Judges 1-4

Judges 1

¹Now after the death of Joshua, the children of Israel made request to the Lord, saying, Who is to go up first to make war for us against the Canaanites?

²And the Lord said, Judah is to go up: see, I have given the land into his hands.

³Then Judah said to Simeon his brother, Come up with me into my heritage, so that we may make war against the Canaanites; and I will then go with you into your heritage. So Simeon went with him.

⁴And Judah went up; and the Lord gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hands; and they overcame ten thousand of them in Bezek.

⁵And they came across Adoni-zedek, and made war on him; and they overcame the Canaanites and the Perizzites.

⁶But Adoni-zedek went in flight; and they went after him and overtook him, and had his thumbs and his great toes cut off.

⁷And Adoni-zedek said, Seventy kings, whose thumbs and great toes had been cut off, got broken meat under my table: as I have done, so has God done to me in full. And they took him to Jerusalem, and he came to his end there.

⁸Then the children of Judah made an attack on Jerusalem, and took it, burning down the town after they had put its people to the sword without mercy.

⁹After that the children of Judah went down to make war on the Canaanites living in the hill-country and in the south and in the lowlands.

¹⁰And Caleb went against the Canaanites of Hebron: (now in earlier times Hebron was named Kiriath-arba:) and he put Sheshai and Ahiman and Talmai to the sword.

¹¹And from there he went up against the people of Debir. (Now the name of Debir in earlier times was Kiriath-sepher.)

¹²And Caleb said, I will give Achsah, my daughter, as wife to the man who overcomes Kiriath-sepher and takes it.

¹³And Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, took it; so he gave him his daughter Achsah for his wife.

¹⁴Now when she came to him, he put into her mind the idea of requesting a field from her father: and she got down from her ass; and Caleb said to her, What is it?

¹⁵And she said to him, Give me a blessing; because you have put me in a dry south-land, now give me springs of water. So Caleb gave her the higher spring and the lower spring.

¹⁶Now Hobab the Kenite, Moses' father-in-law, had come up out of the town of palm-trees, with the children of Judah, into the waste land of Arad; and he went and was living among the Amalekites;

¹⁷And Judah went with Simeon, his brother, and overcame the Canaanites living in Zephath, and put it under the curse; and he gave the town the name of Hormah.

¹⁸Then Judah took Gaza and its limit, and Ashkelon and its limit, and Ekron and its limit.

¹⁹And the Lord was with Judah; and he took the hill-country for his heritage; but he was unable to make the people of the valley go out, for they had war-carriages of iron.

²⁰And they gave Hebron to Caleb, as Moses had said; and he took the land of the three sons of Anak, driving them out from there.

²¹And the children of Judah did not make the Jebusites who were living in Jerusalem go out; the Jebusites are still living with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem.

²²And the family of Joseph went up against Beth-el, and the Lord was with them.

²³So they sent men to make a search round Beth-el. (Now the name of the town in earlier times was Luz.)

²⁴And the watchers saw a man coming out of the town, and said to him, If you will make clear to us the way into the town, we will be kind to you.

²⁵So he made clear to them the way into the town, and they put it to the sword; but they let the man and all his family get away safe.

²⁶And he went into the land of the Hittites, building a town there and naming it Luz: which is its name to this day.

²⁷And Manasseh did not take away the land of the people of Beth-shean and its daughter-towns, or of Taanach and its daughter-towns, or of the people of Dor and its daughter-towns, or of the people of Ibleam and its daughter-towns, or of the people of Megiddo and its daughter-towns, driving them out; but the Canaanites would go on living in that land.

²⁸And whenever Israel became strong, they put the Canaanites to forced work, without driving them out completely.

²⁹And Ephraim did not make the Canaanites who were living in Gezer go out; but the Canaanites went on living in Gezer among them.

³⁰Zebulun did not make the people of Kitron or the people of Nahalol go out; but the Canaanites went on living among them and were put to forced work.

³¹And Asher did not take the land of the people of Acco, or Zidon, or Ahlab, or Achzib, or Helbah, or Aphik, or Rehob, driving them out;

³²But the Asherites went on living among the Canaanites, the people of the land, without driving them out.

³³Naphtali did not take the land of the people of Beth-shemesh or of Beth-anath, driving them out; but he was living among the Canaanites in the land; however, the people of Beth-shemesh and Beth-anath were put to forced work.

³⁴And the children of Dan were forced into the hill-country by the Amorites, who would not let them come down into the valley;

³⁵For the Amorites would go on living in Mount Heres, in Aijalon, and in Shaalbim; but the children of Joseph became stronger than they, and put them to forced work.

³⁶And the limit of the Edomites went from the slope of Akrabbim from Sela and up.

Judges 2

¹Now the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, …I took you out of Egypt, guiding you into the land which I gave by an oath to your fathers; and I said, My agreement with you will never be broken by me:

²And you are to make no agreement with the people of this land; you are to see that their altars are broken down: but you have not given ear to my voice: what have you done?

