Judges 6:11

Gideon Meets Some Visitors

6:11 The Lord’s angelic messenger ¹  came and sat down under the oak tree in Ophrah owned by Joash the Abiezrite. He arrived while Joash’s son Gideon ²  was threshing ³  wheat in a winepress ⁴  so he could hide it from the Midianites. ⁵ 

Judges 12:6

12:6 then they said to him, “Say ‘Shibboleth!’” ⁶  If he said, “Sibboleth” (and could not pronounce the word ⁷  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 19:3

19:3 her husband came ⁸  after her, hoping he could convince her to return. ⁹  He brought with him his servant ¹⁰  and a pair of donkeys. When she brought him into her father’s house and the girl’s father saw him, he greeted him warmly. ¹¹ 

Judges 21:22

21:22 When their fathers or brothers come and protest to us, ¹²  we’ll say to them, “Do us a favor and let them be, ¹³  for we could not get each one a wife through battle. ¹⁴  Don’t worry about breaking your oath! ¹⁵  You would only be guilty if you had voluntarily given them wives.’” ¹⁶ 

---

¹ tn The adjective “angelic” is interpretive.

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

² 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.

³ tn Heb “beating out.”

⁴ 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.

⁵ tn Heb “Midian.”

⁶ 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.

⁷ 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.

⁸ tn Heb “arose and came.”

⁹ tn Heb “to speak to her heart to bring her back.”

¹⁰ tn Or “young man.”

¹¹ tn Heb “he was happy to meet him.”

¹² tc The (original) LXX and Vulgate read “to you.”

¹³ tn The words “and let them be” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

¹⁴ tn Heb “for we did not take each his wife in battle.”

sn Through battle. This probably refers to the battle against Jabesh Gilead, which only produced four hundred of the six hundred wives needed.

¹⁵ tn This sentence is not in the Hebrew text. It is supplied in the translation to clarify the logic of the statement.

¹⁶ tc Heb “You did not give to them, now you are guilty.” The MT as it stands makes little sense. It is preferable to emend לֹא (lo’, “not”) to לוּא (lu’, “if”). This particle introduces a purely hypothetical condition, “If you had given to them [but you didn’t].” See G. F. Moore, Judges (ICC), 453-54.