Judges 4:14

4:14 Deborah said to Barak, “Spring into action, ¹  for this is the day the Lord is handing Sisera over to you! ²  Has the Lord not taken the lead?” ³  Barak quickly went down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men following him.

Judges 6:24

6:24 Gideon built an altar for the Lord there, and named it “The Lord is on friendly terms with me.” ⁴  To this day it is still there in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.

Judges 6:32

6:32 That very day Gideon’s father named him Jerub-Baal, ⁵  because he had said, “Let Baal fight with him, for it was his altar that was pulled down.”

Judges 9:45

9:45 Abimelech fought against the city all that day. He captured the city and killed all the people in it. Then he leveled ⁶  the city and spread salt over it. ⁷ 

Judges 10:4

10:4 He had thirty sons who rode on thirty donkeys and possessed thirty cities. To this day these towns are called Havvoth Jair ⁸  – they are in the land of Gilead. ⁹ 

Judges 14:17

14:17 She cried on his shoulder ¹⁰  until the party was almost over. ¹¹  Finally, on the seventh day, he told her because she had nagged him so much. ¹²  Then she told the young men the solution to the riddle. ¹³ 

Judges 19:5

19:5 On the fourth day they woke up early and the Levite got ready to leave. ¹⁴  But the girl’s father said to his son-in-law, “Have a bite to eat for some energy, ¹⁵  then you can go.”

Judges 20:26

20:26 So all the Israelites, the whole army, ¹⁶  went up to ¹⁷  Bethel. ¹⁸  They wept and sat there before the Lord; they did not eat anything ¹⁹  that day until evening. They offered up burnt sacrifices and tokens of peace ²⁰  to the Lord.

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¹ tn Heb “Arise!”

² tn The verb form (a Hebrew perfect, indicating completed action from the standpoint of the speaker) emphasizes the certainty of the event. Though it had not yet taken place, the Lord speaks of it as a “done deal.”

³ tn Heb “Has the Lord not gone out before you?”

⁴ tn Heb “The Lord is peace.” Gideon’s name for the altar plays on the Lord’s reassuring words to him, “Peace to you.”

⁵ tn Heb “He called him on that day Jerub-Baal.” The name means, at least by popular etymology, “Let Baal fight!”

⁶ tn Or “destroyed.”

⁷ tn Heb “sowed it with salt.”

sn The spreading of salt over the city was probably a symbolic act designed to place the site under a curse, deprive it of fertility, and prevent any future habitation. The practice is referred to outside the Bible as well. For example, one of the curses in the Aramaic Sefire treaty states concerning Arpad: “May Hadad sow in them salt and weeds, and may it not be mentioned again!” See J. A. Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire (BibOr), 15, 53. Deut 29:23, Jer 17:6, and Zeph 2:9 associate salt flats or salty regions with infertility and divine judgment.

⁸ sn The name Habboth Jair means “tent villages of Jair” in Hebrew.

⁹ tn Heb “they call them Havvoth Jair to this day – which are in the land of Gilead.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “on him.”

¹¹ tn Heb “the seven days [during] which they held the party.” This does not mean she cried for the entire seven days; v. 15 indicates otherwise. She cried for the remainder of the seven day period, beginning on the fourth day.

¹² tn Heb “because she forced him.”

¹³ tn Heb “she told the riddle to the sons of her people.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “and he arose to go.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “Sustain your heart [with] a bit of food.”

¹⁶ tn Heb “and all the people.”

¹⁷ tn Heb “went up and came [to].”

¹⁸ map For location see Map4-G4; Map5-C1; Map6-E3; Map7-D1; Map8-G3.

¹⁹ tn Traditionally, “fasted.”

²⁰ tn Or “peace offerings.”