3:15 When the Israelites cried out for help to the Lord, he 1 raised up a deliverer for them. His name was Ehud son of Gera the Benjaminite, a left-handed man. 2 The Israelites sent him to King Eglon of Moab with their tribute payment. 3
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. 11 Pull down your father’s Baal altar and cut down the nearby Asherah pole.
10:6 The Israelites again did evil in the Lord’s sight. 19 They worshiped 20 the Baals and the Ashtars, 21 as well as the gods of Syria, Sidon, 22 Moab, the Ammonites, and the Philistines. 23 They abandoned the Lord and did not worship 24 him.
13:6 The woman went and said to her husband, “A man sent from God 25 came to me! He looked like God’s angelic messenger – he was very awesome. 26 I did not ask him where he came from, and he did not tell me his name.
“What is sweeter than honey?
What is stronger than a lion?”
He said to them,
“If you had not plowed with my heifer, 32
you would not have solved my riddle!”
15:1 Sometime later, during the wheat harvest, 33 Samson took a young goat as a gift and went to visit his bride. 34 He said to her father, 35 “I want to have sex with my bride in her bedroom!” 36 But her father would not let him enter.
19:22 They were having a good time, 51 when suddenly 52 some men of the city, some good-for-nothings, 53 surrounded the house and kept beating 54 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.” 55
1 tn Heb “the
2 tn The phrase, which refers to Ehud, literally reads “bound/restricted in the right hand,” apparently a Hebrew idiom for a left-handed person. See Judg 20:16, where 700 Benjaminites are described in this way. Perhaps the Benjaminites purposely trained several of their young men to be left-handed warriors by restricting the use of the right hand from an early age so the left hand would become dominant. Left-handed men would have a distinct military advantage, especially when attacking city gates. See B. Halpern, “The Assassination of Eglon: The First Locked-Room Murder Mystery,” BRev 4 (1988): 35.
3 tn Heb “The Israelites sent by his hand an offering to Eglon, king of Moab.”
4 tn Heb “sent and summoned.”
5 tn Heb “took a tent peg and put a hammer in her hand.”
6 tn Heb “and it went into the ground.”
7 tn Heb “and exhausted.” Another option is to understand this as a reference to the result of the fatal blow. In this case, the phrase could be translated, “and he breathed his last.”
8 tn Heb “But my lord.”
9 tn Heb “all this.”
10 tn Heb “saying.”
11 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.
12 tn Heb “men from among his servants.”
13 tn Heb “house.”
14 tn Heb “so he did it at night.”
15 tn Heb “their brother.”
16 tn Heb “so that the violence done to the seventy sons of Jerub-Baal might come, and their blood might be placed on Abimelech, their brother, who murdered them, and upon the leaders of Shechem, who strengthened his hands to murder his brothers.”
17 tn Heb “and Zebul his appointee.”
18 tn Heb “him”; the referent (Abimelech) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
19 tn Heb “in the eyes of the
20 tn Or “served;” or “followed.”
21 sn The Ashtars were local manifestations of the goddess Ashtar (i.e., Astarte).
22 map For location see Map1-A1; JP3-F3; JP4-F3.
23 tn Heb “the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines.”
24 tn Or “serve”; or “follow.”
25 tn Heb “The man of God.”
26 tn Heb “His appearance was like the appearance of the messenger of God, very awesome.”
27 tn Heb “our hand.”
28 tn Heb “my.” The singular may seem strange, since the introduction to the quotation attributes the words to his father and mother. But Samson’s father apparently speaks for both himself and his wife. However, the Lucianic recension of the LXX and the Syriac Peshitta have a second person pronoun here (“you”), and this may represent the original reading.
29 tn Heb “Is there not among the daughters of your brothers or among all my people a woman that you have to go to get a wife among the uncircumcised Philistines?”
30 tn “Her” is first in the Hebrew word order for emphasis. Samson wanted this Philistine girl, no one else. See C. F. Burney, Judges, 357.
31 tn Heb “because she is right in my eyes.”
32 sn Plowed with my heifer. This statement emphasizes that the Philistines had utilized a source of information which should have been off-limits to them. Heifers were used in plowing (Hos 10:11), but one typically used one’s own farm animals, not another man’s.
33 sn The wheat harvest took place during the month of May. See O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 37, 88.
34 tn Heb “Samson visited his wife with a young goat.”
35 tn The words “to her father” are supplied in the translation (see the end of the verse).
36 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”).
37 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).
38 tn Heb “are upon you.”
39 tn Heb “when it smells fire.”
40 tn Heb “His strength was not known.”
41 tn See the note on the word “adviser” in 17:10.
42 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?”
43 tn Heb “the man arose to go.”
44 tn Or “young man.”
45 tn Heb “the day is sinking to become evening.”
46 tn Or “declining.”
47 tn Heb “for your way and go to your tent.”
48 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Levite) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
49 map For location see Map5-B1; Map7-E2; Map8-E2; Map10-B4.
50 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.”
51 tn Heb “they were making their heart good.”
52 tn Heb “and look.”
53 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.
54 tn The Hitpael verb form appears to have an iterative force here, indicating repeated action.
55 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).