The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
The Ark Brought to Jerusalem
2 Samuel 6:12–15 — The Ark Brought to Jerusalem. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
12Now it was reported to King David, “The LORD has blessed the house of Obed-edom and all that belongs to him, because of the ark of God.” So David went and had the ark of God brought up from the house of Obed-edom into the City of David with rejoicing.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yug·gaḏ lam·me·leḵ dā·wiḏ lê·mōr Yah·weh ’eṯ- bê·raḵ bêṯ ‘ō·ḇêḏ ’ĕ·ḏōm wə·’eṯ- kāl- ’ă·šer- lōw ba·‘ă·ḇūr ’ă·rō·wn hā·’ĕ·lō·hîm dā·wiḏ way·yê·leḵ ’ă·rō·wn hā·’ĕ·lō·hîm way·ya·‘al ’eṯ- mib·bêṯ ‘ō·ḇêḏ ’ĕ·ḏōm ‘îr dā·wiḏ bə·śim·ḥāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-it-was-told to-the-king David, saying: “He-has-blessed, YHWH, the-house of-Obed-Edom and-all that-is-to-him on-account-of the-ark of-the-God.” And-he-went, David, and-he-caused-to-go-up the-ark of-the-God from-the-house of-Obed-Edom to-the-city of-David with-gladness.
Where the English smooths the original
It had been his original purpose to carry the ark to Jerusalem, and he had only desisted in a fit of vexation and then of fear.
The lapse of three months not only restored the agitated mind of the monarch to a tranquil and settled tone, but led him to a discovery of his former error. Having learned that the ark was kept in its temporary resting-place not only without inconvenience or danger, but with great advantage, he resolved forthwith to remove it to the capital, with the observance of all due form and solemnity (1Ch 15:1-13).
(f) Meaning, he caused the Levites to bear it according to the law.Geneva reads the Levites into 2 Samuel from the parallel in 1 Chronicles 15; our text here names no bearers at all. The gloss is a harmonisation, and a defensible one, but it is not what this verse says.
The manner of the ark’s transport was irregular; for the law strictly enjoined its being carried by the Levites by means of bearing-poles resting on their shouldersMaclaren is expounding the earlier, failed attempt (vv. 1–11); his sentence names exactly the law whose observance the present verse silently restores.
13When those carrying the ark of the LORD had advanced six paces, he sacrificed an ox and a fattened calf.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·hî kî nō·śə·’ê ’ă·rō·wn- Yah·weh ṣā·‘ă·ḏū šiš·šāh ṣə·‘ā·ḏîm way·yiz·baḥ šō·wr ū·mə·rî
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-it-came-to-be, when had-paced the-bearers-of the-ark-of YHWH six paces, and-he-sacrificed an-ox and-a-fatling.
Where the English smooths the original
But the words of the text do not distinctly affirm that sacrifices were offered whenever the bearers advanced six paces, but only that this was done was soon as the bearers had taken the first six steps.
The meaning is, not that they sacrificed oxen and fatlings every six steps, which would have been impossible, but that when - after the arrangement made by David for the Levites to carry the ark 1 Chronicles 15:2 , 1 Chronicles 15:12 , 1 Chronicles 15:15 they had borne it successfully and with visible tokens of God's favor, out of the house of Obed-edom and six "steps" on the road to the city of David to the sound of the musical instruments - then they stopped and offered solemn sacrifices.
This he did either to appease God for the former miscarriage; or to praise him for his present mercy, that he had not made another breach upon them; or to implore his favour and gracious presence with them in this great affair.Poole holds three possible motives open rather than deciding; the text gives no motive at all, and his restraint is the honest reading.
Evidently the way to the holy city was a way of blood. The stained streets of Zion, the rivers of blood, the slaughtered heaps and the blaze of altar fires formed a strange contrast to the dancing, the singing, and the harping of the multitudes who crowded the cityThe Pulpit Commentary is here quoting Sime, 'Kingdom of All Israel,' p. 288 — and quoting a picture the same page goes on to reject, since Pulpit itself holds that the Hebrew records one sacrifice at the outset, not a road lined with victims.
14And David, wearing a linen ephod, danced with all his might before the LORD,
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·ḏā·wiḏ wə·ḏā·wiḏ ḥā·ḡūr bāḏ ’ê·p̄ō·wḏ mə·ḵar·kêr bə·ḵāl ‘ōz lip̄·nê Yah·weh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-David was-whirling with-all-strength before-the-face-of YHWH; and-David was-girded with-an-ephod-of linen.
