The men of Ephraim said to him, “Why have you done this to us, not calling us when you went to fight against the Midianites?” And they argued with him violently.

God handed over to you Oreb and Zeeb, the two princes of Midian. What was I able to do compared to you?” When he said this, their anger against him subsided.

He captured a youth from the men of Succoth and interrogated him. The youth wrote down for him the names of the 77 princes and elders of Succoth.

His concubine who was in Shechem also bore him a son, and he named him Abimelech.

His mother’s relatives spoke all these words about him in the presence of all the lords of Shechem, and they were favorable to Abimelech, for they said, “He is our brother.”

So they gave him 70 pieces of silver from the temple of Baal-berith. Abimelech hired worthless and reckless men with this money, and they followed him.

“Now if you have acted faithfully and honestly in making Abimelech king, if you have done well by Jerubbaal and his family, and if you have rewarded him appropriately for what he did—

so that the crime against the 70 sons of Jerubbaal might come to justice and their blood would be avenged on their brother Abimelech, who killed them, and on the lords of Shechem, who had helped him kill his brothers.

The lords of Shechem rebelled against him by putting people on the tops of the mountains to ambush and rob everyone who passed by them on the road. So this was reported to Abimelech.

Gaal son of Ebed came with his brothers and crossed into Shechem, and the lords of Shechem trusted him.

Gaal son of Ebed said, “Who is Abimelech and who is Shechem that we should serve him? Isn’t he the son of Jerubbaal, and isn’t Zebul his officer? You are to serve the men of Hamor, the father of Shechem. Why should we serve Abimelech?

Then get up early, and at sunrise charge the city. When he and the people who are with him come out against you, do to him whatever you can.”

So Abimelech and all the people with him got up at night and waited in ambush for Shechem in four units.

Gaal son of Ebed went out and stood at the entrance of the city gate. Then Abimelech and the people who were with him got up from their ambush.

When Gaal saw the people, he said to Zebul, “Look, people are coming down from the mountaintops!” But Zebul said to him, “The shadows of the mountains look like men to you.”

Zebul replied, “Where is your mouthing off now? You said, ‘Who is Abimelech that we should serve him?’ Aren’t these the people you despised? Now go and fight them!”

but Abimelech pursued him, and Gaal fled before him. Many wounded died as far as the entrance of the gate.

Then Abimelech and the units that were with him rushed forward and took their stand at the entrance of the city gate. The other two units rushed against all who were in the countryside and struck them down.

So Abimelech and all the people who were with him went up to Mount Zalmon. Abimelech took his ax in his hand and cut a branch from the trees. He picked up the branch, put it on his shoulder, and said to the people who were with him, “Hurry and do what you have seen me do.”

He quickly called his armor-bearer and said to him, “Draw your sword and kill me, or they’ll say about me, ‘A woman killed him.’” So his armor-bearer thrust him through, and he died.

In this way, God turned back on Abimelech the evil that he had done against his father, by killing his 70 brothers.

After him came Jair the Gileadite, who judged Israel 22 years.

Then the Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. They worshiped the Baals and the Ashtoreths, the gods of Aram, Sidon, and Moab, and the gods of the Ammonites and the Philistines. They abandoned Yahweh and did not worship Him.

Gilead’s wife bore him sons, and when they grew up, they drove Jephthah out and said to him, “You will have no inheritance in our father’s house, because you are the son of another woman.”

So Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob. Then some lawless men joined Jephthah and traveled with him.

They said to him, “Come, be our commander, and let’s fight against the Ammonites.”

So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead. The people put him over themselves as leader and commander, and Jephthah repeated all his terms in the presence of the Lord at Mizpah.

to tell him, “This is what Jephthah says: Israel did not take away the land of Moab or the land of the Ammonites.

“Then Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, king of Heshbon. Israel said to him, ‘Please let us travel through your land to our country,’

But the king of the Ammonites would not listen to Jephthah’s message that he sent him.

Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the Lord handed them over to him.

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.”

The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim. Whenever a fugitive from Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the Gileadites asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he answered, “No,”

they told him, “Please say Shibboleth.” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce it correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. At that time 42,000 from Ephraim died.

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.

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

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

The Angel of the Lord said to him, “If I stay, I won’t eat your food. But if you want to prepare a burnt offering, offer it to the Lord.” For Manoah did not know He was the Angel of the Lord.

Then Manoah said to Him, “What is Your name, so that we may honor You when Your words come true?”

“Why do you ask My name,” the Angel of the Lord asked him, “since it is wonderful.”

But his wife said to him, “If the Lord had intended to kill us, He wouldn’t have accepted the burnt offering and the grain offering from us, and He would not have shown us all these things or spoken to us now like this.”

