He said to Him, “Please, Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Look, my family is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s house.”

Then the Lord said to Gideon, “There are still too many people. Take them down to the water, and I will test them for you there. If I say to you, ‘This one can go with you,’ he can go. But if I say about anyone, ‘This one cannot go with you,’ he cannot go.”

Then get up early, and at sunrise charge the city. When he and the people who are with him come out against you, do to him whatever you can.”

But his father and mother said to him, “Can’t you find a young woman among your relatives or among any of our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines for a wife?”

But Samson told his father, “Get her for me, because I want her.”

“Let me tell you a riddle,” Samson said to them. “If you can explain it to me during the seven days of the feast and figure it out, I will give you 30 linen garments and 30 changes of clothes.

But if you can’t explain it to me, you must give me 30 linen garments and 30 changes of clothes.”

“Tell us your riddle,” they replied. “Let’s hear it.”

The Philistine leaders went to her and said, “Persuade him to tell you where his great strength comes from, so we can overpower him, tie him up, and make him helpless. Each of us will then give you 1,100 pieces of silver.”

Then Delilah said to Samson, “You have mocked me and told me lies! Won’t you please tell me how you can be tied up?”

Then Delilah said to Samson, “You have mocked me all along and told me lies! Tell me how you can be tied up.”

He told her, “If you weave the seven braids on my head with the web of a loom—”

“How can you say, ‘I love you,’” she told him, “when your heart is not with me? This is the third time you have mocked me and not told me what makes your strength so great!”

Samson said to the young man who was leading him by the hand, “Lead me where I can feel the pillars supporting the temple, so I can lean against them.”

“Where do you come from?” Micah asked him.

He answered him, “I am a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah, and I’m going to settle wherever I can find a place.”

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?’”

On the fourth day, they got up early in the morning and prepared to go, but the girl’s father said to his son-in-law, “Have something to eat to keep up your strength and then you can go.”

The man got up to go with his concubine and his servant, when his father-in-law, the girl’s father, said to him, “Look, night is coming. Please spend the night. See, the day is almost over. Spend the night here, enjoy yourself, then you can get up early tomorrow for your journey and go home.”

While they were enjoying themselves, all of a sudden, perverted men of the city surrounded the house and beat on the door. They said to the old man who was the owner of the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him!”

Hand over the perverted men in Gibeah so we can put them to death and eradicate evil from Israel.” But the Benjaminites would not obey their fellow Israelites.

But we can’t give them our daughters as wives.” For the Israelites had sworn, “Anyone who gives a wife to a Benjaminite is cursed.”