³And so I have said, I will not send them out from before you; but they will be a danger to you, and their gods will be a cause of falling to you.

⁴Now on hearing these words which the angel of the Lord said to all the children of Israel, the people gave themselves up to loud crying and weeping.

⁵And they gave that place the name of Bochim, and made offerings there to the Lord.

⁶And Joshua let the people go away, and the children of Israel went, every man to his heritage, to take the land for themselves.

⁷And the people were true to the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the responsible men who were still living after the death of Joshua, and had seen all the great work of the Lord which he had done for Israel.

⁸And death came to Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, he being a hundred and ten years old.

⁹And they put his body in the earth in the land of his heritage in Timnath-heres, in the hill-country of Ephraim to the north of Mount Gaash.

¹⁰And in time death overtook all that generation; and another generation came after them, having no knowledge of the Lord or of the things which he had done for Israel.

¹¹And the children of Israel did evil in the eyes of the Lord and became servants to the Baals;

¹²And they gave up the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had taken them out of the land of Egypt, and went after other gods, the gods of the peoples round about them, worshipping them and moving the Lord to wrath.

¹³And they gave up the Lord, and became the servants of Baal and the Astartes.

¹⁴And the wrath of the Lord was burning against Israel, and he gave them up into the hands of those who violently took their property, and into the hands of their haters all round them, so that they were forced to give way before them.

¹⁵Wherever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had taken his oath it would be; and things became very hard for them.

¹⁶Then the Lord gave them judges, as their saviours from the hands of those who were cruel to them.

¹⁷But still they would not give ear to their judges, but went after other gods and gave them worship; quickly turning from the way in which their fathers had gone, keeping the orders of the Lord; but they did not do so.

¹⁸And whenever the Lord gave them judges, then the Lord was with the judge, and was their saviour from the hands of their haters all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved by their cries of grief because of those who were cruel to them.

¹⁹But whenever the judge was dead, they went back and did more evil than their fathers, going after other gods, to be their servants and their worshippers; giving up nothing of their sins and their hard-hearted ways.

²⁰And the wrath of the Lord was burning against Israel, and he said, Because this nation has not been true to my agreement which I made with their fathers, and has not given ear to my voice;

²¹From now on I will not go on driving out from before them any of the nations which at the death of Joshua were still living in this land;

²²In order to put Israel to the test, and see if they will keep the way of the Lord, walking in it as their fathers did, or not.

²³So the Lord let those nations go on living in the land, not driving them out quickly, and did not give them up into the hands of Joshua.

Judges 3

¹Now these are the nations which the Lord kept in the land for the purpose of testing Israel by them, all those who had had no experience of all the wars of Canaan;

²Only because of the generations of the children of Israel, for the purpose of teaching them war — only those who up till then had no experience of it;

³The five chiefs of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites and the Zidonians and the Hivites living in Mount Lebanon, from the mountain Baal-hermon as far as Hamath:

⁴For the purpose of testing Israel by them, to see if they would give ear to the orders of the Lord, which he had given to their fathers by the hand of Moses.

⁵Now the children of Israel were living among the Canaanites, the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites:

⁶And they took as wives the daughters of these nations and gave their daughters to their sons, and became servants to their gods.

⁷And the children of Israel did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and put out of their minds the Lord their God, and became servants to the Baals and the Astartes.

⁸So the wrath of the Lord was burning against Israel, and he gave them up into the hands of Cushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia; and the children of Israel were his servants for eight years.

⁹And when the children of Israel made prayer to the Lord, he gave them a saviour, Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother.

¹⁰And the spirit of the Lord came on him and he became judge of Israel, and went out to war, and the Lord gave up Cushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hands and he overcame him.

¹¹Then for forty years the land had peace, till the death of Othniel, the son of Kenaz.

¹²Then the children of Israel again did evil in the eyes of the Lord; and the Lord made Eglon, king of Moab, strong against Israel, because they had done evil in the Lord's eyes.

¹³And Eglon got together the people of Ammon and Amalek, and they went and overcame Israel and took the town of palm-trees.

¹⁴And the children of Israel were servants to Eglon, king of Moab, for eighteen years.

¹⁵Then when the children of Israel made prayer to the Lord, he gave them a saviour, Ehud, the son of Gera, the Benjamite, a left-handed man; and the children of Israel sent an offering by him to Eglon, king of Moab.

¹⁶So Ehud made himself a two-edged sword, a cubit long, which he put on at his right side under his robe.

¹⁷And he took the offering to Eglon, king of Moab, who was a very fat man.

¹⁸And after giving the offering, he sent away the people who had come with the offering.

¹⁹But he himself, turning back from the stone images at Gilgal, said, I have something to say to you in secret, O king. And he said, Let there be quiet. Then all those who were waiting before him went out.

