You who ride on light-colored female donkeys, who sit on saddle blankets, you who walk on the road, pay attention!

“The trees were determined to go out and choose a king for themselves. They said to the olive tree, ‘Be our king!’

Abimelech commanded Israel for three years.

The leaders of Shechem rebelled against Abimelech by putting bandits in the hills, who robbed everyone who traveled by on the road. But Abimelech found out about it.

He said, “You may go.” He permitted her to leave for two months. She went with her friends and mourned her virginity as she walked through the hills.

As the flame went up from the altar toward the sky, the Lord’s messenger went up in it while Manoah and his wife watched. They fell facedown to the ground.

So Delilah took new ropes and tied him with them and said to him, “The Philistines are here, Samson!” (The Philistines were hiding in the bedroom.) But he tore the ropes from his arms as if they were a piece of thread.

She made him go to sleep on her lap and then called a man in to shave off the seven braids of his hair. She made him vulnerable and his strength left him.

She said, “The Philistines are here, Samson!” He woke up and thought, “I will do as I did before and shake myself free.” But he did not realize that the Lord had left him.

Samson said to the young man who held his hand, “Position me so I can touch the pillars that support the temple. Then I can lean on them.”

Samson took hold of the two middle pillars that supported the temple and he leaned against them, with his right hand on one and his left hand on the other.

The leaders of Gibeah attacked me and at night surrounded the house where I was staying. They wanted to kill me; instead they abused my concubine so badly that she died.

“So the trees said to the fig tree, ‘You come and be our king!’

“So the trees said to the grapevine, ‘You come and be our king!’

Now this is what we will do to Gibeah: We will attack the city as the lot dictates.

The Israelites got up the next morning and moved against Gibeah.

But you have attacked my father’s family today. You murdered his seventy legitimate sons on one stone and made Abimelech, the son of his female slave, king over the leaders of Shechem, just because he is your close relative.

When he arrived in Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they approached him. But the Lord’s spirit empowered him. The ropes around his arms were like flax dissolving in fire, and they melted away from his hands.

The men of Zebulun were not concerned about their lives; Naphtali charged on to the battlefields.

Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites, and the people from the east would attack them.