Judges 3:25

3:25 They waited so long they were embarrassed, but he still did not open the doors of the upper room. Finally they took the key and opened the doors. ¹  Right before their eyes was their master, sprawled out dead on the floor! ² 

Judges 12:6

12:6 then they said to him, “Say ‘Shibboleth!’” ³  If he said, “Sibboleth” (and could not pronounce the word ⁴  correctly), they grabbed him and executed him right there at the fords of the Jordan. On that day forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell dead.

Judges 14:3

14:3 But his father and mother said to him, “Certainly you can find a wife among your relatives or among all our ⁵  people! You should not have to go and get a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines.” ⁶  But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, ⁷  because she is the right one for me.” ⁸ 

Judges 16:3

16:3 Samson spent half the night with the prostitute; then he got up in the middle of the night and left. ⁹  He grabbed the doors of the city gate, as well as the two posts, and pulled them right off, bar and all. ¹⁰  He put them on his shoulders and carried them up to the top of a hill east of Hebron. ¹¹ 

Judges 20:45

20:45 The rest ¹²  turned and ran toward the wilderness, heading toward the cliff of Rimmon. But the Israelites ¹³  caught ¹⁴  five thousand of them on the main roads. They stayed right on their heels ¹⁵  all the way to Gidom and struck down two thousand more.

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¹ tn The words “the doors” are supplied.

² tn Heb “See, their master, fallen to the ground, dead.”

³ sn The inability of the Ephraimites to pronounce the word shibboleth the way the Gileadites did served as an identifying test. It illustrates that during this period there were differences in pronunciation between the tribes. The Hebrew word shibboleth itself means “stream” or “flood,” and was apparently chosen simply as a test case without regard to its meaning.

⁴ tn Heb “and could not prepare to speak.” The precise meaning of יָכִין (yakhin) is unclear. Some understand it to mean “was not careful [to say it correctly]”; others emend to יָכֹל (yakhol, “was not able [to say it correctly]”) or יָבִין (yavin, “did not understand [that he should say it correctly]”), which is read by a few Hebrew mss.

⁵ 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.

⁶ 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?”

⁷ 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.

⁸ tn Heb “because she is right in my eyes.”

⁹ tn Heb “And Samson lay until the middle of the night and arose in the middle of the night.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “with the bar.”

¹¹ tn Heb “which is upon the face of Hebron.”

¹² tn Heb “they”; the referent (the rest [of the Benjaminites]) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹³ tn Heb “and they”; the referent (the Israelites) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹⁴ tn Heb “gleaned.” The word is an agricultural term which pictures Israelites picking off the Benjaminites as easily as one picks grapes from the vine.

¹⁵ tn Heb “stuck close after them.”