8 The Leningrad Codex (the basis of ) reads אֲנִי (’ani, 1st person common singular independent personal pronoun): “I obey the king’s command.” Other medieval Hebrew and all the versions (, , , ) preserve an alternate textual tradition of the definite accusative marker אֶת־ (’et) introducing the direct object: אֶת־פִּי־מֶלֶךְ שְׁמוֹר (’et-pi-melekh shémor, “Obey the command of the king”). External evidence supports the alternate textual tradition. The is guilty of simple orthographic confusion between similar looking letters. The editors and the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project adopt אֶת־ as the original reading. See D. Barthélemy, e.d., Preliminary and Interim Report on the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, 3:582–83.
9 The phrase “you took” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for smoothness.
10 The genitive-construct שְׁבוּעַת אֱלֹהִים (shévu’at ’elohim, “an oath of God”) functions as a genitive of location (“an oath before God”) or an adjectival genitive of attribute (“a supreme oath”).
11 The words “to be loyal to him” do not appear in the Hebrew text, but are supplied in the translation for clarification.