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¹Jephthah the Gileadite was a valiant warrior, but he was the son of a prostitute, and Gilead was his father.

²Gilead’s wife bore him sons, and when they grew up, they drove Jephthah out and said to him, “You will have no inheritance in our father’s family, because you are the son of another woman.”

³So Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob. Then some worthless men joined Jephthah and went on raids with him.

⁴Some time later, the Ammonites fought against Israel.

⁵When the Ammonites made war with Israel, the elders of Gilead went to get Jephthah from the land of Tob.

⁶They said to him, “Come, be our commander, and let’s fight the Ammonites.”

⁷Jephthah replied to the elders of Gilead, “Didn’t you hate me and drive me out of my father’s family? Why then have you come to me now when you’re in trouble?”

⁸They answered Jephthah, “That’s true. But now we turn to you. Come with us, fight the Ammonites, and you will become leader of all the inhabitants of Gilead.”

⁹So 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.”

¹⁰The elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, “The LORD is our witness if we don’t do as you say.”

¹¹So 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.

¹²Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites, asking, “What do you have against me that you have come to fight me in my land?”

¹³The king of the Ammonites said to Jephthah’s messengers, “When Israel came from Egypt, they seized my land from the Arnon to the Jabbok and the Jordan. Now restore it peaceably.”

¹⁴Jephthah again sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites

¹⁵to tell him, “This is what Jephthah says: Israel did not take away the land of Moab or the land of the Ammonites.

¹⁶But when they came from Egypt, Israel traveled through the wilderness to the Red Sea and came to Kadesh.

¹⁷Israel 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.

¹⁸“Then they traveled through the wilderness and around the lands of Edom and Moab. They came to the east side of the land of Moab and camped on the other side of the Arnon but did not enter into the territory of Moab, for the Arnon was the boundary of Moab.

¹⁹“Then Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, king of Heshbon. Israel said to him, ‘Please let us travel through your land to our country,’

²⁰but Sihon would not trust Israel to pass through his territory. Instead, Sihon gathered all his troops, camped at Jahaz, and fought with Israel.

²¹Then 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.

²²They took possession of all the territory of the Amorites from the Arnon to the Jabbok and from the wilderness to the Jordan.

²³“The LORD God of Israel has now driven out the Amorites before his people Israel, and will you now force us out?

²⁴Isn’t it true that you can have whatever your god Chemosh conquers for you, and we can have whatever the LORD our God conquers for us?

²⁵Now are you any better than Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab? Did he ever contend with Israel or fight against them?

²⁶While Israel lived three hundred years in Heshbon and Aroer and their surrounding villages, and in all the cities that are on the banks of the Arnon, why didn’t you take them back at that time?

²⁷I have not sinned against you, but you are doing me wrong by fighting against me. Let the LORD who is the judge decide today between the Israelites and the Ammonites.”

²⁸But the king of the Ammonites would not listen to Jephthah’s message that he sent him.

²⁹The Spirit of the LORD came on Jephthah, who traveled through Gilead and Manasseh, and then through Mizpah of Gilead. He crossed over to the Ammonites from Mizpah of Gilead.

³⁰Jephthah made this vow to the LORD: “If you in fact hand over the Ammonites to me,

³¹whoever comes out the doors of my house to greet me when I return safely from the Ammonites will belong to the LORD, and I will offer that person as a burnt offering.”

³²Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the LORD handed them over to him.

³³He 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.

³⁴When Jephthah went to his home in Mizpah, there was his daughter, coming out to meet him with tambourines and dancing! She was his only child; he had no other son or daughter besides her.

³⁵When he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, “No! Not my daughter! You have devastated me! You have brought great misery on me. I have given my word to the LORD and cannot take it back.”

³⁶Then she said to him, “My father, you have given your word to the LORD. Do to me as you have said, for the LORD brought vengeance on your enemies, the Ammonites.”

³⁷She also said to her father, “Let me do this one thing: Let me wander two months through the mountains with my friends and mourn my virginity.”

³⁸“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.

³⁹At the end of two months, she returned to her father, and he kept the vow he had made about her. And she had never been intimate with a man. Now it became a custom in Israel

⁴⁰that four days each year the young women of Israel would commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

¹The men of Ephraim were called together and crossed the Jordan to Zaphon. They said to Jephthah, “Why have you crossed over to fight against the Ammonites but didn’t call us to go with you? We will burn your house with you in it!”

²Then 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.

