Translations
F.O.G.MPrimary
F.O.G MessageYour hands were not bound, your feet were not shackled in chains — you fell as men fall before the ruthless.' And all the people wept over him again.
F.O.GSecondary
The F.O.GYour hands were not bound, your feet were not fettered in bronze — you fell as one falls before the wicked.' And all the people wept over him again.
KJV
King James VersionThy hands were not bound, nor thy feet put into fetters: as a man falleth before wicked men, so fellest thou. And all the people wept again over him.
BSB
Berean Standard BibleYour hands were not bound, your feet were not fettered. As a man falls before the wicked, so also you fell.” And all the people wept over him even more.
Footnotes
David's lament insists on Avner's dignity: he died not as a condemned criminal or prisoner of war but as an honourable man brought down by treachery. The antithetical parallelism — bound hands / fettered feet contrasted with falling before the wicked — is characteristic of Hebrew lament poetry, echoing the elegiac form of 2 Samuel 1:19–27. The repetition *wattōsipû kol-hāʿam liḇkôt ʿālāyw* ('all the people again wept over him') shows the cumulative emotional effect: the lament breaks them open a second time, deepening grief rather than exhausting it.
