Wherever they went, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil (misfortune), as the Lord had spoken, and as the Lord had sworn to them, so that they were severely distressed.

When the Lord raised up judges for them, He was with the judge and He rescued them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them.

But when the judge died, they turned back and behaved more corruptly than their fathers, in following and serving other gods, and bowing down to them. They did not abandon their practices or their stubborn ways.

So the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He said, “Because this nation has transgressed (violated) My covenant (binding agreement) which I commanded their fathers, and has not listened to My voice,

only in order that the generations of the sons of Israel might be taught war, at least those who had not experienced it previously).

So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and He sold them into the hand of Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia; and the Israelites served Cushan-rishathaim eight years.

Now the Israelites again did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord strengthened Eglon king of Moab against Israel, since they had done what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

And he brought the tribute to Eglon king of Moab. Now Eglon was a very fat man.

Ehud came to him as he was sitting alone in his [private] cool upper chamber, and Ehud said, “I have a message from God for you.” And the king got up from his seat.

So Moab was subdued and humbled that day under the hand of Israel, and the land was at rest for eighty years.

After Ehud came Shamgar the son of Anath, who struck down six hundred Philistine men with an oxgoad. He too saved Israel.

So the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-hagoyim.

When someone told Sisera that Barak the son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor,

But Barak pursued the chariots and the army to Harosheth-hagoyim, and the entire army of Sisera fell by the sword; not even one man was left.

But Sisera fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite.

But Jael, Heber’s wife, took a tent peg and a hammer in her hand, and came up quietly to him and drove the peg through his temple, and it went through into the ground; for he was sound asleep and exhausted. So he died.

And behold, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him and said to him, “Come, and I will show you the man whom you are seeking.” And he entered [her tent] with her, and behold Sisera lay dead with the tent peg in his temple.

“They chose new gods;
Then war was in the gates.
Was there a shield or spear seen
Among forty thousand in Israel?

“And the heads of Issachar came with Deborah;
As Issachar, so was Barak;
Into the valley they rushed at his heels;
Among the divisions of Reuben
There were great searchings of heart.

“But Zebulun was a people who risked their lives to the [point of] death;
Naphtali also, on the heights of the field.

So Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites, and the Israelites cried out to the Lord [for help].

Now the Angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth tree at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, and his son Gideon was beating wheat in the wine press [instead of the threshing floor] to [hide it and] save it from the Midianites.

Then the Angel of the Lord put out the end of the staff that was in His hand and touched the meat and the unleavened bread; and fire flared up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened bread. Then the Angel of the Lord vanished from his sight.

When Gideon realized [without any doubt] that He was the Angel of the Lord, he declared, “Oh no, Lord God! For now I have seen the Angel of the Lord face to face [and I am doomed]!”

Then Gideon took ten men of his servants and did just as the Lord had told him; but because he was too afraid of his father’s household (relatives) and the men of the city to do it during daylight, he did it at night.

Early the next morning when the men of the city got up, they discovered that the altar of Baal was torn down, and the Asherah which was beside it was cut down, and the second bull was offered on the altar which had been built.

So the Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon [and empowered him]; and he blew a trumpet, and the Abiezrites were called together [as a militia] to follow him.

And it was so. When he got up early the next morning and squeezed the dew out of the fleece, he wrung from it a bowl full of water.

God did so that night; for it was dry only on the fleece, and there was dew on all the ground [around it].

Then Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) and all the people who were with him got up early and camped beside the spring of Harod; and the camp of Midian was north of them by the hill of Moreh in the valley.

Now the number of those who lapped [the water], putting their hand to their mouth, was three hundred men, but all the rest of the people kneeled down to drink water.

So the three hundred men took people’s provisions [for the journey] and their trumpets [made of rams’ horns] in their hands. And Gideon sent [away] all the other men of Israel, each to his tent, but kept the three hundred men. And the camp of Midian was below him in the valley.

When Gideon arrived, there was a man telling a dream to his friend. And he said, “Listen carefully, I had a dream: there was a loaf of barley bread tumbling into the camp of Midian, and it came to the tent and struck it so that it fell, and turned it upside down so that the tent lay flat.”

