Go and cry for help to the gods you have chosen! Let them deliver you from trouble!”

But the Ammonite king disregarded the message sent by Jephthah.

The Lord’s messenger told Manoah, “Your wife should pay attention to everything I told her.

So the rulers of the Philistines brought her seven fresh bowstrings which had not been dried and they tied him up with them.

They said to him, “Seek a divine oracle for us, so we can know if we will be successful on our mission.”

The priest said to them, “Go with confidence. The Lord will be with you on your mission.”

Meanwhile the six hundred Danites, fully armed, stood at the entrance to the gate.

So they traveled on, and the sun went down when they were near Gibeah in the territory of Benjamin.

Do this: exterminate every male, as well as every woman who has had sexual relations with a male. But spare the lives of any virgins.” So they did as instructed.

That entire generation passed away; a new generation grew up that had not personally experienced the Lord’s presence or seen what he had done for Israel.

The Lord was furious with Israel. He said, “This nation has violated the terms of the agreement I made with their ancestors by disobeying me.

The Lord’s angelic messenger came and sat down under the oak tree in Ophrah owned by Joash the Abiezrite. He arrived while Joash’s son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress so he could hide it from the Midianites.

So Gideon took ten of his servants and did just as the Lord had told him. He was too afraid of his father’s family and the men of the city to do it in broad daylight, so he waited until nighttime.

But Joash said to all those who confronted him, “Must you fight Baal’s battles? Must you rescue him? Whoever takes up his cause will die by morning! If he really is a god, let him fight his own battles! After all, it was his altar that was pulled down.”

Gideon took a hundred men to the edge of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, just after they had changed the guards. They blew their trumpets and broke the jars they were carrying.

The total weight of the gold earrings he requested came to seventeen hundred gold shekels. This was in addition to the crescent-shaped ornaments, jewelry, purple clothing worn by the Midianite kings, and the necklaces on the camels.

He did this so the violent deaths of Jerub-Baal’s seventy sons might be avenged and Abimelech, their half-brother who murdered them, might have to pay for their spilled blood, along with the leaders of Shechem who helped him murder them.

In the morning at sunrise quickly attack the city. When he and his men come out to fight you, do what you can to him.”

Zebul said to him, “Where now are your bragging words, ‘Who is Abimelech that we should serve him?’ Are these not the men you insulted? Go out now and fight them!”

They ruthlessly oppressed the Israelites that eighteenth year – that is, all the Israelites living east of the Jordan in Amorite country in Gilead.