But he stood in the midst of the plot, and defended it, and killed the Philistines; and Yahweh worked a great victory.
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But he stood in the midst of the plot, and defended it, and killed the Philistines; and Yahweh worked a great victory.
But he stood in the midst of the ground, and defended it, and slew the Philistines: and the LORD wrought a great victory.
But he stationed himself in the midst of the portion, and he delivered it, and he struck the Philistines. And Yahweh did great salvation.
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
But he stood in the midst of the plot, and defended it, and killed the Philistines; and Yahweh worked a great victory.
But Shammah took his stand in the middle of the field, defended it, and struck down the Philistines. So the LORD brought about a great victory.
But Shammah took his stand in the middle of the field, defended it, and struck down the Philistines. So the LORD brought about a great victory.
But he stood in the midst of the ground, and defended it, and slew the Philistines: and the LORD wrought a great victory.
But he stood in the midst of the plot, and defended it, and slew the Philistines; and Jehovah wrought a great victory.
But he stood in the midst of the plot, and defended it, and slew the Philistines: and the LORD wrought a great victory.
But he stoode in the middes of the fielde, and defended it, and slewe the Philistims: so the Lord gaue great victorie.
He stood in the midst of the field, and defended it, and defeated the Philistines: and the Lord gave a great victory.
and he stationeth himself in the midst of the portion, and delivereth it, and smiteth the Philistines, and Jehovah worketh a great salvation.
and he stations himself in the midst of the portion, and delivers it, and strikes the Philistines, and YHWH works a great salvation.
But Shammah stood in the middle of the field and defended it. He killed the Philistines, and Yahweh brought about a great victory.
But he stationed himself in the midst of the portion, and he delivered it, and he struck the Philistines. And Yahweh did great salvation.
and he stood in the midst of the plot and delivered it, and smote the Philistines, and Jehovah wrought a great deliverance.
But he stood in the middle of the plot and defended it, and killed the Philistines; and the LORD worked a great victory.
But he stood in the midst of the ground, and defended it, and slew the Philistines: and the LORD wrought a great victory.
but Shammah took his stand in the middle of the field, defending it and killing the Philistines. The Lord gave them a great victory.
But he kept his place in the middle of the bit of land, and kept back their attack and overcame the Philistines: and the Lord gave a great salvation.
But he stood in the midst of the plot, and defended it, and slew the Philistines; and the LORD wrought a great victory.
Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult). Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org).
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These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →
Shared distinctive vocabulary
הַֽחֶלְקָה֙ smoothness H2513 occurs in 25 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
Verb forms
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 22 words from the Hebrew and 24 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.
A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.
Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.
In the original languages it is 11 Hebrew tokens and 18 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.
Topical passages linked to 2 Samuel 23:12 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.
Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).
The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.
These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.
וַיִּתְיַצֵּ֤ב בְּתוֹךְ הַֽחֶלְקָה֙ וַיַּצִּילֶ֔הָ וַיַּ֖ךְ אֶת פְּלִשְׁתִּ֑ים וַיַּ֥עַשׂ יְהוָ֖ה תְּשׁוּעָ֥ה גְדוֹלָֽה
But he stood in the midst of the plot, and defended it, and killed the Philistines; and Yahweh worked a great victory.
World English Bible · Public Domain
καί στηλόω ἐν μέσος ὁ μερίς καί ἐκαἱρέω αὐτός καί πατάσσω ὁ ἀλλόφυλος καί ποιέω κύριος σωτηρία μέγας
And he stood firm in the midst of the portion, and rescued it, and struck the Philistines; and the Lord wrought a great deliverance.
LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain
Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →
The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.
וְאִתְעַתֵּד בְּגוֹ אַחְסַנְתָּא וְשֵׁיזְבֵיהּ וּקְטַל יַת פְּלִשְׁתָּאֵי וַעֲבַד יְיָ פּוּרְקָנָא רַבָּא:
(no public-domain English translation for this verse)
Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.
2 Samuel, in the Historical, opens this verse with 11 words (11 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is chelqâh (“smoothness”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Commentary
Notes on 2 Samuel 23:12 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.
Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →
Trapp's Complete Commentary
John Trapp
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Geneva Bible (1599)
Geneva Bible translators
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.
John Gill's Exposition
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Wesley's Explanatory Notes
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.