they are to bring her to the door of her father's house. Then the men of the city are to stone her with boulders until she dies for doing a detestable thing in Israel acting like a prostitute while in her father's house. By doing this, you will remove this evil from among you.

"If a man meets a young virgin lady in the city who is engaged to be married and has sexual relations with her,

"If a man meets a girl in the country who is engaged to be married and then rapes her, the man alone the one who had sexual relations with her must die.

As for the young lady, don't do anything to her. The young lady did nothing worthy of death. This case is similar to when a man attacks his countryman and kills him.

Since he found her in the country, the engaged girl may have cried out, but there was no one to rescue her.

"However, if a man meets a girl who isn't engaged to be married, and he seizes her, rapes her, and is later found out,

then the man who raped her must give 50 shekels of silver to the girl's father. Furthermore, he must marry her. Because he had violated her, he is to not divorce her as long as he lives.

"If a man chooses to enter into marriage with a woman, but she finds herself displeasing to him because he has found something objectionable about her, he must draw up divorce papers, hand them to her, and then send her out of his house.

and this second husband dislikes her, he, also, must draw up divorce papers, hand them to her, and then send her away from his house. Should the second husband die,

her first husband who married her and divorced her earlier must not remarry her, because she was defiled, since this is detestable to the LORD. Don't defile the land that the LORD your God is about to give you as a possession.

"When two brothers are living together and one of them dies without leaving a son, his widow must not be married outside the family to a foreigner. Instead, the brother-in-law must go to her, take her as his wife, and by doing so perform the duty of a brother-in-law.

Then the elders of the city are to summon him and speak with him. If he insists on saying, "I don't want to marry her,'

then she is to approach her brother-in-law in the presence of the elders, remove his sandal, spit in his face, and say in response, "May this be done to the man who does not preserve the lineage of his brother.'

"If two men are fighting together, and the wife of one comes to rescue her husband from the grasp of his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes his genitals,

you are to cut off her hand. Don't show any pity."

"You'll be engaged to a woman, but another man will rape her. You'll build a house, but you won't live in it. You'll plant a vineyard, but you won't harvest it.

The most tender and sensitive lady among you, who doesn't venture to touch the soles of her feet to the ground on account of her daintiness, will look with hostility in her eyes against her beloved husband, her sons, and her daughters.

She will eat her afterbirth and her newborn children secretly since there will be nothing left on account of the siege and distress with which your enemy will oppress you in your cities."

but with whoever is here with us standing in the presence of the LORD our God today, as well as with those who aren't here with us today."

So the king of Jericho sent for Rahab and ordered her, "Bring out the men who came to visit you and lodged in your house, because they've come to scout out the entire land."

So the men told her, "Our life for yours even to death if you don't betray this mission of ours. Then when the LORD gives us this land, we'll treat you graciously and faithfully."

So she let them down by a rope through the window, since her house was built into the town wall where she lived.

So Joshua told the Israelis, "Come here and listen to what the LORD your God has to say."

The city along with everything in it is to be turned over to the LORD for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and everyone who is with her in her house may live, because she hid the scouts we sent.

Joshua told the two men who had scouted the land, "Go into the prostitute's home and bring her out of it, along with everyone who is with her, just as you promised her."

So the young men who had been scouts went in and brought Rahab out, along with her father, her mother, her brothers, and everyone else who was with her. They brought her entire family out and set them outside the camp of Israel.

But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, along with her family and everyone who was with her. Her family has lived in Israel ever since, because she hid the scouts whom Joshua sent to observe Jericho.

"Look how the LORD has let me survive, as you can see, these 45 years since the time when the LORD said this through Moses, while Israel was wandering through the wilderness. And look! I'm here today my eighty-fifth birthday!

Sometime later, she came to Othniel and persuaded him to ask her father for a field. As she dismounted from her donkey, Caleb asked her, "What do you want?"

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

Here's a list of cities allotted for the tribe of the descendants of Judah according to their families:

Lay out the land in seven divisions, then bring your report here to me. I will then cast lots in the presence of the LORD our God.

When the Israelis heard about it, they announced, "Look here, the descendants of Reuben, the descendants of Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh have constructed an altar in Canaan's frontier district of the Jordan River, on the side apportioned to the Israelis."

"Look here: today I'm going down the path that everyone on earth takes, and you know with all your hearts and souls that not a single word of all of the good things that the LORD your God spoke about you has failed to happen. Everything has been fulfilled about you not one of them has failed.

Later on, after she had arrived, she urged Othniel to ask her father for a field. As she got off her donkey, Caleb asked her, "What do you want for yourself?"

"I want this blessing from you," she replied. "Since you've given me land in the Negev, give me water springs, too." So Caleb gave her both the upper and lower springs.

