And he took the people, and divided them into three companies, and laid wait in the field, and looked, and behold, the people had come out of the city; and he rose up against them, and smote them.

And all that day Abimelech was fighting against the town; and he took it, and put to death the people who were in it, and had the town pulled down and covered with salt.

When all the "lords" at the tower of Shechem heard what had happened, they retreated into the inner chamber of the temple of El-berith.

Then it was reported to Abimelech that all the lords of the Tower of Shechem had gathered together.

So he went up to Mount Zalmon, accompanied by his entire army. Abimelech had an axe in his hand, so he cut down a branch from a tree, lifted it up, and laid it on his shoulder. Then he told the army that had accompanied him, "You've seen what I just did. Hurry up! Do the same thing!"

In this way God repaid the wickedness of Abimelech, which he had done to his father [Jerubbaal] by killing his seventy brothers.

And God sent back on to the heads of the men of Shechem all the evil they had done, and the curse of Jotham, the son of Jerubbaal, came on them.

He had thirty sons who rode on thirty donkeys and possessed thirty cities. To this day these towns are called Havvoth Jair -- they are in the land of Gilead.

So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and leader over them. And Jephthah repeated everything that he had promised before the Lord at Mizpah.

But the king of the Ammonites wouldn't heed the message that Jephthah had sent to him.

When Jephthah came home to Mizpah, there was his daughter hurrying out to meet him, dancing to the rhythm of tambourines. She was his only child; except for her he had no son or daughter.

After two months she returned to her father, and he did to her as he had vowed. She died a virgin. Her tragic death gave rise to a custom in Israel.

Then Jephthah said to them, “My people and I had a serious conflict with the Ammonites. So I called for you, but you didn’t deliver me from their power.

So when I saw that there was no help to be had from you, I put my life in my hand and went over against the children of Ammon, and the Lord gave them into my hands: why then have you come up to me this day to make war on me?

Then Jephthah assembled all the men of Gilead and fought with [the tribe of] Ephraim; and the men of Gilead defeated Ephraim, because they had said, “You Gileadites are fugitives of Ephraim, in the midst of [the tribes of] Ephraim and Manasseh.”

And the Gileadites took the fords of the Jordan opposite the Ephraimites; and when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead would say to him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he said, “No,”

And, when Jephthah had judged Israel six years, then Jephthah the Gileadite died, and was buried in one of the cities of Gilead.

He had thirty sons. He arranged for thirty of his daughters to be married outside his extended family, and he arranged for thirty young women to be brought from outside as wives for his sons. Ibzan led Israel for seven years;

And when Ibozan had judged Israel seven years, he died and was buried at Bethlehem.

He had forty sons and thirty grandsons who rode on seventy donkeys. He led Israel for eight years.

And when Abdon the son of Hillel the Pirathonite had judged Israel eight years, he died and was buried in Pirathon, the land of Ephraim in the mount of the Amalekites.

And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was infertile and had no children.

Then the woman went to tell her husband. She said, "A man of God appeared to me. He looked like what an angel of God would look like very frightening. I didn't ask him where he had come from and he didn't tell me his name.

And the angel of the Lord said to Manoah, Though you keep me I will not take of your food; but if you will make a burned offering, let it be offered to the Lord. For it had not come into Manoah's mind that he was the angel of the Lord.

The Lord's messenger did not appear again to Manoah and his wife. After all this happened Manoah realized that the visitor had been the Lord's messenger.

But his wife said to him, “If the Lord had intended to kill us, He wouldn’t have accepted the burnt offering and the grain offering from us, and He would not have shown us all these things or spoken to us now like this.”

His father and mother did not know that it was of the Lord, and that He was seeking an occasion [to take action] against the Philistines. Now at that time the Philistines were ruling over Israel.

The Lord's spirit empowered him and he tore the lion in two with his bare hands as easily as one would tear a young goat. But he did not tell his father or mother what he had done.

So he went down and had talk with the woman; and she was pleasing to Samson.

He scooped it up with his hands and ate it as he walked along. When he returned to his father and mother, he offered them some and they ate it. But he did not tell them he had scooped the honey out of the lion's carcass.

When the Philistines saw he had no attendants, they gave him thirty groomsmen who kept him company.

She cried on his shoulder until the party was almost over. Finally, on the seventh day, he told her because she had nagged him so much. Then she told the young men the solution to the riddle.

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, you would not have solved my riddle!"

