Judges 1:1

Judah Takes the Lead

1:1 After Joshua died, the Israelites asked¹ the Lord, “Who should lead the invasion against the Canaanites and launch the attack?”²

Judges 1:3-4

1:3 The men of Judah said to their relatives, the men of Simeon,³ “Invade our allotted land with us and help us attack the Canaanites.⁴ Then we⁵ will go with you into your allotted land.” So the men of Simeon went with them.

1:4 The men of Judah attacked,⁶ and the Lord handed the Canaanites and Perizzites over to them. They killed ten thousand men at Bezek.

Judges 4:5

4:5 She would sit⁷ under the Date Palm Tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel⁸ in the Ephraimite hill country. The Israelites would come up to her to have their disputes settled.⁹

Judges 6:5

6:5 When they invaded¹⁰ with their cattle and tents, they were as thick¹¹ as locusts. Neither they nor their camels could be counted.¹² They came to devour¹³ the land.

Judges 6:35

6:35 He sent messengers throughout Manasseh and summoned them to follow him as well.¹⁴ He also sent messengers throughout Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they came up to meet him.

Judges 8:8

8:8 He went up from there to Penuel and made the same request.¹⁵ The men of Penuel responded the same way the men of Succoth had.¹⁶

Judges 8:11

8:11 Gideon went up the road of the nomads¹⁷ east of Nobah and Jogbehah and ambushed the surprised army.¹⁸

Judges 11:31

11:31 then whoever is the first to come through¹⁹ the doors of my house to meet me when I return safely from fighting the Ammonites – he²⁰ will belong to the Lord and²¹ I will offer him up as a burnt sacrifice.”

Judges 13:19

13:19 Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered them on a rock to the Lord. The Lord’s messenger did an amazing thing as Manoah and his wife watched.²²

Judges 14:2

14:2 When he got home,²³ he told his father and mother, “A Philistine girl in Timnah has caught my eye.²⁴ Now get her for my wife.”

Judges 20:3

20:3 The Benjaminites heard that the Israelites had gone up to Mizpah. Then the Israelites said, “Explain how this wicked thing happened!”

Judges 20:30

20:30 The Israelites attacked the Benjaminites the next day;²⁵ they took their positions against Gibeah just as they had done before.

¹tn The Hebrew verb translated “asked” (שָׁאַל, sha’al) refers here to consulting the Lord through a prophetic oracle; cf. NAB “consulted.”

²tn Heb “Who should first go up for us against the Canaanites to attack them?”

³tn Heb “Judah said to Simeon, his brother.”

⁴tn Heb “Come up with me into our allotted land and let us attack the Canaanites.”

⁵tn Heb “I.” The Hebrew pronoun is singular, agreeing with the collective singular “Judah” earlier in the verse. English style requires a plural pronoun here, however.

⁵tn Heb “Judah went up.”

⁷tn That is, “consider legal disputes.”

⁸map For location see Map4-G4; Map5-C1; Map6-E3; Map7-D1; Map8-G3.

⁹tn Heb “for judgment.”

⁹tn Heb “came up.”

¹⁰tn Heb “numerous.”

¹¹tn Heb “To them and to their camels there was no number.”

¹²tn Heb “destroy.” The translation “devour” carries through the imagery of a locust plague earlier in this verse.

¹¹tn Heb “and he also was summoned after him.”

¹³tn Heb “and spoke to them in the same way.”

¹⁴tn Heb “The men of Penuel answered him just as the men of Succoth answered.”

¹⁵tn Heb “the ones living in tents.”

¹⁶tn Heb “and attacked the army, while the army was secure.” The Hebrew term בֶטַח (vetakh, “secure”) probably means the army was undefended (see R. G. Boling, Judges [AB], 156), not suspecting an attack at that time and place.

¹⁷tn Heb “the one coming out, who comes out from.” The text uses a masculine singular participle with prefixed article, followed by a relative pronoun and third masculine singular verb. The substantival masculine singular participle הַיּוֹצֵא (hayyotse’, “the one coming out”) is used elsewhere of inanimate objects (such as a desert [Num 21:13] or a word [Num 32:24]) or persons (Jer 5:6; 21:9; 38:2). In each case context must determine the referent. Jephthah may have envisioned an animal meeting him, since the construction of Iron Age houses would allow for an animal coming through the doors of a house (see R. G. Boling, Judges [AB], 208). But the fact that he actually does offer up his daughter indicates the language of the vow is fluid enough to encompass human beings, including women. He probably intended such an offering from the very beginning, but he obviously did not expect his daughter to meet him first.

¹⁸tn The language is fluid enough to include women and perhaps even animals, but the translation uses the masculine pronoun because the Hebrew form is grammatically masculine.

¹⁹tn Some translate “or,” suggesting that Jephthah makes a distinction between humans and animals. According to this view, if a human comes through the door, then Jephthah will commit him/her to the Lord’s service, but if an animal comes through the doors, he will offer it up as a sacrifice. However, it is far more likely that the Hebrew construction (vav [ו] + perfect) specifies how the subject will become the Lord’s, that is, by being offered up as a sacrifice. For similar constructions, where the apodosis of a conditional sentence has at least two perfects (each with vav) in sequence, see Gen 34:15-16; Exod 18:16.

¹⁹tc Heb “Doing an extraordinary deed while Manoah and his wife were watching.” The subject of the participle is missing. The translation assumes that the phrase “the Lord’s messenger” was lost by homoioteleuton. If the text originally read לַיהוָה מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה (layhavah mal’akh yÿhvah), the scribe’s eye could have jumped from the first יְהוָה to the second, accidentally omitting two of the three words. Later the conjunction וּ (shureq) would have been added to the following מַפְלִא (mafli’) for syntactical reasons. Another possibility is that a pronominal subject (הוּא, hu’) has been lost in the MT due to haplography.

²¹tn Heb “and he went up.”

²²tn Heb “I have seen a woman in Timnah, one of the daughters of the Philistines.”

²³tn Heb “the third day.”