²⁰Then Ehud came in to him while he was seated by himself in his summer-house. And Ehud said, I have a word from God for you. And he got up from his seat.

²¹And Ehud put out his left hand, and took the sword from his right side, and sent it into his stomach;

²²And the hand-part went in after the blade, and the fat was joined up over the blade; for he did not take the sword out of his stomach. And he went out into the ...

²³Then Ehud went out into the covered way, shutting the doors of the summer-house on him and locking them.

²⁴Now when he had gone, the king's servants came, and saw that the doors of the summer-house were locked; and they said, It may be that he is in his summer-house for a private purpose.

²⁵And they went on waiting till they were shamed, but the doors were still shut; so they took the key, and, opening them, saw their lord stretched out dead on the floor.

²⁶But Ehud had got away while they were waiting and had gone past the stone images and got away to Seirah.

²⁷And when he came there, he had a horn sounded in the hill-country of Ephraim, and all the children of Israel went down with him from the hill-country, and he at their head.

²⁸And he said to them, Come after me; for the Lord has given the Moabites, your haters, into your hands. So they went down after him and took the crossing-places of Jordan against Moab, and let no one go across.

²⁹At that time they put about ten thousand men of Moab to the sword, every strong man and every man of war; not a man got away.

³⁰So Moab was broken that day under the hand of Israel. And for eighty years the land had peace.

³¹And after him came Shamgar, the son of Anath, who put to death six hundred Philistines with an ox-stick; and he was another saviour of Israel.

Judges 4

¹And the children of Israel again did evil in the eyes of the Lord when Ehud was dead.

²And the Lord gave them up into the hands of Jabin, king of Canaan, who was ruling in Hazor; the captain of his army was Sisera, who was living in Harosheth of the Gentiles.

³Then the children of Israel made prayer to the Lord; for he had nine hundred iron war-carriages, and for twenty years he was very cruel to the children of Israel.

⁴Now Deborah, a woman prophet, the wife of Lapidoth, was judge of Israel at that time.

⁵(And she had her seat under the palm-tree of Deborah between Ramah and Beth-el in the hill-country of Ephraim; and the children of Israel came up to her to be judged.)

⁶And she sent for Barak, the son of Abinoam, from Kedesh-naphtali, and said to him, Has not the Lord, the God of Israel, given orders saying, Go and get your force into line in Mount Tabor, and take with you ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun?

⁷And I will make Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army, with his war-carriages and his forces, come against you at the river Kishon, where I will give him into your hands.

⁸And Barak said to her, If you will go with me then I will go; but if you will not go with me I will not go.

⁹And she said, I will certainly go with you: though you will get no honour in your undertaking, for the Lord will give Sisera into the hands of a woman. So Deborah got up and went with Barak to Kedesh.

¹⁰Then Barak sent for Zebulun and Naphtali to come to Kedesh; and ten thousand men went up after him, and Deborah went up with him.

¹¹Now Heber the Kenite, separating himself from the rest of the Kenites, from the children of Hobab, the brother-in-law of Moses, had put up his tent as far away as the oak-tree in Zaanannim, by Kedesh.

¹²And word was given to Sisera that Barak, the son of Abinoam, had gone up to Mount Tabor.

¹³So Sisera got together all his war-carriages, nine hundred war-carriages of iron, and all the people who were with him, from Harosheth of the Gentiles as far as the river Kishon.

¹⁴Then Deborah said to Barak, Up! for today the Lord has given Sisera into your hands: has not the Lord gone out before you? So Barak went down from Mount Tabor and ten thousand men after him.

¹⁵And the Lord sent fear on Sisera and all his war-carriages and all his army before Barak; and Sisera got down from his war-carriage and went in flight on foot.

¹⁶But Barak went after the war-carriages and the army as far as Harosheth of the Gentiles; and all Sisera's army was put to the sword; not a man got away.

¹⁷But Sisera went in flight on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite; for there was peace between Jabin, king of Hazor, and the family of Heber the Kenite.

¹⁸And Jael went out to Sisera, and said to him, Come in, my lord, come in to me without fear. So he went into her tent, and she put a cover over him.

¹⁹Then he said to her, Give me now a little water, for I have need of a drink. And opening a skin of milk, she gave him drink, and put the cover over him again.

²⁰And he said to her, Take your place at the door of the tent, and if anyone comes and says to you, Is there any man here, say, No.

²¹Then Jael, Heber's wife, took a tent-pin and a hammer and went up to him quietly, driving the pin into his head, and it went through his head into the earth, for he was in a deep sleep from weariness; and so he came to his end.

²²Then Jael went out, and meeting Barak going after Sisera, said to him, Come, and I will let you see the man you are searching for. So he came into her tent and saw, and there was Sisera stretched out dead with the tent-pin in his head.

²³So that day God overcame Jabin, king of Canaan, before the children of Israel.

²⁴And the power of the children of Israel went on increasing against Jabin, king of Canaan, till he was cut off.