translation_id: net-engnet

book_id: JDG

label: NET translator note

text: Heb “Samson visited his wife with a young goat.”


text: The words “to her father” are supplied in the translation (see the end of the verse).


text: Heb “I will go to my wife in the bedroom.” The Hebrew idiom בּוֹא אֶל ( bo ’ ’ el , “to go to”) often has sexual connotations. The cohortative form used by Samson can be translated as indicating resolve (“I want to go”) or request (“let me go”).


text: Heb “saying, I said.” The first person form of אָמַר (’ amar , “to say”) sometimes indicates self-reflection. The girl’s father uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis.


text: Heb “hating, you hated.” Once again the girl’s father uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis.


text: Heb “Is her younger sister not better than her? Let her [i.e., the younger sister] be yours instead of her [i.e., Samson’s ‘bride’]).”


label: NET textual note

text: Codex Alexandrinus (A) of the (original) LXX has the singular “to him.”


text: Heb “I am innocent this time from the Philistines when I do with them harm.”


text: Traditionally, “foxes.”


text: Heb “He turned tail to tail and placed one torch between the two tails in the middle.”


text: Heb “He set fire to the torches.”


text: Or “said.”


text: Heb “and they said.” The subject of the plural verb is indefinite.


text: Heb “he”; the referent (the Timnite) has been specified in the translation for clarity.


text: Heb “his”; the referent (Samson) has been specified in the translation for clarity.


text: The Hebrew text expands the statement with the additional phrase “burned with fire.” The words “with fire” are redundant in English and have been omitted from the translation for stylistic reasons. Some textual witnesses read “burned…her father’s house,” perhaps under the influence of 14:15 . On the other hand, the shorter text may have lost this phrase due to haplography.


text: The Niphal of נָקָם ( naqam , “to avenge, to take vengeance”) followed by the preposition ב ( bet ) has the force “to get revenge against.” See 1 Sam 18:25 ; Jer 50:15 ; Ezek 25:12 .


text: Heb “and afterward I will stop.”


text: Heb “He struck them, calf on thigh, [with] a great slaughter.” The precise meaning of the phrase “calf on thigh” is uncertain.


text: Or “camped in.”


text: Or “spread out.” The Niphal of נָטָשׁ ( natash ) has this same sense in 2 Sam 5:18, 22 .


text: Or “come up against.”


text: Heb “they”; the referent (the Philistines) has been specified in the translation for clarity.


text: Or “swear to me.”


text: Heb “meet [with hostility]”; “harm.” In light of v. 13 , “kill” is an appropriate translation.


text: Heb “No,” meaning that they will not harm him.


text: Heb “rushed on.”


text: Heb “burned with.”


text: Heb “his bonds.”


text: Heb “he found.”


text: Heb “fresh,” i.e., not decayed and brittle.


text: Heb “he reached out his hand and took it.”


text: The Hebrew text adds “with it.” This has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.


text: The precise meaning of the second half of the line ( חֲמוֹר חֲמֹרָתָיִם , khamor khamoratayim ) is uncertain. The present translation assumes that the phrase means, “a heap, two heaps” and refers to the heaps of corpses littering the battlefield. Other options include: (a) “I have made donkeys of them” (cf. NIV; see C. F. Burney, Judges , 373, for a discussion of this view, which understands a denominative verb from the noun “donkey”); (b) “I have thoroughly skinned them” (see HALOT 330 s.v. IV cj. חמר , which appeals to an Arabic cognate for support); (c) “I have stormed mightily against them,” which assumes the verb חָמַר ( khamar , “to ferment; to foam; to boil up”).


text: Heb “from his hand.”


text: Heb “you have placed into the hand of your servant.”


text: Heb “the uncircumcised,” which in context refers to the Philistines.


text: The word translated “basin” refers to a circular-shaped depression in the land’s surface.


text: Heb “spirit.”


text: Heb “named it”; the referent (the spring) has been specified in the translation for clarity.


text: Traditionally, “judged.”


text: Heb “in the days of the Philistines.”