Discovery BoxJudges 9:8 
Context9:8 “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
Context9:11 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
Context9:37 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
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.
