6:11 The Lord’s angelic messenger 6 came and sat down under the oak tree in Ophrah owned by Joash the Abiezrite. He arrived while Joash’s son Gideon 7 was threshing 8 wheat in a winepress 9 so he could hide it from the Midianites. 10
6:19 Gideon went and prepared a young goat, 11 along with unleavened bread made from an ephah of flour. He put the meat in a basket and the broth in a pot. He brought the food 12 to him under the oak tree and presented it to him.
1 tn Heb “took a tent peg and put a hammer in her hand.”
2 tn Heb “and it went into the ground.”
3 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.”
4 tn Heb “he went to her.”
5 tn Heb “fallen, dead.”
6 tn The adjective “angelic” is interpretive.
sn The
7 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.
8 tn Heb “beating out.”
9 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.
10 tn Heb “Midian.”
11 tn Heb “a kid from among the goats.”
12 tn The words “the food” are not in the Hebrew text (an implied direct object). They are supplied in the translation for clarification and for stylistic reasons.
13 tn Heb “men from among his servants.”
14 tn Heb “house.”
15 tn Heb “so he did it at night.”
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 Heb “and Zebul his appointee.”
21 tn Heb “him”; the referent (Abimelech) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
22 tn See the note on the word “son” in 13:5, where this same statement occurs.
23 tn Heb “eat anything unclean.” Certain foods were regarded as ritually “unclean” (see Lev 11). Eating such food made one ritually “contaminated.”
24 tn Traditionally “a Nazirite.”
25 tn Heb “If you detain me.”
26 tn The words “he said this” are supplied in the translation for clarification. Manoah should have known from these words that the messenger represented the
27 tn Heb “our hand.”
28 tn Heb “all his heart.”
29 tn Heb “a razor has not come upon my head.”
30 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”).
31 tn Heb “from the womb of my mother.”
32 tn Heb “I.” The referent has been made more specific in the translation (“my head”).
33 tn Heb “all his heart.”
34 tn Heb “she sent and summoned.”
35 tc The translation follows the Qere, לִי (li, “to me”) rather than the Kethib, לָהּ (lah, “to her”).
36 tn Heb “all his heart.”