2 Samuel 18:3

Plain English Version

But the soldiers said to him, “No way. You can’t come with us. You are the boss man, but we are just nothing. You are the one they want to kill. If we soldiers all run away, they will not chase us. If we all die, they will not care. They will say, ‘All right, leave them.’ But if you die, they will be really happy. So it’s good for you to stay here in this town. If the fighting gets hard for us, then you can send more soldiers to help us.”

Cross References

2 Samuel 17:2

Right now he’s upset and tired. We will suddenly come and attack his mob, and they will get a shock. All his mob will run away. He’s the only one I will kill dead.

2 Samuel 21:17

But one of David’s boss soldiers came to save him from that big man. He attacked the big man and killed him dead. That brave man was Abishai, the son of David’s sister called Zeruiah. After that, David’s men made a promise to him. They said, “We will never let you come with us again to fight. They might kill you dead. You are like the lamp in God’s ceremony house. Nobody puts out its fire. You see, your life is like that. We don’t want anybody to kill you and finish up Israel’s lamp.” (We have not yet translated 21:18—24:25. It is about some of the other things that David did before he died. The last bit of this story is from another book called the 1st book of the Big Bosses. We call that book 1 Kings, and these verses are from 1 Kings 2:10-12.) David died when he was an old man. They buried him in the city called Jerusalem, in that part of the city they call the city of David. David was the big boss of Israel for 40 years. First he was the boss in the town called Hebron for 7 years, then he was the boss in Jerusalem for 33 years. Then David’s son Solomon became the big boss. He took over from his father and controlled the whole country.

1 Samuel 18:7

They sang like this as they went, “Saul killed dead a thousand enemy soldiers. David killed dead 10,000 of them.”