And [the tribe of the sons of] Judah said to [the tribe of the sons of] Simeon his brother, “Come up with me into my allotted territory, so that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I likewise will go with you into your allotted territory.” So Simeon went with him.

And Caleb said, “Whoever attacks Kiriath-sepher and captures it, I will even give him my daughter Achsah as a wife.”

The spies saw a man coming out of the city and they said to him, “Please show us the entrance to the city and we will treat you kindly.”

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,

So I also said, ‘I will not drive your enemies out before you; but they will be like thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you.’”

I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left [to be conquered] when he died,

in order to test [the loyalty of] Israel by them, whether Israel will keep the way of the Lord to walk in it, as their fathers did, or not.”

I will draw out Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his infantry to meet you at the river Kishon, and I will hand him over to you.’”

Then Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go.”

She said, “I will certainly go with you; nevertheless, the journey that you are about to take will not be for your honor and glory, because the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” Then Deborah got up and went with Barak to Kedesh.

And behold, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him and said to him, “Come, and I will show you the man whom you are seeking.” And he entered [her tent] with her, and behold Sisera lay dead with the tent peg in his temple.

“Hear, O kings; listen, O rulers!
I will sing to the Lord,
I will sing praise to the Lord, the God of Israel.

The Lord answered him, “I will certainly be with you, and you will strike down the Midianites as [if they were only] one man.”

Please do not depart from here until I come back to You, and bring my offering and place it before You.” And He said, “I will wait until you return.”

But Joash said to all who stood against him, “Will you plead for Baal? Will you save him? Whoever pleads for Baal shall be put to death while it is still morning. If Baal is a god, let him defend himself, because someone has torn down his altar.”

Then Gideon said to God, “If You are going to rescue Israel through me, as You have spoken,

behold, I will put a fleece of [freshly sheared] wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece, and it is dry on all the ground [around it], then I will know that You will rescue Israel through me, as You have said.”

Then Gideon said to God, “Do not let your anger burn against me, so that I may speak once more. Please let me make a test once more with the fleece; now let only the fleece be dry, and let there be dew on all the ground.”

Then the Lord said to Gideon, “There are still too many people; bring them down to the water and I will test them for you there. Therefore it shall be that he of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall go with you,’ he shall go with you; but everyone of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ he shall not go.”

And the Lord told Gideon, “With the three hundred men who lapped I will rescue you, and will hand over the Midianites to you. Let all the other people go, each man to his home.”

Gideon said, “For that [response], when the Lord has handed over Zebah and Zalmunna to me, I will thrash your bodies with the thorns and briars of the wilderness.”

So Gideon said also to the men of Penuel, “When I come again in peace, I will tear down this tower.”

But Gideon said to them, “I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord shall rule over you.”

They answered, “We will certainly give them to you.” And they spread out a garment, and every one of them threw an earring there from his spoil.

Yet you have abandoned (rejected) Me and served other gods; therefore I will no longer rescue you.

The people, the leaders of Gilead (Israel) said to one another, “Who is the man who will begin to fight against the Ammonites? He shall become head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.”

So Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, “If you take me back [home] to fight against the Ammonites and the Lord gives them over to me, will I [really] become your head?”

Do you not possess what Chemosh your god gives you to possess? And everything that the Lord our God dispossessed before us, we will possess.

Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, “If You will indeed give the Ammonites into my hand,

then whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites, it shall be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.”

The men of [the tribe of] Ephraim were summoned [to action], and they crossed over to Zaphon and said to Jephthah, “Why did you cross over to fight with the Ammonites without calling us to go with you? [For that] we will burn your house down upon you.”

The Angel of the Lord said to Manoah, “Though you detain me, I will not eat your food, but if you prepare a burnt offering, offer it to the Lord.” For Manoah did not know that he was the Angel of the Lord.

Then Samson said to them, “Let me now ask you a riddle; if you can tell me what it is within the seven days of the feast, and solve it, then I will give you thirty linen tunics (undergarments) and thirty changes of [outer] clothing.

But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife with a young goat [as a gift of reconciliation]; and he said, “I will go in to my wife in her room.” But her father would not allow him to go in.

Samson said to them, “If this is the way you act, be certain that I will take revenge on you, and [only] after that I will stop.”

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.”

So they said to him, “No, we will [only] bind you securely and place you into their hands; but we certainly will not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock [of Etam].

The Gazites were told, “Samson has come here.” So they surrounded the place and waited all night at the gate of the city to ambush him. They kept quiet all night, saying, “In the morning, when it is light, we will kill him.”

So the [five] lords (governors) of the Philistines came to her and said to her, “Persuade him, and see where his great strength lies and [find out] how we may overpower him so that we may bind him to subdue him. And each of us will give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.”

Then [finally] he told her everything that was in his heart and said to her, “A razor has never been used on my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I am shaved, then my strength will leave me, and I will become weak and be like any [other] man.”

She said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as I have time after time and shake myself free.” For Samson did not know that the Lord had departed from him.

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.”

And Micah said to him, “Live here with me and be a father and a [personal] priest to me, and I will give you ten pieces of silver each year, a supply of clothing, and your sustenance (room and board).” So the Levite went in.

Then Micah said, “Now I know that the Lord will favor me and make me prosper because I have a Levite as my priest.”

And they said to him, “Please ask of God, so that we may know whether our journey on which we are going will be successful.”

They said, “Arise, let us go up against them; for we have seen the land, and behold, it is very good (fertile). Will you sit still and do nothing? Do not hesitate to go, to enter, to take possession of the land.

When you enter, you will come to people [feeling] safe and secure with a spacious land [widely extended on all sides]; for God has given it into your hands—a place where there is no lack of anything that is on the earth.”

But his master said to him, “We will not turn aside into a city of foreigners who are not of the sons (descendants) of Israel. We will go on as far as Gibeah.”

Here is my virgin daughter and this man’s concubine. I will bring them out now; abuse and humiliate them and do to them whatever you want, but do not commit this act of sacrilege against this man.”

Then all the people stood [unified] as one man, saying, “None of us will go to his tent, and none of us will return to his home [until this is settled].

But now this is the thing which we will do to Gibeah; we will go up by lot against it,

and we will take ten men out of a hundred throughout the tribes of Israel, and a hundred out of a thousand, and a thousand out of ten thousand to bring provisions for the men, so that when they come to Gibeah of Benjamin, they may punish them for all the despicable acts which they have committed in Israel.”

and Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, ministered before it in those days), saying, “Shall I yet again go out to battle against the sons of my brother Benjamin, or shall I quit?” And the Lord said, “Go up, for tomorrow I will hand them over to you.”

What shall we do for wives for those who are left, since we have sworn [an oath] by the Lord that we will not give them any of our daughters as wives?”

When their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, we shall say to them, ‘Give them to us voluntarily, because we did not take a wife for each man of Benjamin in battle, nor did you give wives to them, for that would have made you guilty [of breaking your oath].’”