4:6 She summoned 4 Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali. She said to him, “Is it not true that the Lord God of Israel is commanding you? Go, march to Mount Tabor! Take with you ten thousand men from Naphtali and Zebulun!
6:25 That night the Lord said to him, “Take the bull from your father’s herd, as well as a second bull, one that is seven years old. 7 Pull down your father’s Baal altar and cut down the nearby Asherah pole.
13:6 The woman went and said to her husband, “A man sent from God 37 came to me! He looked like God’s angelic messenger – he was very awesome. 38 I did not ask him where he came from, and he did not tell me his name. 13:7 He said to me, ‘Look, you will conceive and have a son. 39 So now, do not drink wine or beer and do not eat any food that will make you ritually unclean. 40 For the child will be dedicated 41 to God from birth till the day he dies.’”
14:15 On the fourth 43 day they said to Samson’s bride, “Trick your husband into giving the solution to the riddle. 44 If you refuse, 45 we will burn up 46 you and your father’s family. 47 Did you invite us here 48 to make us poor?” 49
15:1 Sometime later, during the wheat harvest, 50 Samson took a young goat as a gift and went to visit his bride. 51 He said to her father, 52 “I want to have sex with my bride in her bedroom!” 53 But her father would not let him enter.
19:22 They were having a good time, 87 when suddenly 88 some men of the city, some good-for-nothings, 89 surrounded the house and kept beating 90 on the door. They said to the old man who owned the house, “Send out the man who came to visit you so we can have sex with him.” 91
1 tn Heb “Judah said to Simeon, his brother.”
2 tn Heb “Come up with me into our allotted land and let us attack the Canaanites.”
3 tn Heb “I.” The Hebrew pronoun is singular, agreeing with the collective singular “Judah” earlier in the verse. English style requires a plural pronoun here, however.
4 tn Heb “sent and summoned.”
5 tn Heb “he went to her.”
6 tn Heb “fallen, dead.”
7 tn Or “Take a bull from your father’s herd, the second one, the one seven years old.” Apparently Gideon would need the bulls to pull down the altar.
8 tn Heb “to all who stood against him.”
9 tn Heb “Do you fight for Baal?”
10 tn Heb “fights for him.”
11 sn Whoever takes up his cause will die by morning. This may be a warning to the crowd that Joash intends to defend his son and to kill anyone who tries to execute Gideon. Then again, it may be a sarcastic statement about Baal’s apparent inability to defend his own honor. Anyone who takes up Baal’s cause may end up dead, perhaps by the same hand that pulled down the pagan god’s altar.
12 tn Heb “fight for himself.”
13 tn Heb “for he pulled down his altar.” The subject of the verb, if not Gideon, is indefinite (in which case a passive translation is permissible).
14 tn Heb “Let your anger not rage at me, so that I might speak only this once.”
15 tn Heb “let the fleece alone be dry, while dew is on all the ground.”
16 tn Heb “And Gideon came, and, look, a man was relating to his friend a dream.”
17 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the man mentioned in the previous clause) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
18 tn Heb “Look!” The repetition of this interjection, while emphatic in Hebrew, would be redundant in the English translation.
19 tn Heb “It came to the tent and struck it and it fell. It turned it upside down and the tent fell.”
20 tn The words “to Gideon” are supplied in the translation for clarification.
21 tn Or “Arise.”
22 tn Heb “for as the man is his strength.”
23 tn Heb “arose and killed.”
24 tn Heb “and Zebul his appointee.”
25 tn Heb “him”; the referent (Abimelech) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
26 tn Heb “his people.”
27 tn Heb “Abimelech.” The proper name has been replaced with the pronoun (“he”) due to considerations of English style.
28 tn The Hebrew text has the plural here.
29 tn Heb “he lifted it and put [it].”
30 tn Heb “What you have seen me do, quickly do like me.”
31 tn Heb “bore.”
32 tn Heb “in the house of our father.”
33 tn Or “took”; or “seized.”
34 tn Heb “he” (a collective singular).
35 tn Heb “from the Arnon to the Jabbok and to the Jordan.” The word “River” has been supplied in the translation with “Arnon” and “Jabbok,” because these are less familiar to modern readers than the Jordan.
36 tc The translation assumes a singular suffix (“[return] it”); the Hebrew text has a plural suffix (“[return] them”), which, if retained, might refer to the cities of the land.
37 tn Heb “The man of God.”
38 tn Heb “His appearance was like the appearance of the messenger of God, very awesome.”
39 tn See the note on the word “son” in 13:5, where this same statement occurs.
40 tn Heb “eat anything unclean.” Certain foods were regarded as ritually “unclean” (see Lev 11). Eating such food made one ritually “contaminated.”
41 tn Traditionally “a Nazirite.”
42 tn Heb “our hand.”
43 tc The MT reads “seventh.” In Hebrew there is a difference of only one letter between the words רְבִיעִי (rÿvi’i, “fourth”) and שְׁבִיעִי (shÿvi’i, “seventh”). Some ancient textual witnesses (e.g., LXX and the Syriac Peshitta) read “fourth,” here, which certainly harmonizes better with the preceding verse (cf. “for three days”) and with v. 17. Another option is to change שְׁלֹשֶׁת (shÿloshet, “three”) at the end of v. 14 to שֵׁשֶׁת (sheshet, “six”), but the resulting scenario does not account as well for v. 17, which implies the bride had been hounding Samson for more than one day.
