World English Bible · The judges
Judges 15
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But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, visited his wife with a young goat. He said, "I will go in to my wife's room." But her wouldn't allow him to go in. Her said, "I most certainly thought that you utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Isn't her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please, take her instead." said to them, "This time I will be blameless in the case of the when I harm them." went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the middle between every two tails. When he had set the torches on , he let them go into the standing grain of the , and burned up both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the olive groves. Then the said, "Who has done this?" They said, ", the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion." The came up, and burned her and her with . said to them, "If you behave like this, surely I will take on you, and after that I will cease." He struck them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; and he went down and lived in the cave in Etam's . Then the went up, encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. 10The men of Judah said, "Why have you come up against us?" They said, "We have come up to bind , to do to him as he has done to us." Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave in Etam's , and said to , "Don't you know that the are over us? What then is this that you have done to us?" He said to them, "As they did to me, so I have done to them." They said to him, "We have come down to bind you, that we may you into the hand of the ." said to them, " to me that you will not attack me yourselves." 13They spoke to him, saying, "No, but we will bind you securely and you into their hands; but surely we will not kill you." They bound him with two new ropes, and brought him up from . When he came to Lehi, the shouted as they met him. Then came mightily on him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that was burned with ; and his bands dropped from off his hands. He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, put out his hand, took it, and struck a thousand men with it. 16 said, "With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps on heaps; with the jawbone of a donkey I have struck a thousand men." 17When he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone out of his hand; and that place was called Ramath Lehi. He was very thirsty, and called on and said, "You have given this great by the hand of ; and now shall I of thirst, and fall into the hands of the ?" But split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out of it. When he had drunk, his came again, and he revived. Therefore its name was called En Hakkore, which is in Lehi, to this day. He judged Israel twenty years in the days of the .
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The world at this moment · The judges, 1200 BC to 1050 BC ›
No central government and no standing army. The great empires are weak, which is precisely why Israel's troubles come from close neighbors: Moab, Ammon, Midian, and the newly arrived Philistines on the coast.
- Egypt
- Broken into competing power centres and no longer able to project force into Canaan. Its withdrawal is the single biggest reason this period has no imperial overlord.
- Mesopotamia
- Assyria exists but is dormant, hemmed in and looking east. The century that would have crushed a stateless Israel simply has not arrived yet.
- The coast
- The Philistines settle their five cities after arriving from the Aegean world, bringing Mycenaean-style pottery, a taste for pork, and an early advantage in ironworking. Further north the Phoenician ports of Tyre and Sidon start the trading expansion that will eventually give the alphabet to Greece.
- Further afield
- Greece has entered its dark age: the palaces are gone, Linear B is forgotten, and writing disappears from the Aegean for three centuries. In China the Zhou dynasty replaces the Shang in 1046 BC and issues the doctrine that heaven withdraws its mandate from unjust kings, an idea with an interesting resemblance to the book of Judges.