But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them among the stalks of flax that she had arranged on the roof.

Before the men fell asleep, she went up on the roof

Then she let them down by a rope through the window, since she lived in a house that was built into the wall of the city.

“Go to the hill country so that the men pursuing you won’t find you,” she said to them. “Hide yourselves there for three days until they return; afterward, go on your way.”

“Let it be as you say,” she replied, and she sent them away. After they had gone, she tied the scarlet cord to the window.

But the city and everything in it are set apart to the Lord for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and everyone with her in the house will live, because she hid the men we sent.

However, Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, her father’s household, and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent to spy on Jericho, and she lives in Israel to this day.

When she arrived, she persuaded Othniel to ask her father for a field. As she got off her donkey, Caleb asked her, “What do you want?”

She replied, “Give me a blessing. Since you have given me land in the Negev, give me the springs of water also.” So he gave her the upper and lower springs.

When she arrived, she persuaded Othniel to ask her father for a field. As she got off her donkey, Caleb asked her, “What do you want?”

She answered him, “Give me a blessing. Since you have given me land in the Negev, give me springs of water also.” So Caleb gave her both the upper and lower springs.

She summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, “Hasn’t the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you: ‘Go, deploy the troops on Mount Tabor, and take with you 10,000 men from the Naphtalites and Zebulunites?

“I will go with you,” she said, “but you will receive no honor on the road you are about to take, because the Lord will sell Sisera into a woman’s hand.” So Deborah got up and went with Barak to Kedesh.

Jael went out to greet Sisera and said to him, “Come in, my lord. Come in with me. Don’t be afraid.” So he went into her tent, and she covered him with a rug.

He said to her, “Please give me a little water to drink for I am thirsty.” She opened a container of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him again.

While he was sleeping from exhaustion, Heber’s wife Jael took a tent peg, grabbed a hammer, and went silently to Sisera. She hammered the peg into his temple and drove it into the ground, and he died.

Jael is most blessed of women,
the wife of Heber the Kenite;
she is most blessed among tent-dwelling women.

He asked for water; she gave him milk.
She brought him curdled milk in a majestic bowl.

She reached for a tent peg,
her right hand, for a workman’s mallet.
Then she hammered Sisera—
she crushed his head;
she shattered and pierced his temple.

Sisera’s mother looked through the window;
she peered through the lattice, crying out:
“Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why don’t I hear the hoofbeats of his horses?”

Her wisest princesses answer her;
she even answers herself:

When Jephthah went to his home in Mizpah, there was his daughter, coming out to meet him with tambourines and dancing! She was his only child; he had no other son or daughter besides her.

Then she said to him, “My father, you have given your word to the Lord. Do to me as you have said, for the Lord brought vengeance on your enemies, the Ammonites.”

She also said to her father, “Let me do this one thing: Let me wander two months through the mountains with my friends and mourn my virginity.”

“Go,” he said. And he sent her away two months. So she left with her friends and mourned her virginity as she wandered through the mountains.

At the end of two months, she returned to her father, and he kept the vow he had made about her. And she had never been intimate with a man. Now it became a custom in Israel

God listened to Manoah, and the Angel of God came again to the woman. She was sitting in the field, and her husband Manoah was not with her.

She must not eat anything that comes from the grapevine or drink wine or beer. And she must not eat anything unclean. Your wife must do everything I have commanded her.”

She wept the whole seven days of the feast, and at last, on the seventh day, he explained it to her, because she had nagged him so much. Then she explained it to her people.

“I was sure you hated her,” her father said, “so I gave her to one of the men who accompanied you. Isn’t her younger sister more beautiful than she is? Why not take her instead?”

The Philistine leaders brought her seven fresh bowstrings that had not been dried, and she tied him up with them.

While the men in ambush were waiting in her room, she called out to him, “Samson, the Philistines are here!” But he snapped the bowstrings as a strand of yarn snaps when it touches fire. The secret of his strength remained unknown.