Here's a list of nations that the LORD caused to remain in order to test Israel (that is, everyone who had not gained any battle experience in Canaan)

She regularly took her seat under the Palm Tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the mountainous region of Ephraim, where the Israelis would approach her for decisions.

Jael went out to greet Sisera. "Turn aside, sir!" she told him. "Turn aside to me! Don't be afraid." So he turned aside to her and entered her tent, where she concealed him behind a curtain.

He asked her, "Please give me some water to drink, because I'm thirsty." Instead, she opened a leather container of milk, gave him a drink, and then covered him up.

He told her, "Stand in the doorway of the tent, and if anyone comes and asks "Is anybody here?' say "No'."

Meanwhile, as Barak continued chasing Sisera, Jael went out to meet him. "Come with me," she told him, "and I'll show you the man you're looking for!" So he went with her, and there was Sisera, lying dead with the tent peg still embedded in his temple!

She reached out one hand for the tent peg, and her other for the workman's mallet. Then she struck Sisera, smashing his head, shattering and piercing his temple.

He crumpled to the ground between her feet, where he fell down and collapsed. Between her feet he crumpled, Fallen dead!

Her wise attendants find an answer for her; in fact, she tells the same words to herself:

And please don't leave here until I've come back to you, brought my offering, and set it down in front of you." The LORD replied, "I'll stay until you return."

Then Gideon approached the men of Succoth and announced, "Here are Zebah and Zalmunna. You criticized me about them when you said, "Do you have Zebah and Zalmunna in custody already, so that we should give food to your weary army?'"

He sent messengers to Abimelech in secret and told him, "Look out! Ebed's son Gaal and his family have arrived here in Shechem. Watch out! They're stirring up the city against you.

The king of the Ammonites answered the messengers of Jephthah, "We're here because Israel took away my land from the Arnon River as far as the Jabbok River and as far as the Jordan River when they came up from Egypt! So restore it as a gesture of good will."

"Israel didn't seize the land of Moab nor the land of the Ammonites. Here's what happened: When Israel came up from Egypt, passed through the desert to the Red Sea, and arrived at Kadesh,

When Jephthah arrived at his home in Mizpah surprise! it was his daughter who came out to meet him, playing tambourines and dancing. She was his one and only child. Except for her, he had no other son or daughter.

When he saw her, he ripped his clothes and cried out, "Oh no! My daughter! You have terribly burdened me! You've joined those who are causing me trouble, because I've given my word to the LORD, and I cannot go back on it.

Then she continued talking with her father, "Do this for me: leave me alone by myself for two months. I'll go up to the mountains and cry there because I'll never marry. My friends and I will go."

So he said, "Go!" He sent her away for two months. She left with her friends and cried there on the mountains because she would never marry.

Later, after the two months were concluded, she returned to her father, and he fulfilled what he had solemnly vowed and she never married. That's how the custom arose in Israel

When I saw that you wouldn't be delivering me, I took my own life in my hands, crossed over to fight the Ammonites, and the LORD gave them into my control. So why have you come here today to fight me?"

One day the angel of the LORD presented himself to the woman. "Hello!" he greeted her. "Though you are infertile at this time and haven't borne a child, you're about to conceive and give birth to a son.

Then the woman went to tell her husband. She said, "A man of God appeared to me. He looked like what an angel of God would look like very frightening. I didn't ask him where he had come from and he didn't tell me his name.

God listened to Manoah's request, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she was sitting out in the pasture. But her husband Manoah wasn't with her,

so the woman ran quickly to tell her husband, "Look! The man who came the other day appeared to me!"

The angel of the LORD replied to Manoah, "Just have your wife be careful to carry out everything that I told her.

She must not consume anything extracted from grape vines, including wine or anything intoxicating, and she must not eat anything unclean, doing everything that I commissioned her to do."

Then he returned and told his father and mother, "In Timnah I saw a woman of Philistine origin." He ordered them, "Get her for me as a wife. Now!"

But Samson retorted to his father, "Get her for me, since she looks fine to me." Meanwhile, his father and mother did not know that she was from the LORD, because he had been seeking a favorable opportunity concerning the Philistines, since the Philistines were dominating Israel at that time.

When he came back later to marry her, he turned aside to observe the lion's carcass. Amazingly, there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, complete with honey.

The next day, they told Samson's wife, "Coax your husband to explain the riddle or we'll set fire to your father's house with you in it! You've invited us here to make us paupers, haven't you?"

So she kept on crying in front of him for the entire seven days of the wedding party. On the seventh day he told the solution to her because she nagged him, and then she told the solution to the riddle to her relatives.

A while later during the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife, bringing along a young goat, and told his father-in-law, "I'm going into my wife's room." But her father wouldn't give permission for him to go.

Her father said, "Because I honestly thought that you hated her deeply, I gave her in marriage to your best man. Isn't her younger sister better than she? Please then, let her be yours instead."