So the woman gave birth to a son and named him Samson. The boy grew, and the Lord blessed him.

Then the Spirit of the Lord began to direct him in the Camp of Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.

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.”

Samson went down to Timnah with his father and mother and came to the vineyards of Timnah. Suddenly a young lion came roaring at him,

the Spirit of the Lord took control of him, and he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat. But he did not tell his father or mother what he had done.

When the Philistines saw him, they brought 30 men to accompany him.

So Samson’s wife came to him, weeping, and said, “You hate me and don’t love me! You told my people the riddle, but haven’t explained it to me.”

“Look,” he said, “I haven’t even explained it to my father or mother, so why should I explain it to you?”

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.

On the seventh day, before sunset, the men of the city said to him:

What is sweeter than honey?
What is stronger than a lion?

So he said to them:

If you hadn’t plowed with my young cow,
you wouldn’t know my riddle now!

The Spirit of the Lord took control of him, and he went down to Ashkelon and killed 30 of their men. He stripped them and gave their clothes to those who had explained the riddle. In a rage, Samson returned to his father’s house,

and his wife was given to one of the men who had accompanied him.

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.

So the men of Judah said, “Why have you attacked us?”

They replied, “We have come to arrest Samson and pay him back for what he did to us.”

They said to him, “We’ve come to arrest you and hand you over to the Philistines.”

Then Samson told them, “Swear to me that you yourselves won’t kill me.”

“No,” they said, “we won’t kill you, but we will tie you up securely and hand you over to them.” So they tied him up with two new ropes and led him away from the rock.

When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came to meet him shouting. The Spirit of the Lord took control of him, and the ropes that were on his arms became like burnt flax and his bonds fell off his wrists.

When the Gazites heard that Samson was there, they surrounded the place and waited in ambush for him all that night at the city gate. While they were waiting quietly, they said, “Let us wait until dawn; then we will kill him.”

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.”

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.

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.

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,

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.

The Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles, and he was forced to grind grain in the prison.

When the people saw him, they praised their god and said:

Our god has handed over to us
our enemy who destroyed our land
and who multiplied our dead.

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.

Samson said to the young man who was leading him by the hand, “Lead me where I can feel the pillars supporting the temple, so I can lean against them.”

Then his brothers and his father’s family came down, carried him back, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. So he judged Israel 20 years.

“Where do you come from?” Micah asked him.

He answered him, “I am a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah, and I’m going to settle wherever I can find a place.”

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?”

He told them what Micah had done for him and that he had hired him as his priest.

Then they said to him, “Please inquire of God so we will know if we will have a successful journey.”

So they detoured there and went to the house of the young Levite at the home of Micah and greeted him.

They told him, “Be quiet. Keep your mouth shut. Come with us and be a father and a priest to us. Is it better for you to be a priest for the house of one person or for you to be a priest for a tribe and family in Israel?”

The Danites said to him, “Don’t raise your voice against us, or angry men will attack you, and you and your family will lose your lives.”

After they had taken the gods Micah had made and the priest that belonged to him, they went to Laish, to a quiet and unsuspecting people. They killed them with their swords and burned down the city.

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.

His father-in-law, the girl’s father, detained him, and he stayed with him for three days. They ate, drank, and spent the nights there.

The man got up to go, but his father-in-law persuaded him, so he stayed and spent the night there again.

He got up early in the morning of the fifth day to leave, but the girl’s father said to him, “Please keep up your strength.” So they waited until late afternoon and the two of them ate.

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.”

But the man was unwilling to spend the night. He got up, departed, and arrived opposite Jebus (that is, Jerusalem). The man had his two saddled donkeys and his concubine with him.

But his master replied to him, “We will not stop at a foreign city where there are no Israelites. Let’s move on to Gibeah.”

He answered him, “We’re traveling from Bethlehem in Judah to the remote hill country of Ephraim, where I am from. I went to Bethlehem in Judah, and now I’m going to the house of the Lord. No one has taken me into his home,

So he brought him to his house and fed the donkeys. Then they washed their feet and ate and drank.

While they were enjoying themselves, all of a sudden, perverted men of the city surrounded the house and beat on the door. They said to the old man who was the owner of the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him!”

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.

They went up, wept before the Lord until evening, and inquired of Him: “Should we again fight against our brothers the Benjaminites?”

And the Lord answered: “Fight against them.”

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?”

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.”

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.

He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. Indeed, your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.”

Naomi took the child, placed him on her lap, and took care of him.

The neighbor women said, “A son has been born to Naomi,” and they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.