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. ¹ 

Judges 6:21

6:21 The Lord’s messenger touched the meat and the unleavened bread with the tip of his staff. ²  Fire flared up from the rock and consumed the meat and unleavened bread. The Lord’s messenger then disappeared. ³ 

Judges 7:25

7:25 They captured the two Midianite generals, Oreb and Zeeb. ⁴  They executed Oreb on the rock of Oreb and Zeeb ⁵  in the winepress of Zeeb. They chased the Midianites ⁶  and brought the heads of Oreb and Zeeb to Gideon, who was now on the other side of the Jordan River. ⁷ 

¹ tc 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.

² tn Heb “extended the tip of the staff which was in his hand and touched the meat and unleavened bread.”

³ tn Heb “went from his eyes.”

³ sn The names Oreb and Zeeb, which mean “Raven” and “Wolf” respectively, are appropriate because the Midianites had been like scavengers and predators to Israel.

⁴ tn The Hebrew text repeats the verb “executed.” This has not been repeated in the translation for stylistic reasons.

⁵ tn Heb “Midian.”

⁶ tn Heb “beyond the Jordan.” The word “River” is not in the Hebrew text but has been supplied in the translation for clarity (also in 8:4).