King James Version · The judges
Judges 15
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
But it came to pass within a while after, in the time of wheat harvest, that visited his wife with a kid; and he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber. But her would not suffer him to go in. And her said, I verily thought that thou hadst utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to thy companion: is not her younger sister fairer than she? take her, I thee, instead of her. And said concerning them, Now shall I be more blameless than the , though I do them a displeasure. And went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails. And when he had set the brands on , he let them go into the standing corn of the , and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives. Then the said, Who hath done this? And they answered, , the son in law of the Timnite, because he had taken his wife, and given her to his companion. And the came up, and burnt her and her with . And said unto them, Though ye have done this, yet will I be of you, and after that I will cease. And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and dwelt in the top of Etam. Then the went up, and pitched in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. 10And the men of Judah said, Why are ye come up against us? And they answered, To bind are we come up, to do to him as he hath done to us. Then three thousand men of Judah went to the top of Etam, and said to , Knowest thou not that the are over us? what is this that thou hast done unto us? And he said unto them, As they did unto me, so have I done unto them. And they said unto him, We are come down to bind thee, that we may thee into the hand of the . And said unto them, unto me, that ye will not fall upon me yourselves. 13And they spake unto him, saying, No; but we will bind thee , and thee into their hand: but surely we will not kill thee. And they bound him with two new cords, and brought him up from . And when he came unto Lehi, the shouted against him: and of came mightily upon him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with , and his bands loosed from off his hands. And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. 16And said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men. 17And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramath–lehi. And he was sore athirst, and called on , and said, Thou hast given this great into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I for thirst, and fall into the hand of the ? But clave an hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water thereout; and when he had drunk, his came again, and he revived: wherefore he called the name thereof En–hakkore, which is in Lehi unto this day. And he judged Israel in the days of the twenty years.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
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.