Where the English smooths the original
Danced - The Hebrew word is found only here and in 2 Samuel 6:16 . It means "to dance in a circle," hence, simply to dance.
The white ephod was, strictly speaking, a priestly costume, although in the law it is not prescribed as the dress to be worn by them when performing their official duties, but rather as the dress which denoted the priestly character of the wearer
David’s enthusiasm did not fear to transgress the limits of conventional propriety.
Probably David did mean to rank himself for the time among the inferior servitors of the ark.Pulpit and Cambridge read the same garment in opposite directions — promotion to priestly office, or voluntary demotion to a servitor's dress. Both are inferences; the text records only the fabric.
15while he and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouting and the sounding of the ram’s horn.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·ḏā·wiḏ wə·ḵāl bêṯ yiś·rā·’êl ma·‘ă·lîm ’eṯ- ’ă·rō·wn Yah·weh biṯ·rū·‘āh ū·ḇə·qō·wl šō·w·p̄ār
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-David and-all the-house of-Israel were-bringing-up the-ark-of YHWH with-shout and-with-voice-of ram's-horn.
Where the English smooths the original
This whole company, with David at the head of them, sung alternately the twenty-fourth Psalm, which was composed for this occasionBenson's assignment of Psalm 24 (and his order of march from Psalm 68) to this procession is a traditional reconstruction, not a claim made by 2 Samuel 6; the psalm headings do not name the occasion.
with the shouts of the people in common, and with blowing of trumpets by those who were appointed for that purpose
We ought to serve God with our whole body and soul, and with every endowment and power we possess.Henry's note is written on the whole block 6:12–19, not on this verse alone.
In 2 Samuel 6:15 it is still further related, that David and all the house (nation) of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with jubilee and trumpet-blast.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The unit opens with a Hofal — וַיֻּגַּ֗ד, “and it was made to be told” — a passive with no teller named. What is told is not a command but a rumour of prosperity: the house of Obed-Edom is blessed בַּעֲב֖וּר, on account of, the ark. ✦ JFB reads the three months (v. 11) as the making of the king: the interval “not only restored the agitated mind of the monarch to a tranquil and settled tone, but led him to a discovery of his former error.” ✦ Ellicott guards David's motive against the obvious cynicism — the new action “implies neither jealousy nor a wish to deprive his subject of a blessing”; rather, “It had been his original purpose to carry the ark to Jerusalem, and he had only desisted in a fit of vexation and then of fear.” ✦ Poole says the same in four words: “he apprehended his former mistake.” ✦ Benson notes the household itself could account for its good fortune no other way. ⚙ What the Hebrew adds to all of them is the stem: וַיַּעַל֩ is Hifil, a causative — David does not carry, he causes to be carried, and that grammatical fact is the whole space into which ✦ Geneva's gloss fits: “he caused the Levites to bear it according to the law.” ✦ Maclaren, expounding the failed first attempt, had named the law in question — the ark's “being carried by the Levites by means of bearing-poles resting on their shoulders” — and our verse silently restores it without once mentioning that it had been broken.
The verse is built on a cognate accusative — צָעֲד֛וּ … צְעָדִ֑ים, “they paced paces” — and on a participle, נֹשְׂאֵ֥י, the bearers. ✦ K&D make the participle carry the argument: “it is very evident that they were Levites … from the fact that the ark was carried this time, and not driven, as before.” The old controversy of the verse is whether a sacrifice fell every six paces the whole way. ✦ Barnes calls the repeated version “impossible” and reads a single halt: “then they stopped and offered solemn sacrifices.” ✦ K&D reach the same result by grammar, noting that the text “does not distinctly affirm that sacrifices were offered whenever the bearers advanced six paces.” ✦ Gill reports both opinions and judges the repeated one “not very likely”; ✦ JFB report a third guess, that four altars were hastily raised. ⚙ The decisive datum is one no English version shows: the verbs and objects are singular — he sacrificed, an ox, a fatling — as ✦ Pulpit alone states outright (“Hebrew, an ox and a fatling”). Almost the entire dispute is an argument about the KJV's plural. ✦ Poole leaves the motive threefold and undecided, and that restraint is right: the narrator gives none. ⚙ What he does give is order. Six steps are counted because a man died on this road, and the first safe stretch is answered not by a cheer but by a killing.