³When I saw that you weren’t going to deliver me, I took my life in my own hands and crossed over to the Ammonites, and the LORD handed them over to me. Why then have you come today to fight against me?”

⁴Then Jephthah gathered all of the men of Gilead. They fought and defeated Ephraim, because Ephraim had said, “You Gileadites are Ephraimite fugitives in the territories of Ephraim and Manasseh.”

⁵The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim. Whenever a fugitive from Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the Gileadites asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he answered, “No,”

⁶they told him, “Please say Shibboleth.” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce it correctly, they seized him and executed him at the fords of the Jordan. At that time forty-two thousand from Ephraim died.

⁷Jephthah judged Israel six years, and when he died, he was buried in one of the cities of Gilead.

⁸Ibzan, who was from Bethlehem, judged Israel after Jephthah

⁹and had thirty sons. He gave his thirty daughters in marriage to men outside the tribe and brought back thirty wives for his sons from outside the tribe. Ibzan judged Israel seven years,

¹⁰and when he died, he was buried in Bethlehem.

¹¹Elon, who was from Zebulun, judged Israel after Ibzan. He judged Israel ten years,

¹²and when he died, he was buried in Aijalon in the land of Zebulun.

¹³After Elon, Abdon son of Hillel, who was from Pirathon, judged Israel.

¹⁴He had forty sons and thirty grandsons, who rode on seventy donkeys. Abdon judged Israel eight years,

¹⁵and when he died, he was buried in Pirathon in the land of Ephraim, in the hill country of the Amalekites.

¹The Israelites again did what was evil in the LORD’s sight, so the LORD handed them over to the Philistines forty years.

²There was a certain man from Zorah, from the family of Dan, whose name was Manoah; his wife was unable to conceive and had no children.

³The angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her, “It is true that you are unable to conceive and have no children, but you will conceive and give birth to a son.

⁴Now please be careful not to drink wine or beer, or to eat anything unclean;

⁵for indeed, you will conceive and give birth to a son. You must never cut his hair, because the boy will be a Nazirite to God from birth, and he will begin to save Israel from the power of the Philistines.”

⁶Then the woman went and told her husband, “A man of God came to me. He looked like the awe-inspiring angel of God. I didn’t ask him where he came from, and he didn’t tell me his name.

⁷He said to me, ‘You will conceive and give birth to a son. Therefore, do not drink wine or beer, and do not eat anything unclean, because the boy will be a Nazirite to God from birth until the day of his death.’”

⁸Manoah prayed to the LORD and said, “Please, Lord, let the man of God you sent come again to us and teach us what we should do for the boy who will be born.”

⁹God listened to Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman. She was sitting in the field, and her husband Manoah was not with her.

¹⁰The woman ran quickly to her husband and told him, “The man who came to me the other day has just come back!”

¹¹So Manoah got up and followed his wife. When he came to the man, he asked, “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?” “I am,” he said.

¹²Then Manoah asked, “When your words come true, what will be the boy’s responsibilities and work?”

¹³The angel of the LORD answered Manoah, “Your wife needs to do everything I told her.

¹⁴She must not eat anything that comes from the grapevine or drink wine or beer. And she must not eat anything unclean. Your wife must do everything I have commanded her.”

¹⁵“Please stay here,” Manoah told him, “and we will prepare a young goat for you.”

¹⁶The angel of the LORD said to him, “If I stay, I won’t eat your food. But if you want to prepare a burnt offering, offer it to the LORD.” (Manoah did not know he was the angel of the LORD.)

¹⁷Then Manoah said to him, “What is your name, so that we may honor you when your words come true?”

¹⁸“Why do you ask my name,” the angel of the LORD asked him, “since it is beyond understanding.”

¹⁹Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered them on a rock to the LORD, who did something miraculous while Manoah and his wife were watching.

²⁰When the flame went up from the altar to the sky, the angel of the LORD went up in its flame. When Manoah and his wife saw this, they fell facedown on the ground.

²¹The angel of the LORD did not appear again to Manoah and his wife. Then Manoah realized that it was the angel of the LORD.

²²“We’re certainly going to die,” he said to his wife, “because we have seen God!”

²³But his wife said to him, “If the LORD had intended to kill us, he wouldn’t have accepted the burnt offering and the grain offering from us, and he would not have shown us all these things or spoken to us like this.”

²⁴So the woman gave birth to a son and named him Samson. The boy grew, and the LORD blessed him.

²⁵Then the Spirit of the LORD began to stir him in the Camp of Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.