Adoni-bezek used to brag, "Seventy kings without thumbs and big toes used to eat what was left under my table. God has repaid me for what I've done." They brought him to Jerusalem, and he later died there.

The descendants of the Kenites, the tribe from which Moses' father-in-law came, accompanied the descendants of Judah from the city of the palms to the Judean wilderness, which is in the desert area south of Arad, and lived with the people there.

They gave Hebron to Caleb, just as Moses had promised, and he drove out the three sons of Anak from there.

which is why they named the place Bochim. And there they sacrificed to the LORD.

They remained there to test Israel, to reveal if they would obey the commands of the LORD that he issued to their ancestors through Moses.

When he arrived there, he sounded a trumpet in the mountainous region of Ephraim. While the Israeli army accompanied Ehud from the mountainous regions,

Meanwhile, Sisera had escaped on foot to a tent belonging to Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite, since there was peace between Jabin king of Hazor and the household of Heber the Kenite.

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!

New gods were chosen, then war came to the city gates, but there wasn't a shield or spear to be seen among 40,000 soldiers of Israel.

From the sound of those who divide their work loads at the watering troughs, there they will retell the righteous deeds of the LORD, the righteous victories for his rural people in Israel." Then the people of the LORD went down to the gates.

Why did you sit down among the sheepfolds? To hear the bleating of the flocks? Among the divisions of the army of Reuben there was great searching of heart.

So Gideon built an altar right there to the LORD and called it "The LORD is peace." (To this very day it still stands in Ophrah, which belongs to the descendants of Abiezer.)

Then Gideon told God, "Don't let yourself be angry with me! I want to ask you once again: please let me make a test with the fleece just once more. Cause it to be dry only on the fleece, but let there be dew all around on the ground."

"There are still too many soldiers," the LORD told Gideon. "Bring them down to the water and I'll refine them for you there. Therefore when I say to you, "This one will be going with you,' he'll go with you, but no one may go about whom I tell you, "This one won't be going with you.'"

But if you're afraid to go down there, you may take your servant Purah with you to their encampment,

There he announced, "Get up! The LORD has given the Midianite army into your control!" Then he separated the 300 men into three companies, gave them each trumpets to carry, along with jars into which he placed lit torches.

Then he left there to go to Penuel and asked the same thing from them, but the men of Penuel responded the same way the men of Succoth did.

Gideon crafted the booty into an ephod and enshrined it in his home town of Ophrah. Then all of Israel committed spiritual adultery with it there, and it became a snare for Gideon and his household.

to his father's house in Ophrah. There he murdered his own brothers, Jerubbaal's sons all 70 of them in one place. But Jerubbaal's youngest son Jotham survived by hiding himself.

Then Jotham escaped by running away. He went to Beer and remained there because of his brother Abimelech.

When Gaal saw the army, he observed to Zebul, "Look there! People are coming down from the top of the mountains." But Zebul replied to him, "You're looking at morning shadows cast by the mountains. They just look like men to you."

Gaal spoke up again to say, "Look! People are coming down from the highest part of the land, and there's a company approaching from the diviner's oak tree."

Abimilech was told that all of the "lords" of the Shechem Tower had assembled there.

Later on, Abimelech went to Thebez, set up a siege encampment there, and captured it.

But there was a fortified tower in the center of the city, and all the men, women, and leaders of the city escaped to it, shut themselves in, and went up to the roof of the tower.

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.

they would order him, "Pronounce the word "Shibboleth' right now." If he said "Sibboleth," not being able to pronounce it correctly, they would seize him and slaughter him there at the fords of the Jordan River. During those days 42,000 descendants of Ephraim died that way.

There was one man from Zorah, from the family of the descendants of Dan, whose name was Manoah. Since his wife was infertile, she hadn't borne children.

His father and mother asked him, "Isn't there a woman suitable among the daughters of your relatives or among all of our people, since you're going to get your wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?"

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.

Later on, when his father went down to visit the woman, Samson threw a party there, since young men customarily did this.

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.

A young male descendant of Levi happened to be visiting there from Bethlehem in the territory of Judah.

So the tribe of Dan sent from their families five valiant men of their number from Zorah and Eshtaol to scout the land and search through it. Following their orders, which were "Go and scout the land," they came to the mountainous region of Ephraim, arrived at Micah's home, and stayed there.

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?"

So the five men left and went to Laish, and observed the people who were living there carefree, as Sidonians tend to do, in peace and quiet. There was no ruler in the land oppressing them for any reason. They were living far away from the Sidonians, and had no dealings with anyone.

They proceeded from there to the mountainous region of Ephraim and arrived at Micah's house.

Then the five men who had gone to scout out the territory of Laish told their relatives, "Are you aware that in these houses there's an ephod, some household idols, a carved image, and a cast image? You know what you need to do."

So they turned aside from there, went to Micah's house, and greeted him.

Now it happened in those days, before there was a king in Israel, that a certain male descendant of Levi, who lived in a remote part of the mountainous region of Ephraim, took a mistress for himself from Bethlehem in the territory of Judah.

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

The young woman's father (that is, his father-in-law) made him stay there for three days while they ate and drank during his visit there.

The man got up, intending to leave, but his father-in-law urged him to spend the night there again.

They turned aside there, intending to enter Gibeah and spend the night.

He replied, "We're traveling from Bethlehem in Judah to the remote part of the mountainous region of Ephraim, because I'm from there, and I've been visiting Bethlehem in Judah. I'm going home now, but no one will take me into his home.

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.

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.

From there the Israelis went up and wept in the LORD's presence until evening. Then they asked the LORD, "Should we attack the descendants of Benjamin again?" The LORD replied, "Attack them."

All the Israelis, including its army, went up from there to Bethel and wept, remaining there in the LORD's presence, fasting throughout the day until dusk, when they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings in the LORD's presence.

The Israelis inquired of the LORD, since the Ark of the Covenant was there at that time

They attacked the army and were drawn away from the city as they began to inflict casualties on the soldiers along the roads to Bethel and Gibeah, just as they had done the other times. About 30 soldiers from Israel fell in battle there and in the fields.

So the survivors of the tribe of Benjamin returned at that time, and the Israelis gave them the women whom they had kept alive from the raid on Jabesh-gilead. Even so, there weren't enough for them.

They continued, "Let's make sure that there's an inheritance for the survivors of the tribe of Benjamin, so that a tribe won't be blotted out from Israel.

So they concluded, "Look, there's a festival to the LORD every year in Shiloh on the north side of Bethel, south of Lebonah and on the east side of the highway that runs from Bethel to Shechem""

So the descendants of Benjamin did all of this: they chose and carried away just enough wives from those who danced to meet the number needed, then they left to return to their inheritance, to rebuild their cities, and to live there.

The Israelis left there at that time, each man to his tribe and family, and each of them went down from there to his territorial allotment.