God has given the leaders of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb into your hands; and what was I able to do in comparison with you?” Then their anger toward him subsided when he made this statement.

So [to humiliate them] Gideon said to Jether his firstborn, “Stand up, and kill them!” But the youth did not draw his sword, because he was afraid, for he was still [just] a boy.

And the weight of the golden earrings that he requested was seventeen hundred shekels of gold, apart from the crescent amulets and pendants and the purple garments which were worn by the kings of Midian, and apart from the chains that were on their camels’ necks.

So Midian was subdued and humbled before the sons of Israel, and they no longer lifted up their heads [in pride]. And the land was at rest for forty years in the days of Gideon.

And his concubine who was in Shechem also bore him a son, whom he named Abimelech.

Gideon the son of Joash died at a good advanced age and was buried in the tomb of Joash his father in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.

Then it came about, as soon as Gideon was dead, that the Israelites again played the prostitute with the Baals, and made Baal-berith their god.

Then he went to his father’s house at Ophrah and murdered his brothers the sons of Jerubbaal, seventy men, [in a public execution] on one stone. But Jotham the youngest son of Jerubbaal was left alive, because he had hidden himself.

When they told Jotham, he went and stood at the top of Mount Gerizim and shouted to them, “Hear me, O men of Shechem, so that God may hear you.

The leaders of Shechem set men in ambush against Abimelech on the mountaintops, and they robbed all who passed by them along the road; and it was reported to Abimelech.

When Zebul the ruler of the city heard the words of Gaal the son of Ebed, his anger burned.

The next day the people went out to the field, and it was reported to Abimelech.

Abimelech was told that all the leaders of the Tower of Shechem were assembled together.

But there was a strong (fortified) tower in the center of the city, and all the men and women with all the leaders of the city fled to it and shut themselves in; and they went up on the roof of the tower.

When the men of Israel saw that Abimelech was dead, each departed to his home.

Tola judged Israel for twenty-three years; then he died and was buried in Shamir.

And Jair died and was buried in Kamon.

Then the Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; they served the Baals, the Ashtaroth (female deities), the gods of Aram (Syria), the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines. They abandoned the Lord and did not serve Him.

So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and He sold them into the hands of the Philistines and the Ammonites,

The Ammonites crossed the Jordan to fight against Judah, Benjamin, and the house of Ephraim, so that Israel was greatly distressed.

Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a brave warrior, but he was the son of a prostitute. Gilead was the father of Jephthah.

The Ammonites’ king replied to the messengers of Jephthah, “It is because Israel took away my land when they came up from Egypt, from the [river] Arnon as far as the Jabbok and [east of] the Jordan; so now, return those lands peaceably.”

Then they went through the wilderness and went around the land of Edom and the land of Moab, and came to the east side of the land of Moab, and they camped on the other side of the [river] Arnon; but they did not enter the territory of Moab, for the Arnon was the [northern] boundary of Moab.

Then Jephthah came to his house at Mizpah, and this is what he saw: his daughter coming out to meet him with tambourines and with dancing. And she was his only child; except for her he had no son or daughter.

Jephthah judged Israel for six years. Then Jephthah the Gileadite died and was buried in one of the cities of Gilead.

Then Ibzan died and was buried at Bethlehem.

Then Elon the Zebulunite died and was buried at Aijalon in the land of Zebulun.

Then Abdon the son of Hillel the Pirathonite died and was buried at Pirathon in the land of Ephraim, in the hill country of the Amalekites.

Now Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.

And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was infertile and had no children.

Then the woman went and told her husband, saying, “A Man of God came to me and his appearance was like the appearance of the Angel of God, very awesome. I did not ask Him where he came from, and he did not tell me his name.

And God listened to the voice of Manoah; and the Angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field, but Manoah her husband was not with her.

The Angel of the Lord said to Manoah, “Though you detain me, I will not eat your food, but if you prepare a burnt offering, offer it to the Lord.” For Manoah did not know that he was the Angel of the Lord.

The Angel of the Lord did not appear again to Manoah or his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was the Angel of the Lord.

