Study Desk

so they cried out to the Lord, saying, “We have sinned against you. We have abandoned our God and worshiped the Baals.”

So they got rid of the foreign gods among them and worshiped the Lord, and he became weary of Israel’s misery.

The Ammonites were called together, and they camped in Gilead. So the Israelites assembled and camped at Mizpah.

So Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob. Then some worthless men joined Jephthah and went on raids with him.

So Jephthah said to them, “If you are bringing me back to fight the Ammonites and the Lord gives them to me, I will be your leader.”

So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead. The people made him their leader and commander, and Jephthah repeated all his terms in the presence of the Lord at Mizpah.

Israel sent messengers to the king of Edom, saying, ‘Please let us travel through your land,’ but the king of Edom would not listen. They also sent messengers to the king of Moab, but he refused. So Israel stayed in Kadesh.

Then the Lord God of Israel handed over Sihon and all his troops to Israel, and they defeated them. So Israel took possession of the entire land of the Amorites who lived in that country.

He defeated twenty of their cities with a great slaughter from Aroer all the way to the entrance of Minnith and to Abel-keramim. So the Ammonites were subdued before the Israelites.

“Go,” he said. And he sent her away two months. So she left with her friends and mourned her virginity as she wandered through the mountains.

Then Jephthah said to them, “My people and I had a bitter conflict with the Ammonites. So I called for you, but you didn’t deliver me from their power.

The Israelites again did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord handed them over to the Philistines forty years.

So Manoah got up and followed his wife. When he came to the man, he asked, “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?”

Then Manoah said to him, “What is your name, so that we may honor you when your words come true?”

So the woman gave birth to a son and named him Samson. The boy grew, and the Lord blessed him.

So he said to them:

So Samson’s wife came to him, weeping, and said, “You hate me and don’t love me! You told my people the riddle, but haven’t explained it to me.”

She wept the whole seven days of the feast, and at last, on the seventh day, he explained it to her, because she had nagged him so much. Then she explained it to her people.

“I was sure you hated her,” her father said, “so I gave her to one of the men who accompanied you. Isn’t her younger sister more beautiful than she is? Why not take her instead?”

So he went out and caught three hundred foxes. He took torches, turned the foxes tail-to-tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails.