However, after the leader had died, they would relapse to a condition more corrupt than their ancestors, following other gods, serving them, and worshiping them. They would not abandon their activities or their obstinate lifestyles.

They remained there to test Israel, to reveal if they would obey the commands of the LORD that he issued to their ancestors through Moses.

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.

Whenever the Israelis sowed their crops, the Midianites, the Amalekites, and certain groups from the east would come up and invade them.

They would invade with their livestock and tents, swooping in as numerous as locusts. It was impossible to count them or their camels and they came into the land to destroy it.

The LORD told Gideon, "You have too many soldiers with you for me to drop Midian into their hands, because Israel would become arrogant and say, "It was my own abilities that delivered me.'

Gideon replied, "They were my brothers sons from my own mother. As the LORD lives, if you had let them live, I wouldn't be killing you."

But Gideon also added, "I would like to ask that each of you give me a ring from his war booty" because, as Ishmaelites, the Midianites had been wearing gold rings.

If only authority over this people were given to me. Then I would remove Abimelech!" Then he challenged Abimelech: "Build up your army and then come out and fight!"

Later on, the Israelis again practiced what the LORD considered to be evil by serving the Baals, the stars, the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the descendants of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines. In doing so, they ignored the LORD and wouldn't serve him.

"But the king of Edom wouldn't listen. So they also sent word to the king of Moab, but he wouldn't consent, either. So Israel stayed at Kadesh. Then they went through the desert, circumventing the territory belonging to Edom and Moab. They encamped on the other side of the Arnon River, but never entered the territory of Moab because the Arnon River is the border of Moab.

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

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.

that for four days out of every year the Israeli women would go to mourn the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite in commemoration.

When I saw that you wouldn't be delivering me, I took my own life in my hands, crossed over to fight the Ammonites, and the LORD gave them into my control. So why have you come here today to fight me?"

The descendants of Gilead seized control of the Jordan River's fords along the border of Ephraim's territory. Later on, when any fugitive from Ephraim asked them, "Let me cross over," the men from Gilead would ask him, "Are you an Ephraimite?" If he said "No,"

they would order him, "Pronounce the word "Shibboleth' right now." If he said "Sibboleth," not being able to pronounce it correctly, they would seize him and slaughter him there at the fords of the Jordan River. During those days 42,000 descendants of Ephraim died that way.

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.

But his wife replied to him, "If the LORD had intended to kill us, he wouldn't have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from us, he wouldn't have shown us all these things, and he wouldn't have permitted us to hear things like this, now would he?"

Then the men of the city answered him just before sunset on the seventh day: "What is sweeter than honey? What are stronger than lions?" Samson responded, "If you hadn't plowed with my heifer, you wouldn't have solved my riddle."

A while later during the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife, bringing along a young goat, and told his father-in-law, "I'm going into my wife's room." But her father wouldn't give permission for him to go.

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.

Instead, here's my virgin daughter and my visitor's mistress. Please let me bring them out to you. Occupy yourselves with them, and do to them whatever you would like. But don't commit such a stupid thing against this man."

But the descendants of Benjamin wouldn't obey the request of their own relatives, the Israelis, so the descendants of Benjamin assembled from the cities of Gibeah to fight the Israelis in battle.