Judges 5:22

5:22 The horses’ ¹  hooves pounded the ground; ² 

the stallions galloped madly. ³ 

Judges 6:31

6:31 But Joash said to all those who confronted him, ⁴  “Must you fight Baal’s battles? ⁵  Must you rescue him? Whoever takes up his cause ⁶  will die by morning! ⁷  If he really is a god, let him fight his own battles! ⁸  After all, it was his altar that was pulled down.” ⁹ 

Judges 9:47

9:47 Abimelech heard ¹⁰  that all the leaders of the Tower of Shechem were in one place. ¹¹ 

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 ¹²  people! You should not have to go and get a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines.” ¹³  But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, ¹⁴  because she is the right one for me.” ¹⁵ 

Judges 14:7

14:7 Samson continued on down to Timnah ¹⁶  and spoke to the girl. In his opinion, she was just the right one. ¹⁷ 

¹ tc The MT as it stands has a singular noun, but if one moves the prefixed mem (מ) from the beginning of the next word to the end of סוּס (sus), the expected plural form is achieved. Another possibility is to understand an error of scribal haplography here, in which case the letter mem should appear in both places.

² tn The words “the ground” are not in the Hebrew text, but are supplied in the translation for clarification.

³ tn Heb “galloped, galloped.” The repetition is for emphasis and is more appropriately indicated in English with an adverb.

⁴ tn Heb “to all who stood against him.”

⁵ tn Heb “Do you fight for Baal?”

⁶ tn Heb “fights for him.”

⁷ sn Whoever takes up his cause will die by morning. This may be a warning to the crowd that Joash intends to defend his son and to kill anyone who tries to execute Gideon. Then again, it may be a sarcastic statement about Baal’s apparent inability to defend his own honor. Anyone who takes up Baal’s cause may end up dead, perhaps by the same hand that pulled down the pagan god’s altar.

⁸ tn Heb “fight for himself.”

⁹ tn Heb “for he pulled down his altar.” The subject of the verb, if not Gideon, is indefinite (in which case a passive translation is permissible).

⁷ tn Heb “and it was told to Abimelech.”

⁸ tn Heb “were assembled.”

¹⁰ 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.

¹¹ 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?”

¹² 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.

¹³ tn Heb “because she is right in my eyes.”

¹³ tn Heb “He went down.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “She was the right one in the eyes of Samson.”