, NRSV).

Kevin Becker

Welcome to the wonderful world of Textual criticism!

It is not uncommon for translation committees to look at a verse and decide to depart from the BHS or NA27 for any number of reasons. They don't always alert you to this fact with a footnote. R Mansfield's instinct to go to the NET Bible is good. They discuss every Text Critical issue that has influence on translation. In fact, if comparing English translations shows there's disagreement on how to render a passage, the NET Bible probably has a good explanation of the issue and the reason for which choice they made.