And David built there an altar to the LORD and presented burnt offerings and peace offerings: The common Hebrew conjunction rendered And may be taken as a temporal connector (New American Bible “then”) or it may be left untranslated. The text says that David made the sacrifices, but it is possible that the writer meant that David had a priest offer these sacrifices. In languages that have a causative form of the verb, that verb form would be used here if David himself did not offer the sacrifices. But since the text does not mention any priest, it will be better to say that David offered the sacrifices. Burnt offerings were animal “offerings that were completely burnt” (Nova Tradução na Linguagem de Hoje; see verse 23). Peace offerings were sacrifices in which only a part of the animal was burned on the altar; the rest was eaten by the worshipers (see the comments on 1 Chr 16.1). In addition to peace offerings (also New Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible), other translations include “fellowship offerings” (Good News Translation, La Bible du Semeur), “offerings of well-being” (New Revised Standard Version), “shared-offerings” (Revised English Bible), and “reconciliation sacrifices” (Biblia Dios Habla Hoy).

And called upon the LORD may be translated “and he prayed to the Lord” (Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente; similarly Good News Translation, Nueva Versión Internacional, Nova Tradução na Linguagem de Hoje).

And he answered him with fire from heaven upon the altar of burnt offering: The fire from heaven was a sign of God’s approval of David’s choice of the place as the site of the future Temple (compare Lev 9.24; 2 Chr 7.1). The reason that God sent fire may be made explicit as in Good News Translation: “to burn the sacrifices” (also Bible en français courant, Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente, Nova Tradução na Linguagem de Hoje)

At the end of this verse some translations add with the Septuagint “and [it] consumed the burnt offering” (American Bible, La Bible Pléiade; similarly Knoppers). It is possible that a scribe accidentally omitted these words when his eye skipped from the first occurrence of burnt offering to the second occurrence. Even if the shorter Masoretic Text is followed, the Septuagint simply makes explicit what is implicit in the Hebrew.

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on 1-2 Chronicles, Volume 1. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2014. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .