Hakim-hakim 1:5

1:5 They met ¹  Adoni-Bezek at Bezek and fought him. They defeated the Canaanites and Perizzites.

Hakim-hakim 6:16

6:16 The Lord said to him, “Ah, but ²  I will be with you! You will strike down the whole Midianite army.” ³ 

Hakim-hakim 15:8

15:8 He struck them down and defeated them. ⁴  Then he went down and lived for a time in the cave in the cliff of Etam.

Hakim-hakim 15:15-16

15:15 He happened to see ⁵  a solid ⁶  jawbone of a donkey. He grabbed it ⁷  and struck down ⁸  a thousand men. 15:16 Samson then said,

“With the jawbone of a donkey

I have left them in heaps; ⁹ 

with the jawbone of a donkey

I have struck down a thousand men!”

[1:5]  ¹ tn Or “found.”

[6:16]  ² tn Or “certainly.”

[6:16]  ³ tn Heb “You will strike down Midian as one man.” The idiom “as one man” emphasizes the collective unity of a group (see Judg 20:8, 11). Here it may carry the force, “as if they were just one man.”

[15:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “He struck them, calf on thigh, [with] a great slaughter.” The precise meaning of the phrase “calf on thigh” is uncertain.

[15:15]  ⁵ tn Heb “he found.”

[15:15]  ⁶ tn Heb “fresh,” i.e., not decayed and brittle.

[15:15]  ⁷ tn Heb “he reached out his hand and took it.”

[15:15]  ⁸ tn The Hebrew text adds “with it.” This has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[15:16]  ⁹ tn The precise meaning of the second half of the line (חֲמוֹר חֲמֹרָתָיִם, khamor khamoratayim) is uncertain. The present translation assumes that the phrase means, “a heap, two heaps” and refers to the heaps of corpses littering the battlefield. Other options include: (a) “I have made donkeys of them” (cf. NIV; see C. F. Burney, Judges, 373, for a discussion of this view, which understands a denominative verb from the noun “donkey”); (b) “I have thoroughly skinned them” (see HALOT 330 s.v. IV cj. חמר, which appeals to an Arabic cognate for support); (c) “I have stormed mightily against them,” which assumes the verb חָמַר (khamar, “to ferment; to foam; to boil up”).