Judges 1:17

1:17 The men of Judah went with their brothers the men of Simeon ¹  and defeated the Canaanites living in Zephath. They wiped out Zephath. ²  So people now call the city Hormah. ³ 

Judges 6:38

6:38 The Lord did as he asked. ⁴  When he got up the next morning, he squeezed the fleece, and enough dew dripped from it to fill a bowl. ⁵ 

Judges 10:16

10:16 They threw away the foreign gods they owned ⁶  and worshiped ⁷  the Lord. Finally the Lord grew tired of seeing Israel suffer so much. ⁸ 

Judges 11:11

11:11 So Jephthah went with the leaders of Gilead. The people made him their leader and commander. Jephthah repeated the terms of the agreement ⁹  before the Lord in Mizpah.

Judges 13:17

13:17 Manoah said to the Lord’s messenger, “Tell us your name, so we can honor you when your announcement comes true.” ¹⁰ 

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. ¹¹ 

[1:17]  ¹ tn Heb “Judah went with Simeon, his brother.”

[1:17]  ² tn Heb “it”; the referent (the city of Zephath) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:17]  ³ sn The name Hormah (חָרְמָה, khormah) sounds like the Hebrew verb translated “wipe out” (חָרַם, kharam).

[6:38]  ⁴ tn Heb “And it was so.”

[6:38]  ⁵ tn Heb “dew dripped from the fleece – a bowl full of water.”

[10:16]  ⁷ tn Heb “from their midst.”

[10:16]  ⁸ tn Or “served”; or “followed.”

[10:16]  ⁹ tn Heb “And his spirit grew short [i.e., impatient] with the suffering of Israel.” The Hebrew noun נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) also appears as the subject of the verb קָצַר (qatsar) in Num 21:4 (the Israelites grow impatient wandering in the wilderness), Judg 16:16 (Samson grows impatient with Delilah’s constant nagging), and Zech 11:8 (Zechariah grows impatient with the three negligent “shepherds”).

[11:11]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “spoke all his words.” This probably refers to the “words” recorded in v. 9. Jephthah repeats the terms of the agreement at the Lord’s sanctuary, perhaps to ratify the contract or to emphasize the Gileadites’ obligation to keep their part of the bargain. Another option is to translate, “Jephthah conducted business before the Lord in Mizpah.” In this case, the statement is a general reference to the way Jephthah ruled. He recognized the Lord’s authority and made his decisions before the Lord.

[13:17]  ¹³ tn Heb “Who your name? For [when] your word comes [to pass], we will honor you.” Manoah apparently gets tongue-tied and uses the wrong pronoun (“who” instead of “what”). He starts to say, “Who are you?” But then he switches to “your name” as if he began the sentence with “what.” See R. G. Boling, Judges (AB), 222.

[13:19]  ¹⁶ 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.