Now, come up at night with your men and set an ambush in the field outside the city.

In the morning at sunrise quickly attack the city. When he and his men come out to fight you, do what you can to him."

So Abimelech and all his men came up at night and set an ambush outside Shechem -- they divided into four units.

When Gaal son of Ebed came out and stood at the entrance to the city's gate, Abimelech and his men got up from their hiding places.

Gaal saw the men and said to Zebul, "Look, men are coming down from the tops of the hills." But Zebul said to him, "You are seeing the shadows on the hills -- it just looks like men."

Zebul said to him, "Where now are your bragging words, 'Who is Abimelech that we should serve him?' Are these not the men you insulted? Go out now and fight them!"

So Gaal led the leaders of Shechem out and fought Abimelech.

Abimelech chased him, and Gaal ran from him. Many Shechemites fell wounded at the entrance of the gate.

Abimelech went back to Arumah; Zebul drove Gaal and his brothers out of Shechem.

The next day the Shechemites came out to the field. When Abimelech heard about it,

he took his men and divided them into three units and set an ambush in the field. When he saw the people coming out of the city, he attacked and struck them down.

Abimelech fought against the city all that day. He captured the city and killed all the people in it. Then he leveled the city and spread salt over it.

He and all his men went up on Mount Zalmon. He took an ax in his hand and cut off a tree branch. He put it on his shoulder and said to his men, "Quickly, do what you have just seen me do!"

So each of his men also cut off a branch and followed Abimelech. They put the branches against the stronghold and set fire to it. All the people of the Tower of Shechem died -- about a thousand men and women.

Abimelech moved on to Thebez; he besieged and captured it.

There was a fortified tower in the center of the city, so all the men and women, as well as the city's leaders, ran into it and locked the entrance. Then they went up to the roof of the tower.

Abimelech came and attacked the tower. When he approached the entrance of the tower to set it on fire,

The Israelites cried out for help to the Lord: "We have sinned against you. We abandoned our God and worshiped the Baals."

the Sidonians, Amalek, and Midian when they oppressed you? You cried out for help to me, and I delivered you from their power.

It was some time after this when the Ammonites fought with Israel.

The Ammonite king said to Jephthah's messengers, "Because Israel stole my land when they came up from Egypt -- from the Arnon River in the south to the Jabbok River in the north, and as far west as the Jordan. Now return it peaceably!"

and said to him, "This is what Jephthah says, 'Israel did not steal the land of Moab and the land of the Ammonites.

Israel sent messengers to the king of Edom, saying, "Please allow us to pass through your land." But the king of Edom rejected the request. Israel sent the same request to the king of Moab, but he was unwilling to cooperate. So Israel stayed at Kadesh.

Since the Lord God of Israel has driven out the Amorites before his people Israel, do you think you can just take it from them?

You have the right to take what Chemosh your god gives you, but we will take the land of all whom the Lord our God has driven out before us.

He defeated them from Aroer all the way to Minnith -- twenty cities in all, even as far as Abel Keramim! He wiped them out! The Israelites humiliated the Ammonites.

When Jephthah came home to Mizpah, there was his daughter hurrying out to meet him, dancing to the rhythm of tambourines. She was his only child; except for her he had no son or daughter.

When he saw her, he ripped his clothes and said, "Oh no! My daughter! You have completely ruined me! You have brought me disaster! I made an oath to the Lord, and I cannot break it."

then they said to him, "Say 'Shibboleth!'" If he said, "Sibboleth" (and could not pronounce the word correctly), they grabbed him and executed him right there at the fords of the Jordan. On that day forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell dead.

He had forty sons and thirty grandsons who rode on seventy donkeys. He led Israel for eight years.

Now be careful! Do not drink wine or beer, and do not eat any food that will make you ritually unclean.

He said to me, 'Look, you will conceive and have a son. So now, do not drink wine or beer and do not eat any food that will make you ritually unclean. For the child will be dedicated to God from birth till the day he dies.'"

The woman ran at once and told her husband, "Come quickly, the man who visited me the other day has appeared to me!"

Manoah said, "Now, when your announcement comes true, how should the child be raised and what should he do?"

She should not drink anything that the grapevine produces. She must not drink wine or beer, and she must not eat any food that will make her ritually unclean. She should obey everything I commanded her to do."

Manoah said to the Lord's messenger, "Please stay here awhile, so we can prepare a young goat for you to eat."

