Judges 11:35

11:35 When he saw her, he ripped his clothes and said, “Oh no! My daughter! You have completely ruined me! ¹  You have brought me disaster! ²  I made an oath to the Lord, and I cannot break it.” ³ 

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 ⁴  people! You should not have to go and get a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines.” ⁵  But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, ⁶  because she is the right one for me.” ⁷ 

Judges 14:12

14:12 Samson said to them, “I will give you a riddle. If you really can solve it during the seven days the party lasts, ⁸  I will give you thirty linen robes and thirty sets ⁹  of clothes.

Judges 15:6

15:6 The Philistines asked, ¹⁰  “Who did this?” They were told, ¹¹  “Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law, because the Timnite ¹²  took Samson’s ¹³  bride and gave her to his best man.” So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father. ¹⁴ 

Judges 19:25

19:25 The men refused to listen to him, so the Levite ¹⁵  grabbed his concubine and made her go outside. ¹⁶  They raped ¹⁷  her and abused her all night long until morning. They let her go at dawn.

[11:35]  ¹ tn Heb “you have brought me very low,” or “you have knocked me to my knees.” The infinitive absolute precedes the verb for emphasis.

[11:35]  ² tn Heb “You are among [or “like”] those who trouble me.”

[11:35]  ³ tn Heb “I opened my mouth to the Lord and I am not able to return.”

[14:3]  ⁴ 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.

[14:3]  ⁵ 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?”

[14:3]  ⁶ 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.

[14:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “because she is right in my eyes.”

[14:12]  ⁷ tn Heb “If you really can tell it to me [during] the seven days of the feast and you find [its answer].”

[14:12]  ⁸ tn Heb “changes.”

[15:6]  ¹⁰ tn Or “said.”

[15:6]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and they said.” The subject of the plural verb is indefinite.

[15:6]  ¹² tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Timnite) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[15:6]  ¹³ tn Heb “his”; the referent (Samson) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[15:6]  ¹⁴ tn The Hebrew text expands the statement with the additional phrase “burned with fire.” The words “with fire” are redundant in English and have been omitted from the translation for stylistic reasons. Some textual witnesses read “burned…her father’s house,” perhaps under the influence of 14:15. On the other hand, the shorter text may have lost this phrase due to haplography.

[19:25]  ¹³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Levite) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[19:25]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and he caused [her] to go outside to them.”

[19:25]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “knew,” in the sexual sense.