Discovery BoxJudges 3:15 
Context3:15 When the Israelites cried out for help to the Lord, he 1 raised up a deliverer for them. His name was Ehud son of Gera the Benjaminite, a left-handed man. 2 The Israelites sent him to King Eglon of Moab with their tribute payment. 3
Judges 4:6
Context4:6 She summoned 4 Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali. She said to him, “Is it not true that the Lord God of Israel is commanding you? Go, march to Mount Tabor! Take with you ten thousand men from Naphtali and Zebulun!
Judges 4:21
Context4:21 Then Jael wife of Heber took a tent peg in one hand and a hammer in the other. 5 She crept up on him, drove the tent peg through his temple into the ground 6 while he was asleep from exhaustion, 7 and he died.
Judges 6:13
Context6:13 Gideon said to him, “Pardon me, 8 but if the Lord is with us, why has such disaster 9 overtaken us? Where are all his miraculous deeds our ancestors told us about? They said, 10 ‘Did the Lord not bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to Midian.”
Judges 6:25
Context6:25 That night the Lord said to him, “Take the bull from your father’s herd, as well as a second bull, one that is seven years old. 11 Pull down your father’s Baal altar and cut down the nearby Asherah pole.
Judges 6:27
Context6:27 So Gideon took ten of his servants 12 and did just as the Lord had told him. He was too afraid of his father’s family 13 and the men of the city to do it in broad daylight, so he waited until nighttime. 14
Judges 9:24
Context9:24 He did this so the violent deaths of Jerub-Baal’s seventy sons might be avenged and Abimelech, their half-brother 15 who murdered them, might have to pay for their spilled blood, along with the leaders of Shechem who helped him murder them. 16
Judges 9:28
Context9:28 Gaal son of Ebed said, “Who is Abimelech and who is Shechem, that we should serve him? Is he not the son of Jerub-Baal, and is not Zebul the deputy he appointed? 17 Serve the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem! But why should we serve Abimelech? 18
Judges 10:6
Context10:6 The Israelites again did evil in the Lord’s sight. 19 They worshiped 20 the Baals and the Ashtars, 21 as well as the gods of Syria, Sidon, 22 Moab, the Ammonites, and the Philistines. 23 They abandoned the Lord and did not worship 24 him.
Judges 13:6
Context13:6 The woman went and said to her husband, “A man sent from God 25 came to me! He looked like God’s angelic messenger – he was very awesome. 26 I did not ask him where he came from, and he did not tell me his name.
Judges 13:23
Context13:23 But his wife said to him, “If the Lord wanted to kill us, he would not have accepted the burnt offering and the grain offering from us. 27 He would not have shown us all these things, or have spoken to us like this just now.”
Judges 14:3
Context14:3 But his father and mother said to him, “Certainly you can find a wife among your relatives or among all our 28 people! You should not have to go and get a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines.” 29 But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, 30 because she is the right one for me.” 31
Judges 14:18
Context14:18 On the seventh day, before the sun set, the men of the city said to him,
“What is sweeter than honey?
What is stronger than a lion?”
He said to them,
“If you had not plowed with my heifer, 32
you would not have solved my riddle!”
Judges 15:1
Context15:1 Sometime later, during the wheat harvest, 33 Samson took a young goat as a gift and went to visit his bride. 34 He said to her father, 35 “I want to have sex with my bride in her bedroom!” 36 But her father would not let him enter.
Judges 16:9
Context16:9 They hid 37 in the bedroom and then she said to him, “The Philistines are here, 38 Samson!” He snapped the bowstrings as easily as a thread of yarn snaps when it is put close to fire. 39 The secret of his strength was not discovered. 40
Judges 18:19
Context18:19 They said to him, “Shut up! Put your hand over your mouth and come with us! You can be our adviser 41 and priest. Wouldn’t it be better to be a priest for a whole Israelite tribe than for just one man’s family?” 42
Judges 19:9
Context19:9 When the man got ready to leave 43 with his concubine and his servant, 44 his father-in-law, the girl’s father, said to him, “Look! The day is almost over! 45 Stay another night! Since the day is over, 46 stay another night here and have a good time. You can get up early tomorrow and start your trip home.” 47
Judges 19:18
Context19:18 The Levite 48 said to him, “We are traveling from Bethlehem 49 in Judah to the remote region of the Ephraimite hill country. That’s where I’m from. I had business in Bethlehem in Judah, but now I’m heading home. 50 But no one has invited me into their home.
