Discovery BoxJudges 6:31 
Context6:31 But Joash said to all those who confronted him, 1 “Must you fight Baal’s battles? 2 Must you rescue him? Whoever takes up his cause 3 will die by morning! 4 If he really is a god, let him fight his own battles! 5 After all, it was his altar that was pulled down.” 6
Judges 15:1
Context15:1 Sometime later, during the wheat harvest, 7 Samson took a young goat as a gift and went to visit his bride. 8 He said to her father, 9 “I want to have sex with my bride in her bedroom!” 10 But her father would not let him enter.
Judges 21:22
Context21:22 When their fathers or brothers come and protest to us, 11 we’ll say to them, “Do us a favor and let them be, 12 for we could not get each one a wife through battle. 13 Don’t worry about breaking your oath! 14 You would only be guilty if you had voluntarily given them wives.’” 15
1 tn Heb “to all who stood against him.”
2 tn Heb “Do you fight for Baal?”
3 tn Heb “fights for him.”
4 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.
5 tn Heb “fight for himself.”
6 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).
7 sn The wheat harvest took place during the month of May. See O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 37, 88.
8 tn Heb “Samson visited his wife with a young goat.”
9 tn The words “to her father” are supplied in the translation (see the end of the verse).
10 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”).
11 tc The (original) LXX and Vulgate read “to you.”
12 tn The words “and let them be” are supplied in the translation for clarification.
13 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.
14 tn This sentence is not in the Hebrew text. It is supplied in the translation to clarify the logic of the statement.
15 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.
