Judges 9:8

9:8 “The trees were determined to go out ¹  and choose a king for themselves. ²  They said to the olive tree, ‘Be our king!’ ³ 

Judges 9:11

9:11 But the fig tree said to them, ‘I am not going to stop producing my sweet figs, my excellent fruit, just to sway above the other trees!’ ⁴ 

Judges 9:37

9:37 Gaal again said, “Look, men are coming down from the very center ⁵  of the land. A unit ⁶  is coming by way of the Oak Tree of the Diviners.” ⁷ 

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¹ tn Heb “Going they went, the trees.” The precise emphatic force of the infinitive absolute (“Going”) is not entirely clear. Perhaps here it indicates determination, as in Gen 31:30, where one might translate, “You have insisted on going away.”

² tn Heb “to anoint [with oil] over them a king.”

³ tn Or “Rule over us!”

⁴ tn Heb “Should I stop my sweetness and my good fruit and go to sway over the trees? The negative sentence in the translation reflects the force of the rhetorical question.

⁵ tn Heb “navel.” On the background of the Hebrew expression “the navel of the land,” see R. G. Boling, Judges (AB), 178-79.

⁶ tn Heb “head.”

⁷ tn Some English translations simply transliterated this as a place name (Heb “Elon-meonenim”); cf. NAB, NRSV.