Then the Philistines demanded, "Who did this?" Someone said, "Samson, son-in-law of the Timnite, because his father-in-law took Samson's wife and gave her to the best man at Samson's wedding." In retaliation, the Philistines came up and burned her and her father to death.

The leading men of Judah asked, "Why have you invaded us?" They replied, "We're here to arrest Samson. Then we're going to do to him what he did to us."

They responded, "We've come here to arrest you and transfer you to the custody of the Philistines." Samson told them, "Promise me that you won't kill me."

Then Samson declared, "With a jawbone from the donkey here a heap, there a pair of heaps with the jawbone of the donkey I've killed 1,000 men."

Sometime later, Samson went to Gaza, saw a prostitute there, and went in to have sex with her.

When the Gazites were informed, "Samson has come here!" they surrounded him, intending to lay in wait for him at the city gate throughout the entire night. They kept quiet all night, telling each other, "At first light, let's kill him!"

The Philistine officials approached her and told her, "Entice him to discover where his great strength is, and how we can overpower him. We intend to tie him up and torture him. We'll each pay you 1,100 silver coins."

Then the Philistine leaders brought her seven green cords that had never been dried, and she tied him up with them.

Meanwhile, some kidnappers were hiding inside an inner room, waiting for her signal. So she told him, "The Philistines are attacking you!" But he snapped the cords as one might break a burned candle wick. So his secret remained undiscovered.

Some time later, Delilah told Samson, "Look here! You've been mocking me and lying to me. Now please tell me how you can be tied up."

He told her, "If I'm tied up securely with new ropes that have never been used, then I'll become weak and just like any other human being."

Later on, Delilah told Samson, "You're still mocking me and telling me lies! Tell me how to tie you up!" He answered her, "If you weave the seven locks on my head into a loom and fasten it with a peg, then I will become weak and just like any other human being."

So he finally disclosed everything. He told her, "A razor has never touched my head, because I've been a Nazirite for God before I was born. If I am shaved, then my strength will abandon me and I will become weak like every human being."

When Delilah realized that he had disclosed everything to her, she sent for the Philistine officials and told them, "Hurry up and come here at once, because he has told me everything." So the Philistine officials went to her and brought their money with them.

So she enticed him to fall asleep on her lap, called for a man to shave off his seven locks of hair from his head, and so began to humiliate him. Then his strength abandoned him.

Her son gave back the 1,100 silver coins to his mother, and she said, "I'm totally giving this silver from my hand to the LORD so my son can make a carved image and a cast image. So I'm returning it to you."

As they approached Micah's home, they recognized the voice of the young male descendant of Levi. They turned aside from there and spoke to him, asking him, "Who brought you here? What work are you doing here? And what's your business here?"

The descendants of Dan answered him, "You had better not talk to us about this, or else these bad guys here will attack you. You will lose your life, along with the lives of your whole household."

But his mistress was sexually unfaithful to him, and then she left him to live in her father's home in Bethlehem in the territory of Judah. She had been living there for a period of about four months

when her husband got up and went after her, intending to speak lovingly to her in order to win her back. He took with him his young man servant and a pair of donkeys. When she brought him into her father's house to see him, her father was happy to have met him.

When the man got up to leave with his mistress and servant, his father-in-law, the young woman's father, told him, "Look now, evening is coming, so please spend another night. See how the daylight is fading, so spend the night here and enjoy yourself. Then tomorrow get up early and leave on your journey home."

Instead, here's my virgin daughter and my visitor's mistress. Please let me bring them out to you. Occupy yourselves with them, and do to them whatever you would like. But don't commit such a stupid thing against this man."

But the men were unwilling to listen to him. So the descendant of Levi grabbed his mistress, took her out to them, and they raped and tortured her all night until morning. Then they released her as the first daylight was beginning to appear.

As dawn was breaking, the woman approached the door of the man's home where her master was and collapsed. Eventually, full daylight came.

When her master got up that morning and opened the doors of the house to leave on his way, there was his mistress, fallen dead at the door of the house with her hands grasping the threshold.

He spoke to her, "Get up, and let's go."

But there was no response. So he placed her on the donkey, mounted his own animal, and went home. When he arrived home, he grabbed a knife, took hold of his mistress, cut her apart limb by limb into twelve pieces, and sent her remains throughout the land of Israel.

All the witnesses said, "Nothing has happened or has been seen like this from the day the Israelis came here from the land of Egypt to this day! Think about it, get some advice about it, and then speak up about it!"

So I grabbed my mistress, cut her in pieces, and sent her remains throughout the territory of Israel's inheritance, because they've committed a vile, stupid outrage in Israel.

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

Each of her sons married Moabite women: one named Orpah and the other named Ruth. After they lived there about ten years,