Then the {Israelites} cried out to Yahweh, saying, "We have sinned against you; we have abandoned our God and served the Baals."

And Yahweh said to the {Israelites}, "[Did I] not [deliver you] from [the] Egyptians, the Amorites, from the {Ammonites}, and from the Philistines?

And when [the] Sidonians, [the] Amalekites, and [the] Maonites oppressed you, you cried out to me, and I delivered you from their hand.

Go and cry out to the gods whom you have chosen; let them deliver you in the time of your trouble."

And the {Israelites} said to Yahweh, "We have sinned; {do to us accordingly as you see fit}; only please deliver us this day."

The people, the ones commanding Gilead, {said to each other}, "Who [is] the man that will begin to fight against the {Ammonites}? He will be as head over all the inhabitants of Gilead."

Gilead's wife also bore for him sons; and the sons of [his] wife grew up and drove Jephthah away, and they said to him, "You will not inherit the house of our father because you [are] the son of another woman."

When the {Ammonites} made war with Israel, the elders of Gilead went to bring Jephthah from the land of Tob.

And they said to Jephthah, "Come and be our commander, so that we may make war against the {Ammonites}."

Jephthah said to the elders, "Did you not shun me and drive me out from the house of my father? Why do you come to me now when you have trouble?"

And the elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, "That being so, we have now returned to you, that you may go with us {to fight} against the {Ammonites} and become for us as head of all the inhabitants of Gilead."

So Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, "If you bring me back {to fight} against the {Ammonites}, and Yahweh gives them {over to me}, will I be your head?"

And the elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, "Yahweh will be a {witness} between us; we will act according to your word."

And Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the {Ammonites}, saying, "What [is between] you and me that you have come to me to make war against my land?"

And the king of the {Ammonites} said to Jephthah's messengers, "Because Israel took my land from [the] Arnon up to the Jabbok and the Jordan when they came up from Egypt; so then, restore it peacefully."

Once again Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the {Ammonites},

and he said to him, "Thus says Jephthah, 'Israel did not take the land of Moab or the land of the {Ammonites},

because when they came up from Egypt, Israel went through the wilderness to the {Red Sea} and went to Kadesh.

Israel sent messengers to the king of Edom, saying, "Please let us cross through your land," but the king of Edom would not listen. And they also sent [messengers] to the king of Moab, but he was not willing. So Israel stayed in Kadesh.

Then they traveled through the wilderness, went around the land of Edom and Moab, and came to {the east} side of the land of Moab, and they encamped beyond [the] Arnon; and they did not go into the territory of Moab because [the] Arnon [was] the border of Moab.

Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, king of Heshbon; and Israel said to him, 'Please let us cross through your land {to our country}.'

But Sihon did not trust Israel to cross through his territory, so Sihon gathered all his people and then encamped at Jahaz; and he made war with Israel.

They occupied all the territory of the Amorites from [the] Arnon up to the Jabbok, and from the wilderness up to the Jordan.

So then Yahweh, the God of Israel, has driven out the Amorites from before his people Israel, and you want to possess it?

Do you not possess what Chemosh your god gave you to possess? Whoever Yahweh our God has driven out before us, we will possess it.

But the king of the {Ammonites} did not listen to the message that Jephthah sent to him.

And the Spirit of Yahweh came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh. He passed through Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed through [to] the {Ammonites}.

And Jephthah made a vow to Yahweh, and he said, "If indeed you will give the {Ammonites} into my hand,

whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return safely from the {Ammonites} will be Yahweh's, and I will offer it [as] a burnt offering."

And Jephthah crossed [over] to the {Ammonites} to make war against them; and Yahweh gave them into his hand.

And he defeated them [with] a very great blow, from Aroer as far as Minnith, twenty towns, up to Abel Keramim. And the {Ammonites} were subdued before the {Israelites}.

Jephthah came to Mizpah, to his house, and behold his daughter came out to meet him with tambourines and dancing. She [was] his only child; he did not have a son or daughter except her.

And the moment he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, "Ah! My daughter, you have caused me to bow down, and you have become my trouble. {I made an oath} to Yahweh, and I cannot take [it] back."

She said to him, "My father, {you made an oath} to Yahweh. Do to me according to what has gone out from your mouth, since Yahweh gave vengeance to you against your enemies, the {Ammonites}."

And she said to her father, "Let this thing be done for me: grant me two months so that I may go wander on the mountains and lament over my virginity, I and my companions.

And he said, "Go." He sent her away [for] two months, and she went with her friends, and she lamented over her virginity on the mountains.

At the end of the two months she returned to her father, and he did to her [according to] his vow; and {she did not sleep with a man}. And it became an annual custom in Israel

for the daughters of Israel to go and lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite for forty days of the year.

The men of Ephraim were called to arms, and they crossed [over] to Zaphon and said to Jephthah, "Why did you cross [over] and make war against the {Ammonites}, and why did you not call us to go with you? We will burn down your house over you with fire."

And Jephthah said to them, "I and my people were engaged in great conflict with the {Ammonites}; I called you, but you did not deliver me from their hand.

I saw that you would not deliver [us]; {I risked my own life}, and I crossed [over] to the {Ammonites}, and Yahweh gave them into my hand. Why have you come up to me this day to fight against me?"

Then Gilead captured the fords of the Jordan from Ephraim, and whenever a fugitive of Ephraim said, "Let me cross [over]," the men of Gilead said to him, "[Are] you an Ephraimite?" [When] he said, "No,"

they said to him, "Please say Shibboleth," and [if] he said, "Sibboleth"--because he could not {pronounce it} correctly--they grabbed him and executed him at the fords of Jordan. At that time forty-two thousand from Ephraim fell.

And an angel of Yahweh appeared to the woman, and he said to her, "Behold, you [are] infertile and have not borne [children], but you will conceive and bear a son.

So then, be careful and do not drink wine or strong drink, and do not eat anything unclean,

because you [will] conceive and bear a son. No razor {will touch} his head, because the boy will be a {Nazirite of God} {from birth}. And it is he who will begin to deliver Israel from [the] hand of [the] Philistines."

And the woman came and told her husband, saying, "A man of God came to me, and his appearance [was] like the appearance of an angel of God, very awesome. I did not ask him from where he [came], and he did not tell me his name.

And he said to me, 'Look, you [will] conceive and bear a son, so then, do not drink wine or strong drink, and do not eat anything unclean, for the boy will be a Nazirite of God from birth until the day of his death.'"

Then Manoah prayed to Yahweh and said, "Excuse me, my Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent again come to us and teach us what we should do concerning the boy who will be born."

And God listened to the voice of Manoah, and an angel of God came again to the woman; she [was] sitting in the field, but Manoah her husband was not with her.

The woman quickly ran and told her husband, and she said to him, "Look! The man who came to me the [other] day appeared to me."

So Manoah got up and went after his wife, and he came to the man and said to him, "[Are] you the man that spoke to the woman?" And he said, "I [am]."

And Manoah said to him, "Now {when your words come true}, what will be the boy's {manner of life} and work?"

And the angel of Yahweh said to Manoah, "Let the woman be attentive to all that I said.

And Manoah said to the angel of Yahweh, "{Please stay}, and let us prepare a {young goat} for you."

The angel of Yahweh said to Manoah, "If you keep me, I will not eat your food, but if you prepare a burnt offering for Yahweh, you can offer it (for Manoah did not know that he [was] an angel of Yahweh)."

And Manoah said to the angel of Yahweh, "What [is] your name so that when your words come [true] we may honor you?"

But the angel of Yahweh said to him, "Why do you ask my name? It [is too] wonderful."

And Manoah took the {young goat} and the grain offering, and he offered [it] to Yahweh on the rock, to the one who performs miracles. And Manoah and his wife [were] watching.

And when the flame went up toward the heaven from the altar, the angel of Yahweh went up in the flame of the altar to heaven while Manoah and his wife [were] watching. And they fell on their faces to the ground.

The angel of Yahweh did not appear again to Manoah and his wife, and then Manoah knew that he [was] a messenger of Yahweh.

And Manoah said to his wife, "We will certainly die because we have seen God."

But his wife said to him, "If Yahweh wanted to kill us he would not have taken from our hand the burnt offering and the grain offering, or shown us all these things, or now announced to us things such as these."

And the Spirit of Yahweh began to stir him in the camp of Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.

And Samson went down to Timnah, and he saw a woman in Timnah from the daughters of the Philistines.

But his father and mother said to him, "Is there not a wife among the daughters of your relatives, or among all our people, that you must take a wife from [the] uncircumcised Philistines?" But Samson said to his father, "Take her for me because {she pleases me}."

And Samson and his father and mother went down to Timnah, and they came to the vineyards of Timnah, and suddenly a young lion [came] roaring to meet him.

Then he went down and talked to the woman, and {she pleased Samson}.

And he returned after awhile {to marry her}, and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion, and there [was] a swarm of wild honey bees in the body of the lion, and honey.

He scraped it out into his hands, and he went on, eating [it] as he went. And he went to his father and mother and gave [some] to them, and they ate it. But he did not tell them that he had scraped the honey from the body of the lion.

His father went down to the woman, and Samson prepared there a feast, as young men were accustomed to doing this.

And Samson said to them, "Let me tell you a riddle. If you can fully explain it to me within the seven days of the feast, and find [it out], I will give to you thirty linen garments and thirty festal garments.

But if you are unable to explain it to me, you must give me thirty linen garments and thirty festal garments." So they said to him, "Tell your riddle; let us hear it."

He said to them, "From the eater came out food, From [the] strong came out sweet." But they were unable to explain the riddle for three days.

When it was the fourth day, they said to Samson's wife, "Entice your husband and tell us the riddle, or we will burn you and your father's house with fire. Have you invited us to rob us?"

And Samson's wife wept before him, and she said, "You must hate me; you do not love me. You told the riddle to {my people}, but you have not explained [it] to me." He said to her, "I have not explained [it] to my father and mother. [Why] should I explain it to you?"

She wept before him the seven days of their feast; and it happened, because she nagged him, on the seventh day he explained [it] to her, and she told the riddle to {her people}.

The men of the city said to him on the seventh day before the sun went [down], "What [is] sweeter than honey? What [is] stronger than a lion?" And he said to them, "If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle."

And the Spirit of Yahweh rushed on him, and he went down to Ashkelon. He killed thirty men from them, and he took their belongings, and he gave festal garments to the ones that explained the riddle. {He was angry}, and he went up to his father's house.

And Samson's wife was [given] to his companion who [was] his best man.

After a while, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a {young goat}. He said, "I want to go to my wife's private room." But her father would not allow him to enter.

Her father said, "I really thought that you hated her, so I gave her to your companion. [Is] not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please, {take her instead}."

And Samson said to them, "This time, as far as the Philistines are concerned, when I do something evil I am without blame."

And Samson went and captured three hundred foxes, and he took torches. He turned [them] tail to tail, and he put one torch between two tails.

He set fire to the torches and let [the foxes] go into the standing grain of [the] Philistines, and he burned both the stacks of sheaves and the standing grain, up to the vineyards of olive groves.

And [the] Philistines said, "Who has done this?" And they said, "Samson the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion." And [the] Philistines went up and burned her and her father with fire.

Samson said to them, "If you want to behave like this, [I swear] I will not rest unless I have taken revenge on you."

And the men of Judah said, "Why have you come up against us?" And they said, "To bind Samson; to do to him just as he did to us."

Then three thousand men from Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and they said to Samson, "Do you not know that the Philistines [are] ruling over us? What [is] this [that] you have done to us?" And he said to them, "Just as they did to me, so I have done to them."

They said to him, "We have come down to bind you and give you over into the hand of [the] Philistines." And Samson said to them, "Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves."

They said to him, "No, we will only bind you and give you into their hand; we will certainly not kill you." So they bound him with two new ropes, and they brought him up from the rock.

As he came up to Lehi, [the] Philistines came shouting to meet him; and the Spirit of Yahweh rushed on him, and the ropes that [were] on his arms became like flax that has burned with fire, and his bindings melted from his hands.

And he was very thirsty, and he called to Yahweh and said, "You gave this great victory into the hand of your servant, but now I must die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?"

So God split the hollow place that [is] at Lehi, and water came out from it; and he drank, and his spirit returned, and he was revived. Thus he called its name {The Spring of Ha-Qore}, which [is] at Lehi to this day.

Samson went down to Gaza; there he saw a prostitute and {had sex with her}.

But Samson lay until the middle of the night; he got up in the middle of the night and took hold of the doors of the city gate and the two door posts, tore them loose with the bar, put them on his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of the hill that is {in front of} Hebron.

And the rulers of [the] Philistines came up to her and said, "Entice him and find out what makes his strength so great, and how we can overpower him, so that we may bind him up in order to subdue him; each of us will give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.

So Delilah said to Samson, "Please tell me what makes your strength so great, and with what can you be tied up to subdue you?"

Samson said to her, "If you tie me up with seven fresh bowstrings that are not dried up, I will become weak like everyone else."

So the rulers of [the] Philistines brought up to her seven fresh bowstrings that were not dried up, and she tied him up with them.