Judges 19:22
Context19:22 They were having a good time, 51 when suddenly 52 some men of the city, some good-for-nothings, 53 surrounded the house and kept beating 54 on the door. They said to the old man who owned the house, “Send out the man who came to visit you so we can have sex with him.” 55
1 tn Heb “the
2 tn The phrase, which refers to Ehud, literally reads “bound/restricted in the right hand,” apparently a Hebrew idiom for a left-handed person. See Judg 20:16, where 700 Benjaminites are described in this way. Perhaps the Benjaminites purposely trained several of their young men to be left-handed warriors by restricting the use of the right hand from an early age so the left hand would become dominant. Left-handed men would have a distinct military advantage, especially when attacking city gates. See B. Halpern, “The Assassination of Eglon: The First Locked-Room Murder Mystery,” BRev 4 (1988): 35.
3 tn Heb “The Israelites sent by his hand an offering to Eglon, king of Moab.”
4 tn Heb “sent and summoned.”
5 tn Heb “took a tent peg and put a hammer in her hand.”
6 tn Heb “and it went into the ground.”
7 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.”
8 tn Heb “But my lord.”
9 tn Heb “all this.”
10 tn Heb “saying.”
11 tn Or “Take a bull from your father’s herd, the second one, the one seven years old.” Apparently Gideon would need the bulls to pull down the altar.
12 tn Heb “men from among his servants.”
13 tn Heb “house.”
14 tn Heb “so he did it at night.”
15 tn Heb “their brother.”
16 tn Heb “so that the violence done to the seventy sons of Jerub-Baal might come, and their blood might be placed on Abimelech, their brother, who murdered them, and upon the leaders of Shechem, who strengthened his hands to murder his brothers.”
17 tn Heb “and Zebul his appointee.”
18 tn Heb “him”; the referent (Abimelech) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
19 tn Heb “in the eyes of the
20 tn Or “served;” or “followed.”
21 sn The Ashtars were local manifestations of the goddess Ashtar (i.e., Astarte).
22 map For location see Map1 A1; JP3 F3; JP4 F3.
23 tn Heb “the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines.”
24 tn Or “serve”; or “follow.”
25 tn Heb “The man of God.”
26 tn Heb “His appearance was like the appearance of the messenger of God, very awesome.”
27 tn Heb “our hand.”
28 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.
29 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?”
30 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.
31 tn Heb “because she is right in my eyes.”
32 sn Plowed with my heifer. This statement emphasizes that the Philistines had utilized a source of information which should have been off-limits to them. Heifers were used in plowing (Hos 10:11), but one typically used one’s own farm animals, not another man’s.
33 sn The wheat harvest took place during the month of May. See O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 37, 88.
34 tn Heb “Samson visited his wife with a young goat.”
35 tn The words “to her father” are supplied in the translation (see the end of the verse).
36 tn Heb “I will go to my wife in the bedroom.” The Hebrew idiom בּוֹא אֶל (bo’ ’el, “to go to”) often has sexual connotations. The cohortative form used by Samson can be translated as indicating resolve (“I want to go”) or request (“let me go”).
37 tn Heb “And the ones lying in wait were sitting for her.” The grammatically singular form וְהָאֹרֵב (vÿha’orev) is collective here, referring to the rulers as a group (so also in v. 16).
38 tn Heb “are upon you.”
39 tn Heb “when it smells fire.”
40 tn Heb “His strength was not known.”
41 tn See the note on the word “adviser” in 17:10.
42 tn Heb “Is it better for you to be priest for the house of one man or for you to be priest for a tribe, for a clan in Israel?”
43 tn Heb “the man arose to go.”
44 tn Or “young man.”
45 tn Heb “the day is sinking to become evening.”
46 tn Or “declining.”
47 tn Heb “for your way and go to your tent.”
48 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Levite) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
49 map For location see Map5 B1; Map7 E2; Map8 E2; Map10 B4.
50 tn Heb “I went to Bethlehem in Judah, but [to] the house of the LORD I am going.” The Hebrew text has “house of the LORD,” which might refer to the shrine at Shiloh. The LXX reads “to my house.”
51 tn Heb “they were making their heart good.”
52 tn Heb “and look.”
53 tn Heb “the men of the city, men, the sons of wickedness.” The phrases are in apposition; the last phrase specifies what type of men they were. It is not certain if all the men of the city are in view, or just a group of troublemakers. In 20:5 the town leaders are implicated in the crime, suggesting that all the men of the city were involved. If so, the implication is that the entire male population of the town were good-for-nothings.
54 tn The Hitpael verb form appears to have an iterative force here, indicating repeated action.
55 tn Heb “so we can know him.” On the surface one might think they simply wanted to meet the visitor and get to know him, but their hostile actions betray their double-talk. The old man, who has been living with them long enough to know what they are like, seems to have no doubts about the meaning of their words (see v. 23).
