Now the Angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt and led you to the land which I swore [to give] to your fathers; and I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you,

Now Ehud escaped while they lingered, and he passed beyond the sculptured stones and escaped to Seirah.

“Lord, when You went out from Seir,
When You marched from the field of Edom,
The earth quaked, the heavens also dripped,
Yes, the clouds dripped water.

But Gideon said to him, “Please my lord, if the Lord is with us, then why has all this happened to us? And where are all His wondrous works which our fathers told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian.”

Then the Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; they served the Baals, the Ashtaroth (female deities), the gods of Aram (Syria), the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines. They abandoned the Lord and did not serve Him.

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.

And the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him at times in Mahaneh-dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.

They said to him, “We have come down to bind you, so that we may hand you over to the Philistines.” And Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not kill me.”

Then his brothers and his father’s entire [tribal] household came down, took him, and brought him up; and they buried him in the tomb of Manoah his father, [which was] between Zorah and Eshtaol. So Samson had judged Israel for twenty years.

So the sons of Dan sent from the total number of their [extended] family five brave men from Zorah and Eshtaol, to scout the land and to explore it; and they said to them, “Go, explore the land.” They came to the hill country of Ephraim, to the house of Micah, and lodged there.

The five men came back [home] to their brothers at Zorah and Eshtaol, and their brothers said to them, “What do you have to report?”

Then from the [tribal] family of the Danites, from Zorah and from Eshtaol, six hundred men armed with weapons of war set out.