Hakim-hakim 2:11

A Monotonous Cycle

2:11 The Israelites did evil before ¹  the Lord by worshiping ²  the Baals.

Hakim-hakim 5:31--6:1

5:31 May all your enemies perish like this, O Lord!

But may those who love you shine

like the rising sun at its brightest!” ³ 

And the land had rest for forty years.

Oppression and Confrontation

6:1 The Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight, ⁴  so the Lord turned them over to ⁵  Midian for seven years.

Hakim-hakim 6:24

6:24 Gideon built an altar for the Lord there, and named it “The Lord is on friendly terms with me.” ⁶  To this day it is still there in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.

Hakim-hakim 10:15

10:15 But the Israelites said to the Lord, “We have sinned. You do to us as you see fit, ⁷  but deliver us today!” ⁸ 

Hakim-hakim 11:23

11:23 Since ⁹  the Lord God of Israel has driven out ¹⁰  the Amorites before his people Israel, do you think you can just take it from them? ¹¹ 

Hakim-hakim 13:19

13:19 Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered them on a rock to the Lord. The Lord’s messenger did an amazing thing as Manoah and his wife watched. ¹² 

Hakim-hakim 14:4

14:4 Now his father and mother did not realize this was the Lord’s doing, ¹³  because he was looking for an opportunity to stir up trouble with the Philistines ¹⁴  (for at that time the Philistines were ruling Israel).

[2:11]  ¹ tn Heb “in the eyes of.”

[2:11]  ² tn Or “serving”; or “following.”

[5:31]  ³ tn Heb “But may those who love him be like the going forth of the sun in its strength.”

[6:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “in the eyes of.”

[6:1]  ⁵ tn Heb “gave them into the hand of.”

[6:24]  ⁶ tn Heb “The Lord is peace.” Gideon’s name for the altar plays on the Lord’s reassuring words to him, “Peace to you.”

[10:15]  ⁷ tn Heb “according to all whatever is good in your eyes.”

[10:15]  ⁸ sn You do to us as you see fit, but deliver us today. The request seems contradictory, but it can be explained in one of two ways. They may be asking for relief from their enemies and direct discipline from God’s hand. Or they may mean, “In the future you can do whatever you like to us, but give us relief from what we’re suffering right now.”

[11:23]  ⁹ tn Heb “Now.”

[11:23]  ¹⁰ tn Or “dispossessed.”

[11:23]  ¹¹ tn Heb “will you dispossess him [i.e., Israel; or possibly “it,” i.e., the territory]?” There is no interrogative marker in the Hebrew text.

[13:19]  ¹² tc Heb “Doing an extraordinary deed while Manoah and his wife were watching.” The subject of the participle is missing. The translation assumes that the phrase “the Lord’s messenger” was lost by homoioteleuton. If the text originally read לַיהוָה מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה (layhavah mal’akh yÿhvah), the scribe’s eye could have jumped from the first יְהוָה to the second, accidentally omitting two of the three words. Later the conjunction וּ (shureq) would have been added to the following מַפְלִא (mafli’) for syntactical reasons. Another possibility is that a pronominal subject (הוּא, hu’) has been lost in the MT due to haplography.

[14:4]  ¹³ tn Heb “this was from the LORD.”

[14:4]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “for an opportunity he was seeking from the Philistines.”