Judges 3:15

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 

Judges 4:6

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!

Judges 6:11

Gideon Meets Some Visitors

6:11 The Lord’s angelic messenger ⁵  came and sat down under the oak tree in Ophrah owned by Joash the Abiezrite. He arrived while Joash’s son Gideon ⁶  was threshing ⁷  wheat in a winepress ⁸  so he could hide it from the Midianites. ⁹ 

Judges 9:18

9:18 But you have attacked ¹⁰  my father’s family ¹¹  today. You murdered his seventy legitimate ¹²  sons on one stone and made Abimelech, the son of his female slave, king over the leaders of Shechem, just because he is your close relative. ¹³ 

Judges 11:2

11:2 Gilead’s wife also gave ¹⁴  him sons. When his wife’s sons grew up, they made Jephthah leave and said to him, “You are not going to inherit any of our father’s wealth, ¹⁵  because you are another woman’s son.”

Judges 13:7

13:7 He said to me, ‘Look, you will conceive and have a son. ¹⁶  So now, do not drink wine or beer and do not eat any food that will make you ritually unclean. ¹⁷  For the child will be dedicated ¹⁸  to God from birth till the day he dies.’”

Judges 15:6

15:6 The Philistines asked, ¹⁹  “Who did this?” They were told, ²⁰  “Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law, because the Timnite ²¹  took Samson’s ²²  bride and gave her to his best man.” So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father. ²³ 

Judges 17:2-3

17:2 He said to his mother, “You know ²⁴  the eleven hundred pieces of silver which were stolen ²⁵  from you, about which I heard you pronounce a curse? Look here, I have the silver. I stole ²⁶  it, but now I am giving it back to you.” ²⁷  His mother said, “May the Lord reward ²⁸  you, my son!” 17:3 When he gave back to his mother the eleven hundred pieces of silver, his mother said, “I solemnly dedicate ²⁹  this silver to the Lord. It will be for my son’s benefit. We will use it to make a carved image and a metal image.” ³⁰ 

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¹ tn Heb “the Lord.” This has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation for stylistic reasons.

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 The adjective “angelic” is interpretive.

sn The Lord’s angelic messenger is also mentioned in Judg 2:1.

⁶ tn Heb “Now Gideon his son…” The Hebrew circumstantial clause (note the pattern vav [ו] + subject + predicate) breaks the narrative sequence and indicates that the angel’s arrival coincided with Gideon’s threshing.

⁷ tn Heb “beating out.”

⁸ sn Threshing wheat in a winepress. One would normally thresh wheat at the threshing floor outside the city. Animals and a threshing sledge would be employed. Because of the Midianite threat, Gideon was forced to thresh with a stick in a winepress inside the city. For further discussion see O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 63.

⁹ tn Heb “Midian.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “have risen up against.”

¹¹ tn Heb “house.”

¹² tn The word “legitimate” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for clarification.

¹³ tn Heb “your brother.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “bore.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “in the house of our father.”

¹⁶ tn See the note on the word “son” in 13:5, where this same statement occurs.

¹⁷ tn Heb “eat anything unclean.” Certain foods were regarded as ritually “unclean” (see Lev 11). Eating such food made one ritually “contaminated.”

¹⁸ tn Traditionally “a Nazirite.”

¹⁹ tn Or “said.”

²⁰ tn Heb “and they said.” The subject of the plural verb is indefinite.

²¹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Timnite) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

²² tn Heb “his”; the referent (Samson) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

²³ tn The Hebrew text expands the statement with the additional phrase “burned with fire.” The words “with fire” are redundant in English and have been omitted from the translation for stylistic reasons. Some textual witnesses read “burned…her father’s house,” perhaps under the influence of 14:15. On the other hand, the shorter text may have lost this phrase due to haplography.

²⁴ tn The words “You know” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

²⁵ tn Heb “taken.”

²⁶ tn Heb “took.”

²⁷ tn In the Hebrew text the statement, “but now I am giving it back to you,” appears at the end of v. 3 and is spoken by the mother. But v. 4 indicates that she did not give the money back to her son. Unless the statement is spoken by the woman to the LORD, it appears to be misplaced and fits much better in v. 2. It may have been accidentally omitted from a manuscript, written in the margin, and then later inserted in the wrong place in another manuscript.

²⁸ tn Traditionally, “bless.”

²⁹ tn Heb “dedicating, I dedicate.” In this case the emphatic infinitive absolute lends a mood of solemnity to the statement.

³⁰ 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.