Judges 14:3

14:3 But his father and mother said to him, “Certainly you can find a wife among your relatives or among all our ¹  people! You should not have to go and get a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines.” ²  But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, ³  because she is the right one for me.” ⁴ 

Judges 17:2

17:2 He said to his mother, “You know ⁵  the eleven hundred pieces of silver which were stolen ⁶  from you, about which I heard you pronounce a curse? Look here, I have the silver. I stole ⁷  it, but now I am giving it back to you.” ⁸  His mother said, “May the Lord reward ⁹  you, my son!”

Judges 20:10

20:10 We will take ten of every group of a hundred men from all the tribes of Israel (and a hundred of every group of a thousand, and a thousand of every group of ten thousand) to get supplies for the army. ¹⁰  When they arrive in Gibeah of Benjamin they will punish them for the atrocity which they committed in Israel.” ¹¹ 

¹ tn Heb “my.” The singular may seem strange, since the introduction to the quotation attributes the words to his father and mother. But Samson’s father apparently speaks for both himself and his wife. However, the Lucianic recension of the LXX and the Syriac Peshitta have a second person pronoun here (“you”), and this may represent the original reading.

² tn Heb “Is there not among the daughters of your brothers or among all my people a woman that you have to go to get a wife among the uncircumcised Philistines?”

³ tn “Her” is first in the Hebrew word order for emphasis. Samson wanted this Philistine girl, no one else. See C. F. Burney, Judges, 357.

⁴ tn Heb “because she is right in my eyes.”

⁵ tn The words “You know” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

⁶ tn Heb “taken.”

⁷ tn Heb “took.”

⁸ tn In the Hebrew text the statement, “but now I am giving it back to you,” appears at the end of v. 3 and is spoken by the mother. But v. 4 indicates that she did not give the money back to her son. Unless the statement is spoken by the woman to the LORD, it appears to be misplaced and fits much better in v. 2. It may have been accidentally omitted from a manuscript, written in the margin, and then later inserted in the wrong place in another manuscript.

⁹ tn Traditionally, “bless.”

⁹ tn Or “people.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “to do at their arrival in Geba of Benjamin according to all the disgraceful [thing] which he [collective = “Benjamin”] did in Israel.” Here “Geba” must be an error for “Gibeah.”