His father and mother did not know that it was of the Lord, and that He was seeking an occasion [to take action] against the Philistines. Now at that time the Philistines were ruling over Israel.

His father went down to the woman, and Samson prepared a feast there, for that was the customary thing for young men to do.

Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily, and he went down to Ashkelon and killed thirty of them and took their gear, and gave changes of clothes to those who had explained the riddle. And his anger burned, and he went up to his father’s house.

But Samson’s wife was given to his companion who had been his friend.

When he finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand; and he named that place Ramath-lehi (hill of the jawbone).

Then Samson was very thirsty, and he called out to the Lord and said, “You have given this great victory through the hand of Your servant, and now am I to die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised (pagans)?”

So God split open the hollow place that was at Lehi, and water came out of it. When Samson drank, his spirit (strength) returned and he was revived. Therefore he named it En-hakkore (spring which is calling), which is at Lehi to this day.

After this he fell in love with a [Philistine] woman [living] in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.

Now she had men lying in ambush in an inner room. And she said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he broke the cords as a string of tow breaks when it touches fire. So [the secret of] his strength was not discovered.

When she pressured him day after day with her words and pleaded with him, he was annoyed to death.

Now the house was full of men and women; all the Philistine lords were there, and on the flat roof were about three thousand men and women who looked on while Samson was entertaining them.

Samson took hold of the two middle [support] pillars on which the house rested, and braced himself against them, one with his right hand and the other with his left.

There was a man of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah.

In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.

Now there was a young man from Bethlehem in Judah, from the family [of the tribe] of Judah, who was a Levite; and he was staying there [temporarily].

The Levite agreed to live with the man, and the young man became to Micah like one of his sons.

So Micah dedicated (installed) the Levite, and the young man became his priest and lived in the house of Micah.

In those days there was no king in Israel; and in those days the tribe of the Danites was seeking an inheritance [of land] for themselves to live in, for until then an inheritance had not been allotted to them as a possession among the tribes of Israel.

Then the five men went on and came to Laish and saw the people who were there, [how they were] living securely in the style of the Sidonians, quiet and peaceful; and there was no oppressive magistrate in the land humiliating them in anything, and they were far from the Sidonians and had no dealings with anyone.

The priest’s heart was glad [to hear that], and he took the ephod, the teraphim, and the image, and went among the people.

And there was no one to rescue them because it was far from Sidon and they had no dealings with anyone. It was in the valley which belongs to Beth-rehob. And they rebuilt the city and lived in it.

They named the city Dan, after Dan their forefather who was born to Israel (Jacob); however, the original name of the city was Laish.

So they set up for themselves Micah’s [silver-plated wooden] image which he had made, and kept it throughout the time that the house (tabernacle) of God was at Shiloh.

Now it happened in those days, when there was no king in Israel, that a certain Levite living [as an alien] in the most remote part of the hill country of Ephraim, who took a concubine for himself from Bethlehem in Judah.

But his concubine was unfaithful to him, and left him and went to her father’s house in Bethlehem of Judah, and stayed there for a period of four months.

When they were near Jebus, the day was almost gone, and the servant said to his master, “Please come and let us turn aside into this Jebusite city and spend the night in it.”

Then behold, there was an old man who was coming out of the field from his work at evening. He was from the hill country of Ephraim but was staying in Gibeah, and the men of the place were sons (descendants) of Benjamin.

At daybreak the woman came and collapsed at the door of the man’s house where her master was, until it was [fully] light.

He said to her, “Get up, and let us go.” But there was no answer [for she had died]. Then he put her [body] on the donkey; and the man left and went home.

All who saw the dismembered parts said, “Nothing like this has ever happened or been seen from the day that the sons of Israel came up from the land of Egypt to this day. Consider it, take counsel, and speak [your minds]!”

So the Levite, the husband of the woman who was murdered, replied, “I had come with my concubine to spend the night in Gibeah, [a town] which belongs to [the tribe of] Benjamin.

And the sons of Israel inquired of the Lord (for the ark of the covenant of God was there [at Bethel] in those days,

When the ten thousand choice [fighting] men from all Israel came against Gibeah, the battle was hard and fierce; but the Benjamites did not realize that disaster was about to strike them.