The Lord's messenger said to Manoah, "If I stay, I will not eat your food. But if you want to make a burnt sacrifice to the Lord, you should offer it." (He said this because Manoah did not know that he was the Lord's messenger.)

The Lord's messenger said to him, "You should not ask me my name, because you cannot comprehend it."

As the flame went up from the altar toward the sky, the Lord's messenger went up in it while Manoah and his wife watched. They fell facedown to the ground.

Now his father and mother did not realize this was the Lord's doing, because he was looking for an opportunity to stir up trouble with the Philistines (for at that time the Philistines were ruling Israel).

The Lord's spirit empowered him and he tore the lion in two with his bare hands as easily as one would tear a young goat. But he did not tell his father or mother what he had done.

He scooped it up with his hands and ate it as he walked along. When he returned to his father and mother, he offered them some and they ate it. But he did not tell them he had scooped the honey out of the lion's carcass.

Samson said to them, "I will give you a riddle. If you really can solve it during the seven days the party lasts, I will give you thirty linen robes and thirty sets of clothes.

But if you cannot solve it, you will give me thirty linen robes and thirty sets of clothes." They said to him, "Let us hear your riddle."

He said to them, "Out of the one who eats came something to eat; out of the strong one came something sweet." They could not solve the riddle for three days.

On the seventh day, before the sun set, the men of the city said to him, "What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?" He said to them, "If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have solved my riddle!"

Sometime later, during the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat as a gift and went to visit his bride. He said to her father, "I want to have sex with my bride in her bedroom!" But her father would not let him enter.

The men of Judah said, "Why are you attacking us?" The Philistines said, "We have come up to take Samson prisoner so we can do to him what he has done to us."

Three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave in the cliff of Etam and said to Samson, "Do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? Why have you done this to us?" He said to them, "I have only done to them what they have done to me."

He happened to see a solid jawbone of a donkey. He grabbed it and struck down a thousand men.

He was very thirsty, so he cried out to the Lord and said, "You have given your servant this great victory. But now must I die of thirst and fall into hands of the Philistines?"

So God split open the basin at Lehi and water flowed out from it. When he took a drink, his strength was restored and he revived. For this reason he named the spring En Hakkore. It remains in Lehi to this very day.

The Gazites were told, "Samson has come here!" So they surrounded the town and hid all night at the city gate, waiting for him to leave. They relaxed all night, thinking, "He will not leave until morning comes; then we will kill him!"

The rulers of the Philistines went up to visit her and said to her, "Trick him! Find out what makes him so strong and how we can subdue him and humiliate him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred silver pieces."

So Delilah said to Samson, "Tell me what makes you so strong and how you can be subdued and humiliated."

They hid in the bedroom and then she said to him, "The Philistines are here, Samson!" He snapped the bowstrings as easily as a thread of yarn snaps when it is put close to fire. The secret of his strength was not discovered.

Delilah said to Samson, "Up to now you have deceived me and told me lies. Tell me how you can be subdued." He said to her, "If you weave the seven braids of my hair into the fabric on the loom and secure it with the pin, I will become weak and be like any other man."

So she made him go to sleep, wove the seven braids of his hair into the fabric on the loom, fastened it with the pin, and said to him, "The Philistines are here, Samson!" He woke up and tore away the pin of the loom and the fabric.

She said to him, "How can you say, 'I love you,' when you will not share your secret with me? Three times you have deceived me and have not told me what makes you so strong."

She nagged him every day and pressured him until he was sick to death of it.

The Philistines captured him and gouged out his eyes. They brought him down to Gaza and bound him in bronze chains. He became a grinder in the prison.

His hair began to grow back after it had been shaved off.

Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines!" He pushed hard and the temple collapsed on the rulers and all the people in it. He killed many more people in his death than he had killed during his life.

He said to his mother, "You know the eleven hundred pieces of silver which were stolen from you, about which I heard you pronounce a curse? Look here, I have the silver. I stole it, but now I am giving it back to you." His mother said, "May the Lord reward you, my son!"

When he gave back to his mother the eleven hundred pieces of silver, his mother said, "I solemnly dedicate this silver to the Lord. It will be for my son's benefit. We will use it to make a carved image and a metal image."

In those days Israel had no king. Each man did what he considered to be right.

In those days Israel had no king. And in those days the Danite tribe was looking for a place to settle, because at that time they did not yet have a place to call their own among the tribes of Israel.