She fastened the braids with a pin and called to him, “Samson, the Philistines are here!” He awoke from his sleep and pulled out the pin, with the loom and the web.

“How can you say, ‘I love you,’” she told him, “when your heart is not with me? This is the third time you have mocked me and not told me what makes your strength so great!”

Because she nagged him day after day and pleaded with him until she wore him out,

When Delilah realized that he had told her the whole truth, she sent this message to the Philistine leaders: “Come one more time, for he has told me the whole truth.” The Philistine leaders came to her and brought the money with them.

Then she let him fall asleep on her lap and called a man to shave off the seven braids on his head. In this way, she made him helpless, and his strength left him.

Then she cried, “Samson, the Philistines are here!” When he awoke from his sleep, he said, “I will escape as I did before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him.

So he returned the silver to his mother, and she took five pounds of silver and gave it to a silversmith. He made it into a carved image overlaid with silver, and it was in Micah’s house.

But she was unfaithful to him and left him for her father’s house in Bethlehem in Judah. She was there for a period of four months.

Then her husband got up and went after her to speak kindly to her and bring her back. He had his servant with him and a pair of donkeys. So she brought him to her father’s house, and when the girl’s father saw him, he gladly welcomed him.

Early that morning, the woman made her way back, and as it was getting light, she collapsed at the doorway of the man’s house where her master was.

Citizens of Gibeah ganged up on me and surrounded the house at night. They intended to kill me, but they raped my concubine, and she died.

Naomi’s husband Elimelech died, and she was left with her two sons.

She and her daughters-in-law prepared to leave the land of Moab, because she had heard in Moab that the Lord had paid attention to His people’s need by providing them food.

She left the place where she had been living, accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, and traveled along the road leading back to the land of Judah.

She said to them, “Each of you go back to your mother’s home. May the Lord show faithful love to you as you have shown to the dead and to me.

May the Lord enable each of you to find security in the house of your new husband.” She kissed them, and they wept loudly.

When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped trying to persuade her.

“Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara,” she answered, “for the Almighty has made me very bitter.

So Ruth left and entered the field to gather grain behind the harvesters. She happened to be in the portion of land belonging to Boaz, who was from Elimelech’s family.

The servant answered, “She is the young Moabite woman who returned with Naomi from the land of Moab.

She asked, ‘Will you let me gather fallen grain among the bundles behind the harvesters?’ She came and has remained from early morning until now, except that she rested a little in the shelter.”

She bowed with her face to the ground and said to him, “Why are you so kind to notice me, although I am a foreigner?”

“My lord,” she said, “you have been so kind to me, for you have comforted and encouraged your slave, although I am not like one of your female servants.”

At mealtime Boaz told her, “Come over here and have some bread and dip it in the vinegar sauce.” So she sat beside the harvesters, and he offered her roasted grain. She ate and was satisfied and had some left over.

When she got up to gather grain, Boaz ordered his young men, “Let her even gather grain among the bundles, and don’t humiliate her.

So Ruth gathered grain in the field until evening. She beat out what she had gathered, and it was about 26 quarts of barley.

She picked up the grain and went into the town, where her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. Then she brought out what she had left over from her meal and gave it to her.

Then her mother-in-law said to her, “Where did you gather barley today, and where did you work? May the Lord bless the man who noticed you.”

Ruth told her mother-in-law about the men she had worked with and said, “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz.”

Ruth stayed close to Boaz’s female servants and gathered grain until the barley and the wheat harvests were finished. And she lived with her mother-in-law.

She went down to the threshing floor and did everything her mother-in-law had instructed her.

After Boaz ate, drank, and was in good spirits, he went to lie down at the end of the pile of barley. Then she went in secretly, uncovered his feet, and lay down.

So he asked, “Who are you?”

“I am Ruth, your slave,” she replied. “Spread your cloak over me, for you are a family redeemer.”

So she lay down at his feet until morning but got up while it was still dark. Then Boaz said, “Don’t let it be known that a woman came to the threshing floor.”

