Your master’s house, and your master’s wives: the “master” referred to in this passage is Saul, and this should be made clear in translation. This may be done either by using the name of Saul specifically in this verse, or by using third person pronoun references back to the previous verse, as Good News Translation has done. The house does not mean simply the royal palace but either the royal “household” (New Jerusalem Bible) or the whole kingdom that Saul had ruled over (so Good News Translation).

Anchor Bible and Revised English Bible, on the other hand, follow the Syriac version, which reads “your master’s daughter” (that is, Michal; see 3.13-14) and “the daughters of Israel and Judah.” A small spelling change in the Hebrew noun “house” would make these readings possible. And, in view of the nature of David’s crime, this possibility has considerable appeal. But the textual evidence for this is not very convincing, and Critique Textuelle de l’Ancien Testament gives an {A} rating to the Masoretic Text.

Into your bosom: the addition of these words may be understood as stressing the possibility of intimate female contact that should have made it unnecessary for David to have taken the wife of another man. But this wording also ties in with the vocabulary used in the image of the lamb on the lap (“bosom”) of its master in verse 3. New International Version, for example, translates “into your arms.” On the other hand, some translations take this expression as nothing more than an indication of “possession” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh). Similarly Revised English Bible has “to be your own.”

The house of Israel and of Judah: following the Syriac again, Anchor Bible and Revised English Bible have “the daughters of Israel and Judah.” This is in keeping with the notion that David had all the women that anyone could have wanted, and that most of this verse has to do with women rather than including certain other privileges of the king.

If this were too little, I would add to you as much more: the verb tenses here in English present a problem. The second verb may mean “I would have added…,” as indicated in the renderings of Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version. Or possibly it means simply that the LORD could have gone on enumerating more and more benefits that he had given to David, if what was already listed was considered insufficient. New American Bible may therefore be correct in translating “I could count up still more.” The context, however, seems to most interpreters to favor the interpretation clearly expressed in New Jerusalem Bible, “and, if this is still too little, I shall give you other things as well.”

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 .