Two participles hold the verse: מְכַרְכֵּ֥ר, whirling, and חָג֖וּר, girded. ✦ Barnes fixes the first as a canonical hapax of sorts — “The Hebrew word is found only here and in 2 Samuel 6:16 . It means ‘to dance in a circle’” — and ✦ Pulpit describes the motion as “the springing round in half circles to the sound of music.” ✦ Gill honestly records that the ancient versions flinched: Targum, LXX, Syriac and Arabic all read “praised,” since “it nowhere appears to have been a custom to dance before the ark.” On the garment the brief's voices genuinely divide. ✦ Cambridge: David “laid aside his royal robes and appeared in the distinctive dress of a priest,” exercising a priestly character as head of “a kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6). ✦ K&D agree it is “strictly speaking, a priestly costume … the dress which denoted the priestly character of the wearer,” worn by David “as the head of the priestly nation.” ✦ Ellicott dissents on a single Hebrew word: the high priest's ephod was of shesh, while David's and Samuel's were of בָּֽד׃, and the ephod of bad “was simply a garment worn by any one engaged in a religious service.” ✦ Pulpit turns the same fabric downward: “Probably David did mean to rank himself for the time among the inferior servitors of the ark. He might have claimed more.” ⚙ The lexicon will not settle it, and we should not pretend otherwise. What the Hebrew does settle is the cost: עֹ֖ז is the noun for force and for majesty, and David spends all of it — which is exactly what ✦ JFB find “apparently unsuitable to the gravity of age or the dignity of a king,” and exactly what Michal will call shameless.
The closing verse hands the causative of v. 12 to everyone: מַעֲלִ֖ים, a plural participle, “were bringing up.” ⚙ The narrator repeats בֵּ֣ית from v. 12 — the house of Obed-Edom becomes the house of Israel — and ✦ K&D's gloss “all the house (nation) of Israel” catches what English cannot: one blessed household has become a blessed people. The two sounds are בִּתְרוּעָ֖ה and the voice of the horn; ✦ K&D read the first as “the song of jubilee and the joyous shouting of the people,” though the noun is also the technical alarm-blast of war. ✦ Gill distinguishes the crowd's shout from the appointed trumpeters', and notes that the full orchestra is itemised only in 1 Chronicles 15:27–28; he also passes on Josephus's seven choirs. ✦ Benson reconstructs the order of march from Psalm 68:25 and assigns Psalm 24 to the day — a tradition, not a datum. ✦ Henry draws the application the Hebrew supports without embarrassment: “We ought to serve God with our whole body and soul, and with every endowment and power we possess.”
⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested against the text. Chapter 6 is a single argument about the difference between reverence and control, and verses 12–15 are its resolution. Uzzah died with his hand on the ark, steadying it; David lives with his hands empty, whirling in front of it. The chapter is not contrasting fear with joy — it is contrasting two ways of handling holiness: managing it, and being escorted by it. Notice what changes and what does not. The law changes nothing: the ark is as lethal in v. 13 as in v. 7, which is why blood falls after six steps. David changes everything he can change and nothing he cannot: he swaps the cart for shoulders, the royal robe for בָּֽד׃, the managed transport for a counted, sacrificial crawl. And the report that moved him was not a revelation but a neighbour's full barn — God preached to David through Obed-Edom's prosperity, in the only language the king was still able to hear after Perez-Uzzah. ⚙ Then observe the grammar of the joy. עֹ֖ז, the strength David spends on the dance, is the same noun Israel's songs give to God's own might and to a king's majesty; he expends the dignity of the throne in the presence of the throne that matters. The narrator's verdict is hidden in a word he uses only twice in all Scripture, מְכַרְכֵּ֥ר — once here, and once in v. 16 on Michal's lips as contempt. The identical act is worship and indecency depending on who is watching, and the chapter has already told us which viewer the dance is aimed at: לִפְנֵ֣י יְהוָ֑ה, to the face of YHWH. ⚙ What we will not claim: the text nowhere says David was ordaining himself a priest, nowhere gives his motive for the sacrifice, and nowhere criticises or commends the dance. Ellicott, Cambridge, K&D and Pulpit disagree about the ephod, and we leave that disagreement standing rather than resolve it by assertion.
