The statement containing the passive verb, were defeated, may easily be turned around if the passive causes problems: “David’s army defeated the Israelites….”

The servants of David: in the present context this expression refers to all those who were loyal to David—including officers and regular fighting men.

The slaughter there was great …: the structure of the last part of this verse is awkward and will probably need to be arranged differently in other languages. Some may prefer the following model: “That day twenty thousand soldiers died in the battle. The killing was very great.” The word translated slaughter is rendered “casualties” (New International Version and New American Bible) and “loss of life” (Revised English Bible). The rendering of Good News Translation as “defeat” may therefore be misleading. The same Hebrew term is rendered “plague” in 1 Sam 6.4 and “slaughter” in 1 Sam 4.17 and 2 Sam 17.9.

Twenty thousand men: it is uncertain whether this refers to the total number of soldiers on both sides or just the enemies of David. The parallelism between the two parts of this verse suggests that the figure twenty thousand refers to the enemies only, that is, to the Israelite soldiers. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch makes this interpretation explicit, with “20,000 Israelites met their death.”

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 .