Judges 5:23

5:23 ‘Call judgment down on ¹  Meroz,’ says the Lord’s angelic ²  messenger;

‘Be sure ³  to call judgment down on ⁴  those who live there,

because they did not come to help in the Lord’s battle, ⁵ 

to help in the Lord’s battle against the warriors.’ ⁶ 

Judges 11:15

11:15 and said to him, “This is what Jephthah says, ‘Israel did not steal ⁷  the land of Moab and the land of the Ammonites.

Judges 15:2

15:2 Her father said, “I really thought ⁸  you absolutely despised ⁹  her, so I gave her to your best man. Her younger sister is more attractive than she is. Take her instead!” ¹⁰ 

Judges 7:4

7:4 The Lord spoke to Gideon again, “There are still too many men. ¹¹  Bring them down to the water and I will thin the ranks some more. ¹²  When I say, ‘This one should go with you,’ pick him to go; ¹³  when I say, ¹⁴  ‘This one should not go with you,’ do not take him.” ¹⁵ 

Judges 6:8

6:8 he ¹⁶  sent a prophet ¹⁷  to the Israelites. He said to them, “This is what the Lord God of Israel says: ‘I brought you up from Egypt ¹⁸  and took you out of that place of slavery. ¹⁹ 

Judges 12:6

12:6 then they said to him, “Say ‘Shibboleth!’” ²⁰  If he said, “Sibboleth” (and could not pronounce the word ²¹  correctly), they grabbed him and executed him right there at the fords of the Jordan. On that day forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell dead.

[5:23]  ¹ tn Heb “Curse Meroz.”

[5:23]  ² tn The adjective “angelic” is interpretive.

[5:23]  ³ tn Heb “Curse, cursing.” The Hebrew construction is emphatic.

[5:23]  ⁴ tn Heb “[to] curse.”

[5:23]  ⁵ tn Heb “to the help of the Lord” (the same Hebrew phrase occurs in the following line). Another option is to read “to aid the Lord’s cause.”

[5:23]  ⁶ tn Or “along with the other warriors.”

[11:15]  ⁷ tn Or “take”; or “seize.”

[15:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “saying, I said.” The first person form of אָמַר (’amar, “to say”) sometimes indicates self-reflection. The girl’s father uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis.

[15:2]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “hating, you hated.” Once again the girl’s father uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis.

[15:2]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “Is her younger sister not better than her? Let her [i.e., the younger sister] be yours instead of her [i.e., Samson’s ‘bride’]).”

[7:4]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “too many people.”

[7:4]  ²⁰ tn Heb “test them for you there.”

[7:4]  ²¹ tn Heb “he should go with you.”

[7:4]  ²² tn Heb also has “to you.”

[7:4]  ²³ tn Heb “he should not go.”

[6:8]  ²⁵ tn Heb “the Lord”; the proper name has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[6:8]  ²⁶ tn Heb “a man, a prophet.” Hebrew idiom sometimes puts a generic term before a more specific designation.

[6:8]  ²⁷ tc Some ancient witnesses read “from the land of Egypt.” מֵאֶרֶץ (me’erets, “from the land [of]”) could have been accidentally omitted by homoioarcton (note the following מִמִּצְרַיִם [mimmitsrayim, “from Egypt”]).

[6:8]  ²⁸ tn Heb “of the house of slavery.”

[12:6]  ³¹ 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.

[12:6]  ³² 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.