23:13 At the time of17 the harvest three18 of the thirty leaders went down to19 David at the cave of Adullam. A band of Philistines was camped in the valley of Rephaim.
tn The meaning of Hebrew אֶל־קָצִיר (’el qatsir) seems here to be “at the time of harvest,” although this is an unusual use of the phrase. As S. R. Driver points out, this preposition does not normally have the temporal sense of “in” or “during” (S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel, 366).
18
tc The translation follows the Qere and many medieval Hebrew mss in reading שְׁלֹשָׁה (shéloshah, “three”) rather than the Kethib of the MTשְׁלֹשִׁים (shéloshim, “thirty”). “Thirty” is due to dittography of the following word and makes no sense in the context.