1:14 One time Acsah 1 came and charmed her father 2 so she could ask him for some land. When she got down from her donkey, Caleb said to her, “What would you like?”
5:4 O Lord, when you departed 3 from Seir,
when you marched from Edom’s plains,
the earth shook, the heavens poured down,
the clouds poured down rain. 4
1 tn Heb “she”; the referent (Acsah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
2 tn Heb “him.” The pronoun could refer to Othniel, in which case one would translate, “she incited him [Othniel] to ask her father for a field.” This is problematic, however, for Acsah, not Othniel, makes the request in v. 15. The LXX has “he [Othniel] urged her to ask her father for a field.” This appears to be an attempt to reconcile the apparent inconsistency and probably does not reflect the original text. If Caleb is understood as the referent of the pronoun, the problem disappears. For a fuller discussion of the issue, see P. G. Mosca, “Who Seduced Whom? A Note on Joshua 15:18 // Judges 1:14,” CBQ 46 (1984): 18-22. The translation takes Caleb to be the referent, specified as “her father.”
3 tn Or “went out.”
4 tn Heb “water.”
5 tn Heb “vineyards.”
6 tn Heb “stomped” or “trampled.” This refers to the way in which the juice was squeezed out in the wine vats by stepping on the grapes with one’s bare feet. For a discussion of grape harvesting in ancient Israel, see O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 110-14.
7 tn Heb “house.”
7 tn Heb “his people.”
8 tn Heb “And he saw and, look, the people were coming out of the city.”
9 tn Heb “he arose against them and struck them.”
9 tn Or possibly, “the unit that was with him.”
10 tn Heb “stood [at].”
11 tn Heb “God listened to the voice of Manoah.”
12 tn Heb “came to.”
13 tn Heb “her”; the referent is more naturally stated in English as “the pieces.”
14 tn Heb “throughout all the territory of the inheritance of Israel.”
15 tn Heb “a wicked and disgraceful [thing].”