Hakim-hakim 3:15

3:15 When the Israelites cried out for help to the Lord, he ¹  raised up a deliverer for them. His name was Ehud son of Gera the Benjaminite, a left-handed man. ²  The Israelites sent him to King Eglon of Moab with their tribute payment. ³ 

Hakim-hakim 12:3

12:3 When I saw that you were not going to help, ⁴  I risked my life ⁵  and advanced against ⁶  the Ammonites, and the Lord handed them over to me. Why have you come up ⁷  to fight with me today?”

Hakim-hakim 16:3

16:3 Samson spent half the night with the prostitute; then he got up in the middle of the night and left. ⁸  He grabbed the doors of the city gate, as well as the two posts, and pulled them right off, bar and all. ⁹  He put them on his shoulders and carried them up to the top of a hill east of Hebron. ¹⁰ 

Hakim-hakim 18:28

18:28 No one came to the rescue because the city ¹¹  was far from Sidon ¹²  and they had no dealings with anyone. ¹³  The city ¹⁴  was in a valley near Beth Rehob. The Danites ¹⁵  rebuilt the city and occupied it.

[3:15]  ¹ tn Heb “the Lord.” This has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[3:15]  ² tn The phrase, which refers to Ehud, literally reads “bound/restricted in the right hand,” apparently a Hebrew idiom for a left-handed person. See Judg 20:16, where 700 Benjaminites are described in this way. Perhaps the Benjaminites purposely trained several of their young men to be left-handed warriors by restricting the use of the right hand from an early age so the left hand would become dominant. Left-handed men would have a distinct military advantage, especially when attacking city gates. See B. Halpern, “The Assassination of Eglon: The First Locked-Room Murder Mystery,” BRev 4 (1988): 35.

[3:15]  ³ tn Heb “The Israelites sent by his hand an offering to Eglon, king of Moab.”

[12:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “you were no deliverer.” Codex Alexandrinus (A) of the LXX has “no one was helping.”

[12:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “I put my life in my hand.”

[12:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “crossed over to.”

[12:3]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew adds “against me” here. This is redundant in English and has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[16:3]  ⁸ tn Heb “And Samson lay until the middle of the night and arose in the middle of the night.”

[16:3]  ⁹ tn Heb “with the bar.”

[16:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “which is upon the face of Hebron.”

[18:28]  ¹¹ tn Heb “it.” The Hebrew pronoun is feminine singular here, referring to the “city” (a grammatically feminine singular noun) mentioned in v. 27.

[18:28]  ¹² map For location see Map1 A1; JP3 F3; JP4 F3.

[18:28]  ¹³ tn Heb “and a thing there was not to them with men.”

[18:28]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “it.” The Hebrew pronoun is feminine singular here, referring to the “city” (a grammatically feminine singular noun) mentioned in v. 27.

[18:28]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “They”; the referent (the Danites) has been specified in the translation for clarity.