Uzzah steadied the ark and died; David let it go and danced — the difference between the two men is the difference between managing holiness and being escorted by it.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The Piel participle מְכַרְכֵּ֥ר (kârar, H3769) of v. 14 is one of the rarest verbs in the canon: the Verifier finds it in only two verses, and both are in this chapter. Two lines later Michal looks out of a window and sees the king whirling — the identical word — and “despised him in her heart.” ✦ Barnes registers the rarity (“found only here and in 2 Samuel 6:16”), and ✦ Gill notes that Michal's contempt is precisely why the unusual word was “observed” at all. ⚙ The narrator has therefore engineered a collision: he refuses to give the worship and the scorn two different vocabularies. Whatever the act is, it is one act, and the chapter makes the reader choose a vantage point rather than a description.
2 Samuel 6:16
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H3769 kârar (in 2 vv) — a canonical near-hapax shared by these two verses alone; also shared H727 ʼârôwn (in 174 vv)
וּמְרִֽיא׃ (mᵉrîyʼ, H4806, “stall-fed”) is a rare word, and the Verifier finds it clustered with zâbach and shôwr in one other scene: Adonijah, by the stone of Zoheleth, sacrificing sheep, oxen and fatlings to make himself king while David still lives (1 Kings 1:9, 19, 25). ⚙ The vocabulary is identical; the direction is opposite. David kills a fatling six paces out to consecrate the ascent of God's throne into the city; Adonijah kills fatlings to consecrate his own. The Samuel scene has the king in a servant's linen before the ark; the Kings scene has the son in a feast with the army captains and no ark in sight. ⚙ We do not claim the later writer is quoting this verse — only that the same three lexemes furnish two coronation banquets with contrary objects.
1 Kings 1:9 · 1 Kings 1:19 · 1 Kings 1:25
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H4806 mᵉrîyʼ (in 8 vv — rare), H2076 zâbach (in 127 vv), H7794 shôwr (in 69 vv); a genuine verbal cluster, but no citation is claimed in either direction
צָעֲד֛וּ (tsâʻad, H6805) is rare — eight verses in all — and its company is striking: “when thou marchedst out of the field of Edom” (Judges 5:4), “thou didst march through the land in indignation” (Habakkuk 3:12), “when thou didst march through the wilderness” (Psalm 68:7). In every one of those, the marcher is God. ⚙ Here the verb is given to men with a box on their shoulders, and the narrator counts their steps. The loan is generous and dangerous at once: the bearers move with the gait of the One they carry, and six steps later blood is shed to acknowledge that the gait was lent, not owned. ✦ Benson independently places Psalm 68 at this very procession, reading its order of march (v. 25) as the order of this one.
Psalm 68:7 · Judges 5:4 · Habakkuk 3:12
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H6805 tsâʻad (in 8 vv — rare); the shared lexeme is certain, the theological inference from it is ours
The Verifier finds one verse that shares all three of this passage's clothing lexemes — חָג֖וּר (châgar, H2296), בָּֽד׃ (bad, H906) and אֵפ֥וֹד (ʼêphôwd, H646): 1 Samuel 2:18, the child Samuel ministering before YHWH, girded with a linen ephod. ✦ Poole, ✦ Ellicott, ✦ Gill, ✦ K&D and ✦ Pulpit all reach for that verse independently, and ✦ Pulpit draws the sharpest conclusion from it: it was “a dress worn even by a child when admitted to service in a priest's family,” so that Michal could read it as humiliation. ⚙ The three-lexeme overlap is real and unusually tight, and it establishes the garment's rank rather than David's office. We tier it structural rather than verbal on purpose: none of the three words is rare by itself, so what the Verifier has found is a shared dress-formula, not an allusion.
1 Samuel 2:18
basis: Verifier: three shared Hebrew lexemes co-occurring — H906 bad (in 19 vv), H2296 châgar (in 41 vv), H646 ʼêphôwd (in 39 vv); the co-occurrence is unusually tight, but no one of the three lexemes is rare on its own, so this is deliberately tiered below verbal
The same rare noun mᵉrîyʼ (H4806) that David offers six paces from Obed-Edom's door is the animal the prophets say God has had enough of: “I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats” (Isaiah 1:11), “neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts” (Amos 5:22). ⚙ We tier this below the 1 Kings link deliberately. The shared lexeme is real, but nothing verbal is being quoted in either direction; what stands is a motif — the identical costly beast is acceptable here and refused there — and the difference is never located in the animal. Ezekiel 39:18 and Isaiah 11:6 use the same word again in unrelated senses, which is a caution against pressing any of it too hard.