The Lord's spirit empowered him. He went down to Ashkelon and murdered thirty men. He took their clothes and gave them to the men who had solved the riddle. He was furious as he went back home.

But Samson's wife was given to his companion, whom he had used as his friend.

And her father said, It seemed to me that you had only hate for her; so I gave her to your friend: but is not her younger sister fairer than she? so please take her in place of the other.

When he had set the torches ablaze, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and he burned up the heap of sheaves and the standing grain, along with the vineyards and olive groves.

Then the Philistines said, Who hath done this? And they answered, Samson, the son in law of the Timnite, because he had taken his wife, and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire.

When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily, and the ropes on his arms were like flax (linen) that had been burned, and his bonds dropped off his hands.

And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramathlehi.

But God clave an hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water thereout; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: wherefore he called the name thereof Enhakkore, which is in Lehi unto this day.

Samson went down to Gaza; there he saw a prostitute and {had sex with her}.

Meanwhile, Samson had sex until midnight, then at midnight he got up, grabbed the doors, the two door posts, and the bars of the city gate, and uprooted them. He put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the mountain opposite Hebron.

So the rulers of the Philistines brought her seven fresh bowstrings which had not been dried and they tied him up with them.

Now she had men lying in ambush in an inner room. And she said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he broke the cords as a string of tow breaks when it touches fire. So [the secret of] his strength was not discovered.

And Delilah took new ropes and bound him therewith, and said unto him, "The Philistines be upon thee, Samson." And there were layers of wait in the chamber. And he brake them from off his arms, as they had been but a thread.

When Delilah saw that he had told her his secret, she sent for the rulers of the Philistines, saying, "Come up here again, for he has told me his secret." So the rulers of the Philistines went up to visit her, bringing the silver in their hands.

She made him sleep on her knees, and called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his hair. Then she began to afflict him, and his strength left him.

She said, "The Philistines are here, Samson!" He woke up and thought, "I will do as I did before and shake myself free." But he did not realize that the Lord had left him.

His hair began to grow back after it had been shaved off.

Now, the lords of the Philistines, had gathered themselves together to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice, - and they said, Our god hath delivered into our hand, Samson our enemy.

When they were drunk, they said, “Bring Samson here to entertain us.” So they brought Samson from prison, and he entertained them. They had him stand between the pillars.

Then Samson told the young man who had been leading him around by the hand, "Let me touch and feel the pillars on which this building rests, and I'll support myself against them."

Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines!" He pushed hard and the temple collapsed on the rulers and all the people in it. He killed many more people in his death than he had killed during his life.

His brothers and all his family went down and brought him back. They buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father. He had led Israel for twenty years.

He returned the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother, and she said, “I had truly dedicated the silver from my hand to the Lord for my son (in his name) to make an image [carved from wood and plated with silver] and a cast image [of solid silver]; so now, I will return it to you.”

When he had returned the silver to his mother, his mother took 200 of the silver coins and handed them over to a silversmith. He crafted them into a carved image and into a cast image, and they were set up in Micah's house.

Now the man Micah had a house of gods (shrine), and he made an ephod and teraphim and dedicated and installed one of his sons, who became his [personal] priest.

In those days Israel had no king. Each man did what he considered to be right.

There was a young man from Bethlehem in Judah. He was a Levite who had been temporarily residing among the tribe of Judah.

The man had left his city Bethlehem in Judah to live wherever he could. As he traveled along, he eventually arrived at Micah's house in the mountainous region of Ephraim, looking for work.

In those days Israel had no king. And in those days the Danite tribe was looking for a place to settle, because at that time they did not yet have a place to call their own among the tribes of Israel.

He told them what Micah had done for him, saying, "He hired me and I became his priest."

So the five men journeyed on and arrived in Laish. They noticed that the people there were living securely, like the Sidonians do, undisturbed and unsuspecting. No conqueror was troubling them in any way. They lived far from the Sidonians and had no dealings with anyone.

The five men who had gone to spy out the land of Laish said to their kinsmen, "Do you realize that inside these houses are an ephod, some personal idols, a carved image, and a metal image? Decide now what you want to do."

The five men who had gone to spy out the land broke in and stole the carved image, the ephod, the personal idols, and the metal image, while the priest was standing at the entrance to the gate with the six hundred fully armed men.

But, when, these, had entered the house of Micah, and taken the graven image and the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image, the priest said unto them, What are ye doing?

