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tants fled, and they shut themselves in and went up on the roof of the tower. When Abimelech came to the tower, he fought against it and was on the point of setting fire to its door, when a certain woman threw an upper millstone on his head and crushed his skull.

Then he called quickly to the young man who was his armor-bearer and said, 'Draw your sword and kill me, that men may not say of me, "A woman killed him!" So his attendant ran him through, and he died. When the men of Israel saw that Abimelech was dead, they all went home. In this In this way God punished the crime which Abimelech committed against his father in killing his seventy brothers.

63. JEPHTHAH'S FATAL VOW

Jephthah the Gileadite was a stalwart warrior, but he was the son of a harlot, and had fled from his relatives and lived in the district of Tob. There certain rascals gathered about him, and they used to go out on raids with him.

After a time the Ammonites made war against the Israelites. Then the elders of Gilead went to bring Jephthah from the land of Tob, and they said to him, 'Come and be our commander, that we may fight against the Ammonites.' But Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, 'Are you not the men who hated me and drove me out of my father's house? Why then do you come to me now when you are in distress?' But the elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, "This is why we have now turned to you, that you may go with us and fight against the Ammonites, and you shall be our chief, even over all the inhabitants of Gilead.' Then Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, ‘If you take me back to fight against the Ammonites and

Jehovah gives me the victory over them, I shall be your chief.' The elders of Gilead replied, 'Jehovah shall be a witness between us; we swear to do as you say.'

Then Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him chief and commander over them. Jephthah also made this vow to Jehovah: 'If thou wilt deliver the Ammonites completely into my power, then whoever comes out of the door of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be Jehovah's, and I will offer that one as an offering to be consumed with fire.'

So Jephthah went out to fight against the Ammonites; and Jehovah gave him the victory over them, and delivered them into his hands. But when he came home to Mizpah, his daughter was just coming out to meet him with tambourines and choral dances; and she was his only child; beside this one he had neither son nor daughter. So when he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, 'Oh, my daughter, you have stricken me! It is you who are the cause of my woe! for I have made a solemn vow to Jehovah and cannot break it.' She said to him, 'My father, you have made a solemn vow to Jehovah; do to me what you had promised, since Jehovah has taken vengeance for you upon your enemies the Ammonites. But let this

may

favor be granted me: spare me two months that I go out upon the mountains with those who would have been my bridesmaids and lament because I will never become a wife and mother.' He said, 'Go.'

So he sent her away for two months with her friends, and she lamented on the mountains because she would never become a wife and mother. At the end of two months she returned to her father, who did what he had vowed to do, even though she had never been

married.

So it became a custom in Israel: each year the women of Israel go out for four days to bewail the death of the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

64. SAMSON'S MARRIAGE FEAST

There was a certain man of Zorah of the clan of the Danites named Manoah; and he and his wife had no children. But the angel of Jehovah appeared to the woman and said to her, 'See, you have no children; but now be careful not to drink any wine or intoxicating drink, and do not eat anything ceremonially unclean; for you are about to become a mother. No razor shall be used upon your son's head, for from birth the boy shall be consecrated to God.' So the woman gave birth to a son and named him Samson.

Once Samson went down to Timnah and saw there a Philistine woman. When he came back he said to his father and mother, 'I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah. Get her as a wife for me.' But his father and mother said to him, 'Is there no woman in your own tribe or among all our people, that you must marry a wife from among the heathen Philistines?? But Samson said to his father, ‘Get her for me, for she suits me.'

So Samson went with his father and mother to Timnah; and just as they came to the vineyards of Timnah, a full-grown young lion came roaring toward him. The spirit of Jehovah came upon Samson and, although he had nothing in his hand, he tore the beast in two as one tears a kid. But he did not tell his father and mother what he had done.

Then he went down and talked with the woman, and she suited him. When he returned after a while to marry her, he turned aside to see the remains of

the lion, and there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass. He scraped the honey out into his hands and went on, eating it as he went. When he came to his father and mother, he gave some to them, and they ate; but he did not tell them that he had taken the honey out of the carcass of the lion.

Then Samson went down to the woman; and he gave a feast there (for so bridegrooms used to do). When the Philistines saw him, they provided thirty comrades to be with him. And Samson said to them, 'Let me now propound to you a riddle. If you can tell me what it is within the seven days of the feast, then I will give you thirty fine linen robes and thirty suits of clothes; but if you cannot tell me, then you shall give me thirty fine linen robes and thirty suits of clothes.' They said to him, 'Propound your riddle, that we may hear it.' And he said to them:

Out of the eater came something to eat,
And out of the strong came something sweet.

But for six days they could not solve the riddle.

On the seventh day they said to Samson's wife, 'Wheedle your husband into telling us the riddle, or else we will burn up you and your father's house. Did you invite us here to impoverish us?' So Samson's wife wept before him and said, 'You only hate me and do not love me at all! You have propounded a riddle to my fellow-countrymen and not told me what it is.' He said to her, ‘See, I have not told it to my father or my mother, and shall I tell you?' So she wept before him as long as their feast lasted, but on the seventh day he told her, because she pressed him harder and harder; and she told the riddle to her fellow country

men.

So the men of the city said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down, 'What is sweeter than honey? And what is stronger than a lion?' And he said to them:

If with my heifer you did not plow,
You had not solved my riddle now.

Then he was suddenly endowed with divine strength, and he went down to Ashkelon and killed thirty of their men and took the spoil from them and gave the suits of clothes to those who had guessed the riddle. But he was very angry and returned to his father's house; and his bride was given to his comrade who had been his best man.

65. DOING TO OTHERS AS THEY DO TO YOU

After a while, at the time of wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife with a kid as a present; but when he said, 'Let me go into the inner apartment to my wife,' her father would not let him go in, but said, ‘I thought that you must surely hate her, so I gave her to your best man. Is not her younger sister fairer than she? Take her then, instead.' But Samson said to him, "This time I shall be justified if I do the Philistines an injury?" So he went and caught three hundred foxes, turned them tail to tail, and put a torch between every pair of tails. When he had set the torches on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines and burned up not only the shocks and the standing grain, but the olive orchards as well.

Then the Philistines said, 'Who has done this?' The reply was, 'Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because that man took Samson's wife and gave her to

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