Thus shall you say to Joab: this introduces yet another quotation within a quotation. If this presents problems in the receptor language, it can be transformed into an indirect quote, as has been done in Good News Translation.

Do not let this matter trouble you: or “Do not be upset about the way the battle went” or “Don’t be distressed about what happened in that battle.”

For: this introduces the reason for the encouragement David wants to give to Joab. It is because people can never know who may die in battle that Joab is told not to worry. The fact that David and Joab actually arranged for Uriah to die does not change the fact that David pretends that they had nothing to do with it.

The sword devours: a literal translation of this expression will be extremely awkward if not impossible in many languages. What it means is that “people are killed by the sword” or “soldiers die by the sword.” But the word sword is used as an image to represent any military conflict. In some languages it will be more natural to speak of “dying in war” than to translate literally.

Now one and now another: this is a way of saying that things happen in a haphazard manner. There is no apparent reason why one person is killed and another is spared, and people cannot know in advance who may die in battle. In some languages it will be most natural to say “people never know who will die [in a war].”

Overthrow it: the verb so translated may mean either “destroy it [the city]” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh, New International Version, New American Bible) or “break through its walls” (Contemporary English Version), implying the capture of the city but not necessarily its total destruction. The former seems more probable.

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on the First and Second Books of Samuel, Volume 2. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .