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.

The Amorites refused to leave Har-heres, Aijalon, and Shaalbim. When the house of Joseph got the upper hand, the Amorites were made to serve as forced labor.

It was her custom to sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites went up to her for judgment.

Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, I will go. But if you will not go with me, I will not go.”

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.

Then he said to her, “Stand at the entrance to the tent. If a man comes and asks you, ‘Is there a man here?’ say, ‘No.’”

When Barak arrived in pursuit of Sisera, Jael went out to greet him and said to him, “Come and I will show you the man you are looking for.” So he went in with her, and there was Sisera lying dead with a tent peg through his temple!

“Curse Meroz,” says the Angel of the Lord,
“Bitterly curse her inhabitants,
for they did not come to help the Lord,
to help the Lord against the mighty warriors.”

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.

He collapsed, he fell, he lay down at her feet;
he collapsed, he fell at her feet;
where he collapsed, there he fell—dead.

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:

I will put a fleece of wool here on the threshing floor. If dew is only on the fleece, and all the ground is dry, I will know that You will deliver Israel by my strength, as You said.”

Then he went to the men of Succoth and said, “Here are Zebah and Zalmunna. You taunted me about them, saying, ‘Are Zebah and Zalmunna now in your power that we should give bread to your exhausted men?’”

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.

When he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, “No! Not my daughter! You have devastated me! You have brought great misery on me. I have given my word to the Lord and cannot take it back.”

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

The Angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “It is true that you are unable to conceive and have no children, but you will conceive and give birth to a son.

for indeed, you will conceive and give birth to a son. You must never cut his hair, because the boy will be a Nazirite to God from birth, and he will begin to save Israel from the power of the Philistines.”

Then the woman went and told her husband, “A man of God came to me. He looked like the awe-inspiring Angel of God. I didn’t ask Him where He came from, and He didn’t tell me His name.

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.

The woman ran quickly to her husband and told him, “The man who came to me today has just come back!”

The Angel of the Lord answered Manoah, “Your wife needs to do everything I told 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.”

“Please stay here,” Manoah told Him, “and we will prepare a young goat for You.”

He went back and told his father and his mother: “I have seen a young Philistine woman in Timnah. Now get her for me as a wife.”

But his father and mother said to him, “Can’t you find a young woman among your relatives or among any of our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines for a wife?”

But Samson told his father, “Get her for me, because I want her.”

Then he went and spoke to the woman, because Samson wanted her.

After some time, when he returned to get her, he left the road to see the lion’s carcass, and there was a swarm of bees with honey in the carcass.

But if you can’t explain it to me, you must give me 30 linen garments and 30 changes of clothes.”

“Tell us your riddle,” they replied. “Let’s hear it.”

On the fourth day they said to Samson’s wife, “Persuade your husband to explain the riddle to us, or we will burn you and your father’s household to death. Did you invite us here to rob us?”

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.

Later on, during the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat as a gift and visited his wife. “I want to go to my wife in her room,” he said. But her father would not let him enter.

“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?”

Then the Philistines asked, “Who did this?”

They were told, “It was Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law, because he has taken Samson’s wife and given her to another man.” So the Philistines went to her and her father and burned them to death.

Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute and went to bed with her.

The Philistine leaders went to her and said, “Persuade him to tell you where his great strength comes from, so we can overpower him, tie him up, and make him helpless. Each of us will then give you 1,100 pieces of silver.”

Samson told her, “If they tie me up with seven fresh bowstrings that have not been dried, I will become weak and be like any other man.”

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.

He told her, “If they tie me up with new ropes that have never been used, I will become weak and be like any other man.”

Delilah took new ropes, tied him up with them, and shouted, “Samson, the Philistines are here!” But while the men in ambush were waiting in her room, he snapped the ropes off his arms like a thread.

Then Delilah said to Samson, “You have mocked me all along and told me lies! Tell me how you can be tied up.”

He told her, “If you weave the seven braids on my head with the web of a loom—”

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.

he told her the whole truth and said to her, “My hair has never been cut, because I am a Nazirite to God from birth. If I am shaved, my strength will leave me, and I will become weak and be like any other man.”

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.

But his hair began to grow back after it had been shaved.

When they were drunk, they said, “Bring Samson here to entertain us.” So they brought Samson from prison, and he entertained them. They had him stand between the pillars.

He said to his mother, “The 1,100 pieces of silver taken from you, and that I heard you utter a curse about—here, I have the silver with me. I took it. So now I return it to you.”

Then his mother said, “My son, you are blessed by the Lord!”

While they were near Micah’s home, they recognized the speech of the young Levite. So they went over to him and asked, “Who brought you here? What are you doing in this place? What is keeping you here?”

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.

The man got up to go with his concubine and his servant, when his father-in-law, the girl’s father, said to him, “Look, night is coming. Please spend the night. See, the day is almost over. Spend the night here, enjoy yourself, then you can get up early tomorrow for your journey and go home.”

When they were near Jebus and the day was almost gone, the servant said to his master, “Please, why not let us stop at this Jebusite city and spend the night here?”

Here, let me bring out my virgin daughter and the man’s concubine now. Use them and do whatever you want to them. But don’t do this horrible thing to this man.”

But the men would not listen to him, so the man seized his concubine and took her outside to them. They raped her and abused her all night until morning. At daybreak they let her go.

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.

When her master got up in the morning, opened the doors of the house, and went out to leave on his journey, there was the woman, his concubine, collapsed near the doorway of the house with her hands on the threshold.

“Get up,” he told her. “Let’s go.” But there was no response. So the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.

When he entered his house, he picked up a knife, took hold of his concubine, cut her into 12 pieces, limb by limb, and then sent her throughout the territory of Israel.

Then I took my concubine and cut her in pieces, and sent her throughout Israel’s territory, because they committed a horrible shame in Israel.

Look, all of you are Israelites. Give your judgment and verdict here and now.”

There were 700 choice men who were left-handed among all these people; all could sling a stone at a hair and not miss.

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

Her sons took Moabite women as their wives: one was named Orpah and the second was named Ruth. After they lived in Moab about 10 years,

both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two children and without her husband.

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.

“No,” they said to her. “We will go with you to your people.”

Again they wept loudly, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.

Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her god. Follow your sister-in-law.”

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

So Naomi came back from the land of Moab with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabitess. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.

Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side named Boaz. He was a prominent man of noble character from Elimelech’s family.

Ruth the Moabitess asked Naomi, “Will you let me go into the fields and gather fallen grain behind someone who allows me to?”

Naomi answered her, “Go ahead, my daughter.”

Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Listen, my daughter. Don’t go and gather grain in another field, and don’t leave this one, but stay here close to my female servants.

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?”

Boaz answered her, “Everything you have done for your mother-in-law since your husband’s death has been fully reported to me: how you left your father and mother and the land of your birth, and how you came to a people you didn’t previously know.

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.

Pull out some stalks from the bundles for her and leave them for her to gather. Don’t rebuke her.”

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.”

Then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by the Lord, who has not forsaken his kindness to the living or the dead.” Naomi continued, “The man is a close relative. He is one of our family redeemers.”

So Naomi said to her daughter-in-law Ruth, “My daughter, it is good for you to work with his female servants, so that nothing will happen to you in another field.”

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.

Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi said to her, “My daughter, shouldn’t I find security for you, so that you will be taken care of?

So Ruth said to her, “I will do everything you say.”

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

Stay here tonight, and in the morning, if he wants to redeem you, that’s good. Let him redeem you. But if he doesn’t want to redeem you, as the Lord lives, I will. Now lie down until morning.”

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.

Boaz went to the gate of the town and sat down there. Soon the family redeemer Boaz had spoken about came by. Boaz called him by name and said, “Come over here and sit down.” So he went over and sat down.

Then Boaz took 10 men of the town’s elders and said, “Sit here.” And they sat down.

I thought I should inform you: Buy it back in the presence of those seated here and in the presence of the elders of my people. If you want to redeem it, do so. But if you do not want to redeem it, tell me so that I will know, because there isn’t anyone other than you to redeem it, and I am next after you.”

“I want to redeem it,” he answered.