After they had gone a good distance from Micah's house, Micah's neighbors gathered together and caught up with the Danites.

He said, “You took the gods I had made and the priest, and went away. What do I have left? How can you say to me, ‘What’s the matter with you?’”

The descendants of Dan answered him, "You had better not talk to us about this, or else these bad guys here will attack you. You will lose your life, along with the lives of your whole household."

Now the Danites took what Micah had made, as well as his priest, and came to Laish, where the people were undisturbed and unsuspecting. They struck them down with the sword and burned the city.

No one came to the rescue because the city was far from Sidon and they had no dealings with anyone. The city was in a valley near Beth Rehob. The Danites rebuilt the city and occupied it.

And they gave the town the name of Dan, after Dan their father, who was the son of Israel: though the town had been named Laish at first.

So they set up for themselves Micah’s carved image that he had made, and it was there as long as the house of God was in Shiloh.

In those days Israel had no king. There was a Levite living temporarily in the remote region of the Ephraimite hill country. He acquired a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah.

However, she got angry at him and went home to her father's house in Bethlehem in Judah. When she had been there four months,

Then her husband arose and went after her, to speak kindly to her and bring her back. He had with him his servant and a couple of asses. And he came to her father's house; and when the girl's father saw him, he came with joy to meet him.

And his father-in-law, the girl's father, kept him there for three days; and they had food and drink and took their rest there.

So the two of them sat down and had a meal together. Then the girl's father said to the man, "Why not stay another night and have a good time!"

Then early on the morning of the fifth day he got up to go away; but the girl's father said, Keep up your strength; so the two of them had a meal, and the man and his woman and his servant did not go till after the middle of the day.

But the man did not want to stay another night. He left and traveled as far as Jebus (that is, Jerusalem). He had with him a pair of saddled donkeys and his concubine.

After they entered the city, they had to sit down in the public square because no one would take them into their home for the night. Just then, an old man was coming out of the fields that evening from work. The man was from the mountainous region of Ephraim and had been staying in Gibeah, even though the men of that place were descendants of Benjamin.

And when he had lifted up his eyes, he saw a wayfaring man in the street of the city: and the old man said, Whither goest thou? and whence comest thou?

The Levite said to him, "We are traveling from Bethlehem 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. But no one has invited me into their home.

So he brought him to his house and fed the donkeys. They washed their feet and had a meal.

But the men would not listen to him. So the man took the Levite’s concubine and brought her outside to them; and they had relations with her and abused her all night until morning; and when daybreak came, they let her go.

When her master got up in the morning and opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his way, he saw his concubine lying at the door of the house, and her hands were on the threshold.

And when he had come to his house, he got his knife, and took the woman, cutting her up bone by bone into twelve parts, which he sent through all Israel.

Then all the children of Israel went out: and there gathered a congregation together as it had been but one man, even from Dan to Beersheba and out of the land of Gilead, unto the land to Mizpeh.

The Benjaminites heard that the Israelites had gone up to Mizpah. Then the Israelites said, "Explain how this wicked thing happened!"

So I laid hold on my concubine, and cut her in pieces, and sent her throughout all the country of the inheritance of Israel, - because they had wrought lewdness and impiety, in Israel.

Then all the people arose, as it had been one man, saying, "There shall not a man of us go to his tent, neither turn into his house.

And so all the men of Israel gathered together, unto Gibeah, knit together as it had been but one man.

The men of Israel (not counting Benjamin) had mustered four hundred thousand sword-wielding soldiers, every one an experienced warrior.

The Israelite army took heart and once more arranged their battle lines, in the same place where they had taken their positions the day before.

Now the sons of Israel had gone up, and wept before Yahweh, until the evening, and asked of Yahweh, saying, Shall I again draw near to battle against the sons of Benjamin, my brother? And Yahweh said, Go up against him.

The Israelites attacked the Benjaminites the next day; they took their positions against Gibeah just as they had done before.

The Benjaminites attacked the army, leaving the city unguarded. They began to strike down their enemy just as they had done before. On the main roads (one leads to Bethel, the other to Gibeah) and in the field, they struck down about thirty Israelites.

Then said the sons of Benjamin, They are, being smitten, before us, as at the first. But the sons of Israel had said - Let us flee, and draw them away from the city, into the highways.

So all the men of Israel got up and put themselves in fighting order at Baal-tamar: and those who had been waiting secretly to make a surprise attack came rushing out of their place on the west of Geba.