And he told Ruth, “Bring the shawl you’re wearing and hold it out.” When she held it out, he shoveled six measures of barley into her shawl, and she went into the town.

She went to her mother-in-law, Naomi, who asked her, “How did it go, my daughter?”

Then Ruth told her everything the man had done for her.

She said, “He gave me these six measures of barley, because he said, ‘Don’t go back to your mother-in-law empty-handed.’”

Naomi said, “My daughter, wait until you find out how things go, for he won’t rest unless he resolves this today.”

Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he was intimate with her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son.

Whenever she went up to the Lord’s house, her rival taunted her in this way every year. Hannah wept and would not eat.

Making a vow, she pleaded, “Lord of Hosts, if You will take notice of Your servant’s affliction, remember and not forget me, and give Your servant a son, I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and his hair will never be cut.”

While she continued praying in the Lord’s presence, Eli watched her lips.

Hannah was praying silently, and though her lips were moving, her voice could not be heard. Eli thought she was drunk

“May your servant find favor with you,” she replied. Then Hannah went on her way; she ate and no longer looked despondent.

After some time, Hannah conceived and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, because she said, “I requested him from the Lord.”

Her husband Elkanah replied, “Do what you think is best, and stay here until you’ve weaned him. May the Lord confirm your word.” So Hannah stayed there and nursed her son until she weaned him.

When she had weaned him, she took him with her to Shiloh, as well as a three-year-old bull, half a bushel of flour, and a jar of wine. Though the boy was still young, she took him to the Lord’s house at Shiloh.

“Please, my lord,” she said, “as sure as you live, my lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the Lord.

Each year his mother made him a little robe and took it to him when she went with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice.

Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife: “May the Lord give you children by this woman in place of the one she has given to the Lord.” Then they would go home.

The Lord paid attention to Hannah’s need, and she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. Meanwhile, the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the Lord.

Eli’s daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant and about to give birth. When she heard the news about the capture of God’s ark and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband, she collapsed and gave birth because her labor pains came on her.

As she was dying, the women taking care of her said, “Don’t be afraid. You’ve given birth to a son!” But she did not respond or pay attention.

She named the boy Ichabod, saying, “The glory has departed from Israel,” referring to the capture of the ark of God and to the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband.

“The glory has departed from Israel,” she said, “because the ark of God has been captured.”

Afterward, Samuel took a stone and set it upright between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, explaining, “The Lord has helped us to this point.”

When it was time to give Saul’s daughter Merab to David, she was given to Adriel the Meholathite as a wife.

“I’ll give her to him,” Saul thought. “She’ll be a trap for him, and the hand of the Philistines will be against him.” So Saul said to David a second time, “You can now be my son-in-law.”

So she lowered David from the window, and he fled and escaped.

Saul asked Michal, “Why did you deceive me like this? You sent my enemy away, and he has escaped!”

She answered him, “He said to me, ‘Let me go! Why should I kill you?’”

Then she said to her male servants, “Go ahead of me. I will be right behind you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal.

As she rode the donkey down a mountain pass hidden from view, she saw David and his men coming toward her and met them.

When Abigail saw David, she quickly got off the donkey and fell with her face to the ground in front of David.

She fell at his feet and said, “The guilt is mine, my lord, but please let your servant speak to you directly. Listen to the words of your servant.

Then David accepted what she had brought him and said, “Go home in peace. See, I have heard what you said and have granted your request.”

Then Abigail went to Nabal, and there he was in his house, holding a feast fit for a king. Nabal was in a good mood and very drunk, so she didn’t say anything to him until morning light.

She stood up, then bowed her face to the ground and said, “Here I am, your servant, to wash the feet of my lord’s servants.”

Then Abigail got up quickly, and with her five female servants accompanying her, rode on the donkey following David’s messengers. And so she became his wife.

When the woman saw Samuel, she screamed, and then she asked Saul, “Why did you deceive me? You are Saul!”