Judges 9:48-49

9:48 He and all his men ¹  went up on Mount Zalmon. He ²  took an ax ³  in his hand and cut off a tree branch. He put it ⁴  on his shoulder and said to his men, “Quickly, do what you have just seen me do!” ⁵  9:49 So each of his men also cut off a branch and followed Abimelech. They put the branches ⁶  against the stronghold and set fire to it. ⁷  All the people ⁸  of the Tower of Shechem died – about a thousand men and women.

Judges 9:2

9:2 “Tell ⁹  all the leaders of Shechem this: ‘Why would you want ¹⁰  to have seventy men, all Jerub-Baal’s sons, ruling over you, when you can have just one ruler? Recall that I am your own flesh and blood.’” ¹¹ 

Judges 14:10

14:10 Then Samson’s father accompanied him to Timnah for the marriage. ¹²  Samson hosted a party ¹³  there, for this was customary for bridegrooms ¹⁴  to do.

Judges 15:16

15:16 Samson then said,

“With the jawbone of a donkey

I have left them in heaps; ¹⁵ 

with the jawbone of a donkey

I have struck down a thousand men!”

¹ tn Heb “his people.”

² tn Heb “Abimelech.” The proper name has been replaced with the pronoun (“he”) due to considerations of English style.

³ tn The Hebrew text has the plural here.

⁴ tn Heb “he lifted it and put [it].”

⁵ tn Heb “What you have seen me do, quickly do like me.”

⁶ tn The words “the branches” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

⁷ tn Heb “they kindled over them the stronghold with fire.”

⁸ tn Or “men,” but the word seems to have a more general sense here, as the conclusion to the sentence suggests.

¹¹ tn Heb “Speak into the ears of.”

¹² tn Heb “What good is it to you?”

¹³ tn Heb “your bone and your flesh.”

¹⁶ tn Heb “And his father went down to the woman.”

¹⁷ tn Or “[wedding] feast.”

¹⁸ tn Heb “the young men.”

²¹ tn The precise meaning of the second half of the line (חֲמוֹר חֲמֹרָתָיִם, khamor khamoratayim) is uncertain. The present translation assumes that the phrase means, “a heap, two heaps” and refers to the heaps of corpses littering the battlefield. Other options include: (a) “I have made donkeys of them” (cf. NIV; see C. F. Burney, Judges, 373, for a discussion of this view, which understands a denominative verb from the noun “donkey”); (b) “I have thoroughly skinned them” (see HALOT 330 s.v. IV cj. חמר, which appeals to an Arabic cognate for support); (c) “I have stormed mightily against them,” which assumes the verb חָמַר (khamar, “to ferment; to foam; to boil up”).