Executive Summary: 2 Samuel (English → French)

Why it matters

2 Samuel 7 is this curriculum’s Romans-1:16-17 equivalent: the single passage every other chapter of the book orbits. Getting its four interlocking terms right — maison (house/dynasty), trône (throne), pour toujours/éternel (forever), and amour fidèle (chesed, steadfast love) — determines whether French readers receive the Davidic Covenant as an unconditional, still-live theological promise or as a piece of dethroned-monarchy nostalgia. France’s own abolished monarchy, its majority-Catholic religious formation (practiced and lapsed), and its significant Jewish community make this the highest-stakes Old Testament curriculum produced for this language to date.

Key findings

• A new Critical-tier term had to be created that the Romans baseline has no equivalent for: chesed → “amour fidèle.” French has no single native word fusing covenant loyalty, freely-given love, and persistent faithfulness; “grâce” is off-limits because the baseline reserves it for New Testament charis. This term anchors doctrine 4 (God’s Steadfast Love) and recurs in chapters 2, 7, 9, and 22.
• The divine name required a dedicated, book-wide convention decision: YHWH is fixed as “l’Éternel,” never the baseline’s NT “Seigneur” (reserved for the Kyrios/Christ confession) and never “Jéhovah” (the Témoins de Jéhovah’s signature rendering).
• A single verse (7:14) carries the curriculum’s single highest fencing risk: the royal father/son adoption formula must render “son” as lowercase “fils,” absolutely walled off from the baseline’s Critical “Fils de Dieu” (Christ’s eternal Sonship). A slip here corrupts two doctrines at once — the Davidic Covenant and the Messianic Hope.
• The historical anointed-office title (“l’oint de l’Éternel”) must never become “le Messie” — the fulfilled title belongs to Christ alone; Saul and David are type and forerunner, not fulfillment.
• 83 terms are now recorded in translation memory for this curriculum: 30 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline, 53 newly introduced from 2 Samuel’s distinct Hebrew narrative vocabulary (covenant, kingship, bloodguilt, mourning, and worship registers absent from Romans).
• Full 24-chapter coverage confirmed: every chapter is mapped to a governing doctrine in 11_doctrine_analysis.md; no chapter is silently omitted, including chapters (4, 16, 17, 19) that reinforce existing doctrines without introducing new terms.

Risks

• 32 of the 83 recorded terms sit at Critical or High risk (9 Critical: god, yhwh, father_son_formula, righteousness_justice, atonement_propitiation, steadfast_love, plus inherited son_of_god, justification, imputed_righteousness; 23 High), each requiring human theologian review at every occurrence per the enforcement priority order.
• 10 of 17 doctrines (5 Critical + 5 High) require human theologian review for every occurrence, per doctrine_risk_registry.json’s risk summary; only 1 doctrine (Mourning and Lament) is automated-review-only.
• The sharpest cross-cultural risk is French literary fatalism (“destin”) silently replacing covenantal discipline in the Absalom/Sheba narrative arc (chs. 12–20) — a drift risk specific to French classical-tragedy convention that has no parallel in the Romans baseline’s risk profile.
• The ark of the covenant collides with live French Catholic Marian typology (“Arche de la Nouvelle Alliance” = Mary); every unglossed occurrence risks an unintended devotional detour for Catholic-formed readers.
• David’s confession (12:13) is the single highest sacramental-collision risk in the curriculum: unmediated confession to God must not be silently reframed through auricular confession and priestly absolution, the default pattern for a majority-Catholic readership.

Opportunities

• French “maison” preserves the Hebrew bayit wordplay almost perfectly (cf. “la maison de Bourbon”), a rare cross-linguistic gift that makes the chapter’s central reversal — David offers God a house; God promises David a house — fully renderable without loss, provided the same word is used in both directions.
• “Alliance” already usefully evokes the wedding ring in French (per the Romans baseline’s own note), reinforcing the relational warmth of covenant language across both curricula.
• David’s kindness to Mephibosheth (ch. 9) offers a built-in teaching bridge, letting French readers experience chesed narratively before it is defined abstractly in ch. 7 — human chesed illustrating divine chesed.
• Segond 21 (version ID 152) is confirmed as the recommended YouVersion citation base, giving this curriculum a stable, doctrinally uncontroversial, non-archaic citation backbone shared with future French curricula.

Recommended actions

1. Lock the “l’Éternel” divine-name convention and the chesed → “amour fidèle” rendering at the automated-validation layer before any Phase 2 segment is approved — both are zero-tolerance rules.
2. Require theologian sign-off, not merely native-speaker review, on every occurrence of the father/son formula (7:14), the anointed-office term, the ark of the covenant, and the atonement/expiation term, regardless of the surrounding segment’s otherwise-assigned risk tier.
3. Attach the Marian-typology disclaimer and the sacramental-confession disclaimer as mandatory first-occurrence footnotes per lesson, not optional style choices.
4. Carry the full 83-term translation memory and both extended registries into Phase 2 as a package; do not process any 2 Samuel segment against the Romans baseline files alone.

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Sources: 07_semantic_analysis.md, 08_core_glossary.md, 11_doctrine_analysis.md, 04_comparative_theology.md, 06_linguistic_gap_analysis.md, 05_translation_landscape.md, assets/translation_memory.json, assets/bible_term_registry.json, assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json.