Servants: see verse 22.

Thus and so did David speak: literally “In these words David spoke.” The Hebrew does not actually give the exact words that David spoke. Rather the writer has used a form of shorthand, allowing the context to suggest to the reader what David actually said. A literal translation such as that found in Revised Standard Version will be meaningless in many languages. See also the similar type of “pseudoquotation” in 21.2; 2 Sam 15.2; 17.15, 21; 1 Kgs 1.6; and 2 Kgs 5.4; 6.8; 9.12.

New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh renders this verse as “This is what David answered.” But such a translation, like that in Revised Standard Version, leads the reader to expect a quotation of what David actually said. It may be better to turn the servants’ words into an indirect quotation as in Good News Translation (so also Revised English Bible, New American Bible, Bible en français courant, and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch).

A useful article for the translator to read is Ellington, 1994a, “Pseudo-quotations in Translation” (see the Bibliography).

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on the First and Second Books of Samuel, Volume 1. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .