Discovery BoxJudges 4:21-22 
Context4:21 Then Jael wife of Heber took a tent peg in one hand and a hammer in the other. 1 She crept up on him, drove the tent peg through his temple into the ground 2 while he was asleep from exhaustion, 3 and he died. 4:22 Now Barak was chasing Sisera. Jael went out to welcome him. She said to him, “Come here and I will show you the man you are searching for.” He went with her into the tent, 4 and there he saw Sisera sprawled out dead 5 with the tent peg in his temple.
Judges 6:11
Context6:11 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
Judges 6:19
Context6:19 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.
Judges 6:27
Context6:27 So Gideon took ten of his servants 13 and did just as the Lord had told him. He was too afraid of his father’s family 14 and the men of the city to do it in broad daylight, so he waited until nighttime. 15
Judges 7:13
Context7:13 When Gideon arrived, he heard a man telling another man about a dream he had. 16 The man 17 said, “Look! I had a dream. I saw 18 a stale cake of barley bread rolling into the Midianite camp. It hit a tent so hard it knocked it over and turned it upside down. The tent just collapsed.” 19
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? 20 Serve the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem! But why should we serve Abimelech? 21
Judges 13:7
Context13:7 He said to me, ‘Look, you will conceive and have a son. 22 So now, do not drink wine or beer and do not eat any food that will make you ritually unclean. 23 For the child will be dedicated 24 to God from birth till the day he dies.’”
Judges 13:16
Context13:16 The Lord’s messenger said to Manoah, “If I stay, 25 I will not eat your food. But if you want to make a burnt sacrifice to the Lord, you should offer it.” (He said this because Manoah did not know that he was the Lord’s messenger.) 26
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 16:17-18
Context16:17 Finally he told her his secret. 28 He said to her, “My hair has never been cut, 29 for I have been dedicated to God 30 from the time I was conceived. 31 If my head 32 were shaved, my strength would leave me; I would become weak, and be just like all other men.” 16:18 When Delilah saw that he had told her his secret, 33 she sent for 34 the rulers of the Philistines, saying, “Come up here again, for he has told me 35 his secret.” 36 So the rulers of the Philistines went up to visit her, bringing the silver in their hands.
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.”
