Judges 7:3

7:3 Now, announce to the men, ¹  ‘Whoever is shaking with fear ²  may turn around and leave Mount Gilead.’” ³  Twenty-two thousand men ⁴  went home; ⁵  ten thousand remained.

Judges 8:26

8:26 The total weight of the gold earrings he requested came to seventeen hundred gold shekels. ⁶  This was in addition to the crescent-shaped ornaments, jewelry, ⁷  purple clothing worn by the Midianite kings, and the necklaces on the camels. ⁸ 

Judges 12:6

12:6 then they said to him, “Say ‘Shibboleth!’” ⁹  If he said, “Sibboleth” (and could not pronounce the word ¹⁰  correctly), they grabbed him and executed him right there at the fords of the Jordan. On that day forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell dead.

Judges 16:5

16:5 The rulers of the Philistines went up to visit her and said to her, “Trick him! Find out what makes him so strong and how we can subdue him and humiliate ¹¹  him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred silver pieces.”

Judges 17:2-3

17:2 He said to his mother, “You know ¹²  the eleven hundred pieces of silver which were stolen ¹³  from you, about which I heard you pronounce a curse? Look here, I have the silver. I stole ¹⁴  it, but now I am giving it back to you.” ¹⁵  His mother said, “May the Lord reward ¹⁶  you, my son!” 17:3 When he gave back to his mother the eleven hundred pieces of silver, his mother said, “I solemnly dedicate ¹⁷  this silver to the Lord. It will be for my son’s benefit. We will use it to make a carved image and a metal image.” ¹⁸ 

Judges 20:15

20:15 That day the Benjaminites mustered from their cities twenty-six thousand sword-wielding soldiers, besides seven hundred well-trained soldiers from Gibeah. ¹⁹ 

Judges 20:25

20:25 The Benjaminites again attacked them from Gibeah and struck down eighteen thousand sword-wielding Israelite soldiers. ²⁰ 

Judges 20:35

20:35 The Lord annihilated Benjamin before Israel; the Israelites struck down that day 25,100 sword-wielding Benjaminites. ²¹ 

Judges 21:10

21:10 So the assembly sent 12,000 capable warriors ²²  against Jabesh Gilead. ²³  They commanded them, “Go and kill with your swords ²⁴  the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead, including the women and little children.

¹ tn Heb “call into the ears of the people.”

² tn Heb “afraid and shaking.”

³ tc Many interpreters reject the MT reading “and leave Mount Gilead” for geographical reasons. A possible alternative, involving rather radical emendation of the Hebrew text, would be, “So Gideon tested them” (i.e., thinned the ranks in this manner).

⁴ tn Heb “people.” The translation uses “men” because warriors are in view, and in ancient Israelite culture these would be only males. (This is also the case in vv. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.)

⁵ tn Or “turned around, back.”

⁶ sn Seventeen hundred gold shekels would be about 42.7 pounds (19.4 kilograms) of gold.

⁷ tn Or “pendants.”

⁸ tn Heb “the ornaments which were on the necks of their camels.”

¹¹ sn The inability of the Ephraimites to pronounce the word shibboleth the way the Gileadites did served as an identifying test. It illustrates that during this period there were differences in pronunciation between the tribes. The Hebrew word shibboleth itself means “stream” or “flood,” and was apparently chosen simply as a test case without regard to its meaning.

¹² tn Heb “and could not prepare to speak.” The precise meaning of יָכִין (yakhin) is unclear. Some understand it to mean “was not careful [to say it correctly]”; others emend to יָכֹל (yakhol, “was not able [to say it correctly]”) or יָבִין (yavin, “did not understand [that he should say it correctly]”), which is read by a few Hebrew mss.

¹⁶ tn Heb “subdue him in order to humiliate him.”

²¹ tn The words “You know” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

²² tn Heb “taken.”

²³ tn Heb “took.”

²⁴ 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.

²⁵ tn Traditionally, “bless.”

²⁶ tn Heb “dedicating, I dedicate.” In this case the emphatic infinitive absolute lends a mood of solemnity to the statement.

²⁷ tn Heb “to the LORD from my hand for my son to make a carved image and cast metal image.” She cannot mean that she is now taking the money from her hand and giving it back to her son so he can make an image. Verses 4-6 indicate she took back the money and used a portion of it to hire a silversmith to make an idol for her son to use. The phrase “a carved image and cast metal image” is best taken as referring to two idols (see 18:17-18), even though the verb at the end of v. 4, וַיְהִי (vayÿhi, “and it was [in the house of Micah]”), is singular.

³¹ tn Heb “besides from the ones living in Gibeah they mustered seven hundred choice men.”

³⁶ tn Heb “And Benjamin went out to meet them from Gibeah the second day, and they struck down among the sons of Israel eighteen thousand men to the ground, all of these were wielding the sword.”

⁴¹ tn Heb “And the sons of Israel struck down in Benjamin that day 25,100 men, all of these wielding the sword.”

⁴⁶ tn Heb “men, sons of strength.”

⁴⁷ tn Heb “there.”

⁴⁸ tn Heb “the edge of the sword.”