The Danites sent out from their whole tribe five representatives, capable men from Zorah and Eshtaol, to spy out the land and explore it. They said to them, "Go, explore the land." They came to the Ephraimite hill country and spent the night at Micah's house.

As they approached Micah's house, they recognized the accent of the young Levite. So they stopped there and said to him, "Who brought you here? What are you doing in this place? What is your business here?"

He told them what Micah had done for him, saying, "He hired me and I became his priest."

When the Danites returned to their tribe in Zorah and Eshtaol, their kinsmen asked them, "How did it go?"

They said, "Come on, let's attack them, for we saw their land and it is very good. You seem lethargic, but don't hesitate to invade and conquer the land.

When you invade, you will encounter unsuspecting people. The land is wide! God is handing it over to you -- a place that lacks nothing on earth!"

So six hundred Danites, fully armed, set out from Zorah and Eshtaol.

They went up and camped in Kiriath Jearim in Judah. (To this day that place is called Camp of Dan. It is west of Kiriath Jearim.)

From there they traveled through the Ephraimite hill country and arrived at Micah's house.

The five men who had gone to spy out the land of Laish said to their kinsmen, "Do you realize that inside these houses are an ephod, some personal idols, a carved image, and a metal image? Decide now what you want to do."

Meanwhile the six hundred Danites, fully armed, stood at the entrance to the gate.

The five men who had gone to spy out the land broke in and stole the carved image, the ephod, the personal idols, and the metal image, while the priest was standing at the entrance to the gate with the six hundred fully armed men.

When these men broke into Micah's house and stole the carved image, the ephod, the personal idols, and the metal image, the priest said to them, "What are you doing?"

They said to him, "Shut up! Put your hand over your mouth and come with us! You can be our adviser and priest. Wouldn't it be better to be a priest for a whole Israelite tribe than for just one man's family?"

When they called out to the Danites, the Danites turned around and said to Micah, "Why have you gathered together?"

He said, "You stole my gods that I made, as well as this priest, and then went away. What do I have left? How can you have the audacity to say to me, 'What do you want?'"

Now the Danites took what Micah had made, as well as his priest, and came to Laish, where the people were undisturbed and unsuspecting. They struck them down with the sword and burned the city.

No one came to the rescue because the city was far from Sidon and they had no dealings with anyone. The city was in a valley near Beth Rehob. The Danites rebuilt the city and occupied it.

They named it Dan after their ancestor, who was one of Israel's sons. But the city's name used to be Laish.

However, she got angry at him and went home to her father's house in Bethlehem in Judah. When she had been there four months,

His father-in-law, the girl's father, persuaded him to stay with him for three days, and they ate and drank together, and spent the night there.

On the fourth day they woke up early and the Levite got ready to leave. But the girl's father said to his son-in-law, "Have a bite to eat for some energy, then you can go."

He woke up early in the morning on the fifth day so he could leave, but the girl's father said, "Get some energy. Wait until later in the day to leave!" So they ate a meal together.

When they got near Jebus, it was getting quite late and the servant said to his master, "Come on, let's stop at this Jebusite city and spend the night in it."

But his master said to him, "We should not stop at a foreign city where non-Israelites live. We will travel on to Gibeah."

But then an old man passed by, returning at the end of the day from his work in the field. The man was from the Ephraimite hill country; he was living temporarily in Gibeah. (The residents of the town were Benjaminites.)

They were having a good time, when suddenly some men of the city, some good-for-nothings, surrounded the house and kept beating on the door. They said to the old man who owned the house, "Send out the man who came to visit you so we can have sex with him."

Here are my virgin daughter and my guest's concubine. I will send them out and you can abuse them and do to them whatever you like. But don't do such a disgraceful thing to this man!"

The men refused to listen to him, so the Levite grabbed his concubine and made her go outside. They raped her and abused her all night long until morning. They let her go at dawn.

The woman arrived back at daybreak and was sprawled out on the doorstep of the house where her master was staying until it became light.

When her master got up in the morning, opened the doors of the house, and went outside to start on his journey, there was the woman, his concubine, sprawled out on the doorstep of the house with her hands on the threshold.

Everyone who saw the sight said, "Nothing like this has happened or been witnessed during the entire time since the Israelites left the land of Egypt! Take careful note of it! Discuss it and speak!"

All the Israelites from Dan to Beer Sheba and from the land of Gilead left their homes and assembled together before the Lord at Mizpah.