Isaiah 1:11 · Amos 5:22
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H4806 mᵉrîyʼ (in 8 vv); deliberately tiered thematic rather than verbal because no quotation or allusion is claimed — only a shared sacrificial motif read in contrast
✦ Matthew Henry reads the chapter's two houses — Uzzah struck, Obed-Edom enriched — straight into the apostolic image of the stone: “Christ is indeed a Stone of stumbling, and a Rock of offence, to those that are disobedient; but to those that believe, he is a Corner-stone, elect, precious, 1Pe 2:6-8.” ⚙ The structural parallel is exact: a single object, unchanged, whose effect on a man is decided by how he stands toward it — and in both texts the narrator refuses to make the object safer to account for the deaths. ⚙ This link cannot be verbal. The New Testament passage is Greek and this one Hebrew, so no shared Strong's lexeme exists or could; the recorded basis is Henry's own stated reading plus the shared pattern, nothing more.
1 Peter 2:6-8 · 2 Samuel 6:7
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew): no shared Strong's lexeme is possible, so no verbal tier is available. Recorded basis = Matthew Henry's explicit citation of 1 Peter 2:6-8 on this pericope, plus the shared two-effects-one-object pattern
Verse 13 has a disputed textual history and the brief's own witnesses contradict each other about it. ✦ Pulpit reports a Vulgate addition at v. 12 that Jerome evidently took from manuscripts of his day — “There were with David seven choruses and a calf as victim” — and judges “The fact is not in itself improbable”; it further notes that “The LXX. omits the thirteenth verse altogether” and substitutes a reading about seven choruses, a calf and lambs. ✦ K&D quote the same Greek text and dismiss it as “senseless,” treating the Vulgate form as a gloss “probably taken from the Itala,” and refuse Thenius's proposal to emend the Hebrew accordingly. ✦ Gill passes on Josephus's seven choirs as corroboration. ⚙ We flag rather than adjudicate: the Masoretic text we have translated above is singular throughout (“an ox and a fatling”), the Greek tradition differs materially, and readers should verify the manuscript evidence for themselves rather than take either commentator's verdict on trust.
1 Chronicles 15:26
basis: Contested provenance: LXX omits 2 Samuel 6:13 and substitutes a seven-choruses reading; a Vulgate plus at v. 12 carries the same material. Pulpit treats it as plausible, K&D as a senseless gloss from the Itala. Not a Verifier lexeme link; flagged for manuscript verification
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
✦ Cambridge grounds David's ephod in Exodus 19:6 — as “the head and representative of ‘a kingdom of priests,’ the king possessed a priestly character” — and ✦ K&D say the white ephod was worn “as the head of the priestly nation of Israel.” ✦ Ellicott and ✦ Pulpit push back: the ephod of בָּֽד׃ is the cloth of an ordinary servitor, even of a child (1 Samuel 2:18), and Michal read it as humiliation. ⚙ The New Testament does not resolve that dispute so much as absorb it. Zechariah 6:13 promises one who “shall be a priest upon his throne,” and Hebrews 7:14 concedes the difficulty David's ephod raises — “our Lord sprang out of Juda; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood” — before locating the priesthood elsewhere, in an order that is not Aaron's. ⚙ David in linen is the shape of the problem; the two offices sit on one man, but illegally, provisionally, and only for an afternoon. The apostolic answer is not that David was a priest but that the office he could only mime was afterwards filled. That a Davidic priest-king is the pattern here is an ancient and widely-held reading; our particular use of Ellicott's bad/shesh distinction to sharpen it is ⚙ ours.
