Later on, after she had arrived, she urged Othniel to ask her father for a field. As she got off her donkey, Caleb asked her, "What do you want for yourself?"

"I want this blessing from you," she replied. "Since you've given me land in the Negev, give me water springs, too." So Caleb gave her both the upper and lower springs.

She regularly took her seat under the Palm Tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the mountainous region of Ephraim, where the Israelis would approach her for decisions.

She sent word to Abinoam's son Barak from Kedesh-naphtali, summoning him. She asked him, "The LORD God of Israel has commanded you, hasn't he? He told you, "Go out, march to Mount Tabor, and take 10,000 men with you from the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulun.

She responded, "I will surely go with you, but the road that you're about to take will not lead to honor for you. The LORD will sell Sisera into the hands of a woman." Then Deborah got up and went with Barak toward Kedesh.

Jael went out to greet Sisera. "Turn aside, sir!" she told him. "Turn aside to me! Don't be afraid." So he turned aside to her and entered her tent, where she concealed him behind a curtain.

He asked her, "Please give me some water to drink, because I'm thirsty." Instead, she opened a leather container of milk, gave him a drink, and then covered him up.

Meanwhile, as Barak continued chasing Sisera, Jael went out to meet him. "Come with me," she told him, "and I'll show you the man you're looking for!" So he went with her, and there was Sisera, lying dead with the tent peg still embedded in his temple!

"Blessed above all women is Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite; most blessed is she among women who live in tents!

Sisera asked for water she gave him milk. In a magnificent bowl she brought him yogurt!

She reached out one hand for the tent peg, and her other for the workman's mallet. Then she struck Sisera, smashing his head, shattering and piercing his temple.

Her wise attendants find an answer for her; in fact, she tells the same words to herself:

When Jephthah arrived at his home in Mizpah surprise! it was his daughter who came out to meet him, playing tambourines and dancing. She was his one and only child. Except for her, he had no other son or daughter.

She told him, "My father, you have given your word to the LORD. Do to me according to what has come out of your own mouth, considering that the LORD has paid back your enemies, the Ammonites."

Then she continued talking with her father, "Do this for me: leave me alone by myself for two months. I'll go up to the mountains and cry there because I'll never marry. My friends and I will go."

So he said, "Go!" He sent her away for two months. She left with her friends and cried there on the mountains because she would never marry.

Later, after the two months were concluded, she returned to her father, and he fulfilled what he had solemnly vowed and she never married. That's how the custom arose in Israel

There was one man from Zorah, from the family of the descendants of Dan, whose name was Manoah. Since his wife was infertile, she hadn't borne 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.

God listened to Manoah's request, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she was sitting out in the pasture. But her husband Manoah wasn't with her,

She must not consume anything extracted from grape vines, including wine or anything intoxicating, and she must not eat anything unclean, doing everything that I commissioned her to do."

But Samson retorted to his father, "Get her for me, since she looks fine to me." Meanwhile, his father and mother did not know that she was from the LORD, because he had been seeking a favorable opportunity concerning the Philistines, since the Philistines were dominating Israel at that time.

Then he went down and talked to the woman, and she looked fine to Samson.

So she kept on crying in front of him for the entire seven days of the wedding party. On the seventh day he told the solution to her because she nagged him, and then she told the solution to the riddle to her relatives.

Her father said, "Because I honestly thought that you hated her deeply, I gave her in marriage to your best man. Isn't her younger sister better than she? Please then, let her be yours instead."

Then the Philistine leaders brought her seven green cords that had never been dried, and she tied him up with them.

Meanwhile, some kidnappers were hiding inside an inner room, waiting for her signal. So she told him, "The Philistines are attacking you!" But he snapped the cords as one might break a burned candle wick. So his secret remained undiscovered.

So Delilah grabbed some new ropes and tied him up. Then she told him, "The Philistines are attacking you, Samson!" because some kidnappers were hiding inside an inner room. But he snapped the ropes from his arms like thread.

So Delilah took the seven locks on his head and wove them into the loom while he slept. She fastened his hair with a peg and then told him, "The Philistines are attacking you, Samson!" But he woke up from his nap and pulled the pin from the loom and the weaving.

Some time later, she asked him, "How can you keep saying "I love you!' when your heart isn't with me? These three times you've lied to me and haven't told me where your great strength lies."

She nagged him every day with this speech, pestering him until he was annoyed nearly to death.

When Delilah realized that he had disclosed everything to her, she sent for the Philistine officials and told them, "Hurry up and come here at once, because he has told me everything." So the Philistine officials went to her and brought their money with them.

So she enticed him to fall asleep on her lap, called for a man to shave off his seven locks of hair from his head, and so began to humiliate him. Then his strength abandoned him.

When she cried out, "The Philistines are attacking you, Samson!" he woke from his sleep and told himself, "I'll go out like I did at other times like this and shake myself free." But he didn't know that the LORD had abandoned him.

He told his mother, "Do you remember those 1,100 silver coins that were stolen from you and about which you uttered a curse when I could hear it? Well, I have the silver. I took it." So she replied, "May my son be blessed by the LORD."

Her son gave back the 1,100 silver coins to his mother, and she said, "I'm totally giving this silver from my hand to the LORD so my son can make a carved image and a cast image. So I'm returning it to you."

But his mistress was sexually unfaithful to him, and then she left him to live in her father's home in Bethlehem in the territory of Judah. She had been living there for a period of about four months

when her husband got up and went after her, intending to speak lovingly to her in order to win her back. He took with him his young man servant and a pair of donkeys. When she brought him into her father's house to see him, her father was happy to have met him.