How 1 Samuel Came to Us

Journey of a Passage

• 1 Samuel 1:24: Three bulls, or one three-year-old bull? →Hannah brings Samuel to Shiloh with an offering. The Masoretic Text says "three bulls"; 4QSam-a and the Greek say "a three-year-old bull." The next verse, "they slew a bullock," fits one animal.
• 1 Samuel 10:27–11:1: Nahash: the paragraph found only at Qumran →4QSam-a has a paragraph between 10:27 and 11:1 not found in any other biblical manuscript: Nahash king of Ammon had been gouging out the right eyes of the Gadites and Reubenites, and seven thousand had escaped to Jabesh. Josephus tells the same story. The Hebrew "he held his peace" and the Greek "about a month later" differ by one letter.
• 1 Samuel 13:1: Saul's missing age →The Hebrew reads "Saul was a year old when he began to reign, and he reigned two years over Israel." A number is missing. The library's Greek has no verse 13:1 at all. English Bibles fill the gaps with different conjectures.
• 1 Samuel 14:41: Urim and Thummim: the longer prayer →The Hebrew has only "Give perfect [tamim]." The library's Greek and the Vulgate have a full prayer: if the guilt is in Saul or Jonathan, give Urim; if in the people, give Thummim. The longer text is the clearest picture of how the lots worked.
• 1 Samuel 17–18: David and Goliath: the short and long editions →The oldest Greek of 1 Samuel 17–18 lacks about 45% of the Hebrew, including David's arrival with food (17:12–31), Saul's question "whose son is this?" (17:55–18:5), Saul's first spear (18:10–11) and the Merab marriage (18:17–19). The library's Greek shows exactly these gaps.
• 1 Samuel 17:4: How tall was Goliath? →Six cubits and a span (about 2.9 m) in the Masoretic Text, the Vulgate and the KJV; four cubits and a span (about 2 m) in 4QSam-a, the library's Greek and Josephus.