Discovery BoxJudges 4:6 
Context4:6 She summoned 1 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 6:31
Context6:31 But Joash said to all those who confronted him, 2 “Must you fight Baal’s battles? 3 Must you rescue him? Whoever takes up his cause 4 will die by morning! 5 If he really is a god, let him fight his own battles! 6 After all, it was his altar that was pulled down.” 7
Judges 7:13
Context7:13 When Gideon arrived, he heard a man telling another man about a dream he had. 8 The man 9 said, “Look! I had a dream. I saw 10 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.” 11
Judges 15:1
Context15:1 Sometime later, during the wheat harvest, 12 Samson took a young goat as a gift and went to visit his bride. 13 He said to her father, 14 “I want to have sex with my bride in her bedroom!” 15 But her father would not let him enter.
Judges 15:11
Context15:11 Three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave in the cliff of Etam and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? Why have you done this to us?” He said to them, “I have only done to them what they have done to me.”
Judges 16:3
Context16:3 Samson spent half the night with the prostitute; then he got up in the middle of the night and left. 16 He grabbed the doors of the city gate, as well as the two posts, and pulled them right off, bar and all. 17 He put them on his shoulders and carried them up to the top of a hill east of Hebron. 18
Judges 16:17
Context16:17 Finally he told her his secret. 19 He said to her, “My hair has never been cut, 20 for I have been dedicated to God 21 from the time I was conceived. 22 If my head 23 were shaved, my strength would leave me; I would become weak, and be just like all other men.”
Judges 21:22
Context21:22 When their fathers or brothers come and protest to us, 24 we’ll say to them, “Do us a favor and let them be, 25 for we could not get each one a wife through battle. 26 Don’t worry about breaking your oath! 27 You would only be guilty if you had voluntarily given them wives.’” 28
1 tn Heb “sent and summoned.”
2 tn Heb “to all who stood against him.”
3 tn Heb “Do you fight for Baal?”
4 tn Heb “fights for him.”
5 sn Whoever takes up his cause will die by morning. This may be a warning to the crowd that Joash intends to defend his son and to kill anyone who tries to execute Gideon. Then again, it may be a sarcastic statement about Baal’s apparent inability to defend his own honor. Anyone who takes up Baal’s cause may end up dead, perhaps by the same hand that pulled down the pagan god’s altar.
6 tn Heb “fight for himself.”
7 tn Heb “for he pulled down his altar.” The subject of the verb, if not Gideon, is indefinite (in which case a passive translation is permissible).
8 tn Heb “And Gideon came, and, look, a man was relating to his friend a dream.”
9 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the man mentioned in the previous clause) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
10 tn Heb “Look!” The repetition of this interjection, while emphatic in Hebrew, would be redundant in the English translation.
11 tn Heb “It came to the tent and struck it and it fell. It turned it upside down and the tent fell.”
12 sn The wheat harvest took place during the month of May. See O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 37, 88.
13 tn Heb “Samson visited his wife with a young goat.”
14 tn The words “to her father” are supplied in the translation (see the end of the verse).
15 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”).
16 tn Heb “And Samson lay until the middle of the night and arose in the middle of the night.”
17 tn Heb “with the bar.”
18 tn Heb “which is upon the face of Hebron.”
19 tn Heb “all his heart.”
20 tn Heb “a razor has not come upon my head.”
21 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”).
22 tn Heb “from the womb of my mother.”
23 tn Heb “I.” The referent has been made more specific in the translation (“my head”).
24 tc The (original) LXX and Vulgate read “to you.”
25 tn The words “and let them be” are supplied in the translation for clarification.
26 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.
27 tn This sentence is not in the Hebrew text. It is supplied in the translation to clarify the logic of the statement.
28 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.