44 tn Heb “Entice your husband so that he might tell us the riddle.”
45 tn Heb “lest.”
46 tn The Hebrew text expands the statement: “burn up with fire.” The words “with fire” are redundant in English and have been omitted from the translation for stylistic reasons.
47 tn Heb “house.”
48 tc The translation assumes the Hebrew form הֲלֹם (halom, “here,” attested in five Hebrew
49 tn For discussion of this difficult form, see C. F. Burney, Judges, 364.
50 sn The wheat harvest took place during the month of May. See O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 37, 88.
51 tn Heb “Samson visited his wife with a young goat.”
52 tn The words “to her father” are supplied in the translation (see the end of the verse).
53 tn Heb “I will go to my wife in the bedroom.” The Hebrew idiom בּוֹא אֶל (bo’ ’el, “to go to”) often has sexual connotations. The cohortative form used by Samson can be translated as indicating resolve (“I want to go”) or request (“let me go”).
54 tn Heb “subdue him in order to humiliate him.”
55 tn Heb “And the ones lying in wait were sitting for her.” The grammatically singular form וְהָאֹרֵב (vÿha’orev) is collective here, referring to the rulers as a group (so also in v. 16).
56 tn Heb “are upon you.”
57 tn Heb “when it smells fire.”
58 tn Heb “His strength was not known.”
59 tn Heb “are upon you.”
60 tn Heb “And the ones lying in wait were sitting in the bedroom.”
61 tn Heb “them”; the referent (the ropes) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
62 tn Heb “are upon you.”
63 tc The MT of vv. 13b-14a reads simply, “He said to her, ‘If you weave the seven braids of my head with the web.’ And she fastened with the pin and said to him.” The additional words in the translation, “and secure it with the pin, I will become weak and be like any other man.’ 16:14 So she made him go to sleep, wove the seven braids of his hair into the fabric on the loom,” which without doubt represent the original text, are supplied from the ancient Greek version. (In both vv. 13b and 14a the Greek version has “to the wall” after “with the pin,” but this is an interpretive addition that reflects a misunderstanding of ancient weaving equipment. See G. F. Moore, Judges [ICC], 353-54.) The Hebrew textual tradition was accidentally shortened during the copying process. A scribe’s eye jumped from the first instance of “with the web” to the second, causing him to leave out inadvertently the intervening words.
64 tn The Hebrew adds, “from his sleep.” This has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.
65 tn Heb “all his heart.”
66 tn Heb “a razor has not come upon my head.”
67 tn Or “set apart to God.” Traditionally the Hebrew term נָזִיר (nazir) has been translated “Nazirite.” The word is derived from the verb נָזַר (nazar, “to dedicate; to consecrate; to set apart”).
68 tn Heb “from the womb of my mother.”
69 tn Heb “I.” The referent has been made more specific in the translation (“my head”).
70 tn Heb “dedicating, I dedicate.” In this case the emphatic infinitive absolute lends a mood of solemnity to the statement.
71 tn Heb “to the LORD from my hand for my son to make a carved image and cast metal image.” She cannot mean that she is now taking the money from her hand and giving it back to her son so he can make an image. Verses 4-6 indicate she took back the money and used a portion of it to hire a silversmith to make an idol for her son to use. The phrase “a carved image and cast metal image” is best taken as referring to two idols (see 18:17-18), even though the verb at the end of v. 4, וַיְהִי (vayÿhi, “and it was [in the house of Micah]”), is singular.
72 tn Heb “The Danites sent from their tribe five men, from their borders.”
73 tn Heb “men, sons of strength.”
74 tn Heb “They came to the Ephraimite hill country, to Micah’s house, and spent the night there.”
75 tc Codex Alexandrinus (A) of the LXX lacks the phrase “of Laish.”
76 tn Heb “brothers.”
77 tn See the note on the word “adviser” in 17:10.
78 tn Heb “Is it better for you to be priest for the house of one man or for you to be priest for a tribe, for a clan in Israel?”
79 tn Heb “the man arose to go.”
80 tn Or “young man.”
81 tn Heb “the day is sinking to become evening.”
82 tn Or “declining.”
83 tn Heb “for your way and go to your tent.”
84 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Levite) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
85 map For location see Map5-B1; Map7-E2; Map8-E2; Map10-B4.
86 tn Heb “I went to Bethlehem in Judah, but [to] the house of the LORD I am going.” The Hebrew text has “house of the LORD,” which might refer to the shrine at Shiloh. The LXX reads “to my house.”
87 tn Heb “they were making their heart good.”
88 tn Heb “and look.”
89 tn Heb “the men of the city, men, the sons of wickedness.” The phrases are in apposition; the last phrase specifies what type of men they were. It is not certain if all the men of the city are in view, or just a group of troublemakers. In 20:5 the town leaders are implicated in the crime, suggesting that all the men of the city were involved. If so, the implication is that the entire male population of the town were good-for-nothings.
90 tn The Hitpael verb form appears to have an iterative force here, indicating repeated action.
91 tn Heb “so we can know him.” On the surface one might think they simply wanted to meet the visitor and get to know him, but their hostile actions betray their double-talk. The old man, who has been living with them long enough to know what they are like, seems to have no doubts about the meaning of their words (see v. 23).
92 tn Heb “standing before him.”
93 tn Heb “I” (collective singular).
94 tn Heb “my brother” (collective singular).
95 tn Heb “I” (collective singular).
96 tn Heb “him” (collective singular).