God’s messenger said to him, “Put the meat and unleavened bread on this rock, and pour out the broth.” Gideon did as instructed.

That very day Gideon’s father named him Jerub-Baal, because he had said, “Let Baal fight with him, for it was his altar that was pulled down.”

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

He divided the three hundred men into three units. He gave them all trumpets and empty jars with torches inside them.

Gideon went up the road of the nomads east of Nobah and Jogbehah and ambushed the surprised army.

He captured a young man from Succoth and interrogated him. The young man wrote down for him the names of Succoth’s officials and city leaders – seventy-seven men in all.

The Israelites did not remain true to the Lord their God, who had delivered them from all the enemies who lived around them.

All the leaders of Shechem and Beth Millo assembled and then went and made Abimelech king by the oak near the pillar in Shechem.

But the olive tree said to them, ‘I am not going to stop producing my oil, which is used to honor gods and men, just to sway above the other trees!’

But the fig tree said to them, ‘I am not going to stop producing my sweet figs, my excellent fruit, just to sway above the other trees!’

But the grapevine said to them, ‘I am not going to stop producing my wine, which makes gods and men so happy, just to sway above the other trees!’

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 sent messengers to Abimelech, who was in Arumah, reporting, “Beware! Gaal son of Ebed and his brothers are coming to Shechem and inciting the city to rebel against you.

he took his men and divided them into three units and set an ambush in the field. When he saw the people coming out of the city, he attacked and struck them down.

After Abimelech’s death, Tola son of Puah, grandson of Dodo, from the tribe of Issachar, rose up to deliver Israel. He lived in Shamir in the Ephraimite hill country.

The Ammonites crossed the Jordan to fight with Judah, Benjamin, and Ephraim. Israel suffered greatly.

Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a brave warrior. His mother was a prostitute, but Gilead was his father.

When the Ammonites attacked, the leaders of Gilead asked Jephthah to come back from the land of Tob.

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

You have the right to take what Chemosh your god gives you, but we will take the land of all whom the Lord our God has driven out before us.