The woman ran at once and told her husband, “Come quickly, the man who visited me the other day has appeared to me!”

So Manoah got up and followed his wife. When he met the man, he said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?” He said, “Yes.”

The Lord’s spirit empowered him and he tore the lion in two with his bare hands as easily as one would tear a young goat. But he did not tell his father or mother what he had done.

Samson said to her, “If they tie me up with seven fresh bowstrings that have not been dried, I will become weak and be just like any other man.”

He said to her, “If they tie me tightly with brand new ropes that have never been used, I will become weak and be just like any other man.”

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.

He said, “You stole my gods that I made, as well as this priest, and then went away. What do I have left? How can you have the audacity to say to me, ‘What do you want?’”

They named it Dan after their ancestor, who was one of Israel’s sons. But the city’s name used to be Laish.

They worshiped Micah’s carved image the whole time God’s authorized shrine was in Shiloh.

But his master said to him, “We should not stop at a foreign city where non-Israelites live. We will travel on to Gibeah.”

The woman arrived back at daybreak and was sprawled out on the doorstep of the house where her master was staying until it became light.

The Levite, the husband of the murdered woman, spoke up, “I and my concubine stopped in Gibeah in the territory of Benjamin to spend the night.

The tribes of Israel sent men throughout the tribe of Benjamin, saying, “How could such a wicked thing take place?

The Israelite army took heart and once more arranged their battle lines, in the same place where they had taken their positions the day before.

Then the Benjaminites saw they were defeated. The Israelites retreated before Benjamin, because they had confidence in the men they had hid in ambush outside Gibeah.

The entire assembly sent messengers to the Benjaminites at the cliff of Rimmon and assured them they would not be harmed.

The Benjaminites returned at that time, and the Israelites gave to them the women they had spared from Jabesh Gilead. But there were not enough to go around.

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

He and all his men went up on Mount Zalmon. He took an ax in his hand and cut off a tree branch. He put it on his shoulder and said to his men, “Quickly, do what you have just seen me do!”