Zechariah 6:13 · Hebrews 7:14-17 · Exodus 19:6 · 1 Samuel 2:18
✦ Matthew Henry reads verses 12–19 through 1 Peter 2:6-8 without hesitation: the ark is “a Stone of stumbling, and a Rock of offence, to those that are disobedient; but to those that believe, he is a Corner-stone, elect, precious.” The chapter supplies both halves within eleven verses: Uzzah dead at the touch, Obed-Edom's household enriched by the same presence, בַּעֲב֖וּר — on account of — the very same box. ⚙ Henry adds the sacrificial hinge the narrative itself supplies at v. 13: “all our joy in God must be connected with repentance and faith in the Redeemer's atoning blood.” ⚙ That is the logic of six paces and a slaughtered ox. The presence does not become less dangerous once the Levites carry it correctly; it becomes approachable because blood is shed on the way. Hebrews 10:19-20 names the same order — boldness to enter, by blood, along a road newly opened. This is the standard apostolic reading of the ark, recorded here from Henry and rooted in 1 Peter itself.
1 Peter 2:6-8 · Hebrews 10:19-20 · 2 Samuel 6:7
The unit ends with two sounds, בִּתְרוּעָ֖ה and the voice of the שׁוֹפָֽר׃ — the war-cry and the horn — carrying YHWH up into a city that had never held Him. ✦ Benson assigns Psalm 24 to the day, the psalm of gates lifting their heads for the King of glory to come in, and reconstructs the order of march from Psalm 68:25. ⚙ We mark this reading as novel in its particular form, because the psalm headings do not name the occasion and Benson's assignment is tradition, not data. But the canonical shape it points at is not ours: the ark's ascent into Zion with shout and trumpet is the Old Testament's picture of an enthronement, and the New Testament describes the Lord's own descent “with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God” (1 Thessalonians 4:16), and the seventh trumpet announcing that the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord (Revelation 11:15). ⚙ David's procession runs the same liturgy forward, once, on a hill, with a king dancing in a servant's linen in front of it.
Psalm 24:7-10 · 1 Thessalonians 4:16 · Revelation 11:15
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
Text. The Hebrew translated above is the Masoretic text as given in the Berean interlinear supplied with this brief. Verse 13 is textually disputed: the LXX omits it and substitutes a reading about seven choruses and a calf and lambs, and the Vulgate carries a related plus at v. 12 (“There were with David seven choruses and a calf as victim”). ✦ Pulpit thinks the added fact “not in itself improbable”; ✦ K&D call the Greek reading senseless and treat the Latin as a gloss from the Itala, refusing Thenius's proposed emendation. We have translated the Masoretic text and flagged the dispute rather than settling it.
Interlinear artefacts. Two glitches in the supplied word list should not be mistaken for features of the Hebrew. At 6:12 the two halves of the name Obed-Edom are split across indices 8/9 and 24/25, with the first element carrying a placeholder gloss; and at 6:14 indices 0 and 1 both read וְדָוִד (wə·ḏā·wiḏ), the second with an empty gloss — the Hebrew verse names David twice, once in each clause, and the duplication in the list reflects that alignment, not a doubled word in the consonantal text. Index 13 of 6:12 (lōw, “belongs to him”) carries no Strong's number in the source data.
Word order. Our literal renderings are built from the Hebrew clause order, which differs from the index order of the Berean interlinear at 6:12 and 6:14 (the interlinear re-sequences words to track the English). Where the two disagree, we have followed the Hebrew.
Sources and their limits. ✦ Henry's note is written on the block 6:12–19 as a whole and is quoted here on individual verses accordingly. ✦ The Pulpit excerpt at 6:13 is Pulpit quoting Sime, 'Kingdom of All Israel,' p. 288 — and quoting a view the same page then argues against. ✦ Geneva's identification of the bearers as Levites, ✦ JFB's and ✦ Cambridge's appeal to the preparation of priests and Levites, and ✦ K&D's and ✦ Gill's sacrificial numbers (seven bullocks and seven rams) are all imported from 1 Chronicles 15; 2 Samuel 6:13 names no bearers by tribe and no numbers beyond one ox and one fatling. ✦ Benson's attribution of Psalm 24 and Psalm 68 to this procession is traditional reconstruction.
What remains uncertain. Whether David's linen ephod claims priestly office (Cambridge, K&D) or disclaims royal dignity (Ellicott, Pulpit); whether one sacrifice was offered or many (K&D and Barnes against the older repeated-sacrifice reading); why the ark is called “the ark of God” in v. 12 and “the ark of YHWH” in vv. 13 and 15; and David's motive for the sacrifice, which ✦ Poole leaves threefold and the text leaves unstated. The ⚙ synthesis above is fallible throughout and is offered to be tested against the Hebrew and the cited sources.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)