Abimelech

¹Gideon's son Abimelech went to the town of Shechem, where all his mother's relatives lived, and told them

²to ask the men of Shechem, “Which would you prefer? To have all seventy of Gideon's sons govern you or to have just one man? Remember that Abimelech is your own flesh and blood.”

³His mother's relatives talked to the men of Shechem about this for him, and the men of Shechem decided to follow Abimelech because he was their relative.

⁴They gave him seventy pieces of silver from the temple of Baal-of-the-Covenant, and with this money he hired a bunch of worthless scoundrels to join him.

⁵He went to his father's house at Ophrah, and there on top of a single stone he killed his seventy brothers, Gideon's sons. But Jotham, Gideon's youngest son, hid and was not killed.

⁶Then all the men of Shechem and Bethmillo got together and went to the sacred oak tree at Shechem, where they made Abimelech king.

⁷When Jotham heard about this, he went and stood on top of Mount Gerizim and shouted out to them, “Listen to me, you men of Shechem, and God may listen to you!

⁸Once upon a time the trees went out to choose a king for themselves. They said to the olive tree, ‘Be our king.’

⁹The olive tree answered, ‘In order to govern you, I would have to stop producing my oil, which is used to honor gods and human beings.’

¹⁰Then the trees said to the fig tree, ‘You come and be our king.’

¹¹But the fig tree answered, ‘In order to govern you, I would have to stop producing my good sweet fruit.’

¹²So the trees then said to the grapevine, ‘You come and be our king.’

¹³But the vine answered, ‘In order to govern you, I would have to stop producing my wine, that makes gods and human beings happy.’

¹⁴So then all the trees said to the thorn bush, ‘You come and be our king.’

¹⁵The thorn bush answered, ‘If you really want to make me your king, then come and take shelter in my shade. If you don't, fire will blaze out of my thorny branches and burn up the cedars of Lebanon.’

¹⁶“Now then,” Jotham continued, “were you really honest and sincere when you made Abimelech king? Did you respect Gideon's memory and treat his family properly, as his actions deserved?

¹⁷Remember that my father fought for you. He risked his life to save you from the Midianites.

¹⁸But today you turned against my father's family. You killed his sons—seventy men on a single stone—and just because Abimelech, his son by his servant woman, is your relative, you have made him king of Shechem.

¹⁹Now then, if what you did today to Gideon and his family was sincere and honest, then be happy with Abimelech and let him be happy with you.

²⁰But if not, may fire blaze out from Abimelech and burn up the men of Shechem and Bethmillo. May fire blaze out from the men of Shechem and Bethmillo and burn Abimelech up.”

²¹Then because he was afraid of his brother Abimelech, Jotham ran away and went to live at Beer.

²²Abimelech ruled Israel for three years.

²³Then God made Abimelech and the men of Shechem hostile to each other, and they rebelled against Abimelech.

²⁴This happened so that Abimelech and the men of Shechem, who encouraged him to murder Gideon's seventy sons, would pay for their crime.

²⁵The men of Shechem put men in ambush against Abimelech on the mountaintops, and they robbed everyone who passed their way. Abimelech was told about this.

²⁶Then Gaal son of Ebed came to Shechem with his brothers, and the men of Shechem put their confidence in him.

²⁷They all went out into their vineyards and picked the grapes, made wine from them, and held a festival. They went into the temple of their god, where they ate and drank and made fun of Abimelech.

²⁸Gaal said, “What kind of men are we in Shechem? Why are we serving Abimelech? Who is he, anyway? The son of Gideon! And Zebul takes orders from him, but why should we serve him? Be loyal to your ancestor Hamor, who founded your clan!

²⁹I wish I were leading this people! I would get rid of Abimelech! I would tell him, ‘Reinforce your army, come on out and fight!’”

³⁰Zebul, the ruler of the city, became angry when he heard what Gaal had said.

³¹He sent messengers to Abimelech at Arumah to say, “Gaal son of Ebed and his brothers have come to Shechem, and they are not going to let you into the city.

³²Now then, you and your men should move by night and hide in the fields.

³³Get up tomorrow morning at sunrise and make a sudden attack on the city. Then when Gaal and his men come out against you, hit them with all you've got!”

³⁴So Abimelech and all his men made their move at night and hid outside Shechem in four groups.

³⁵When Abimelech and his men saw Gaal come out and stand at the city gate, they got up from their hiding places.

³⁶Gaal saw them and said to Zebul, “Look! There are men coming down from the mountaintops!” “Those are not men,” Zebul answered. “They are just shadows on the mountains.”

³⁷Gaal said again, “Look! There are men coming down the crest of the mountain and one group is coming along the road from the oak tree of the fortunetellers!”

³⁸Then Zebul said to him, “Where is all your big talk now? You were the one who asked why we should serve this man Abimelech. These are the men you were making fun of. Go on out now and fight them.”

³⁹Gaal led the men of Shechem out and fought Abimelech.

⁴⁰Abimelech started after Gaal, and Gaal ran. Many were wounded, even at the city gate.

⁴¹Abimelech lived in Arumah, and Zebul drove Gaal and his brothers out of Shechem, so that they could no longer live there.

⁴²The next day Abimelech found out that the people of Shechem were planning to go out into the fields,

⁴³so he took his men, divided them into three groups, and hid in the fields, waiting. When he saw the people coming out of the city, he came out of hiding to kill them.

⁴⁴While Abimelech and his group hurried forward to guard the city gate, the other two companies attacked the people in the fields and killed them all.

⁴⁵The fighting continued all day long. Abimelech captured the city, killed its people, tore it down, and covered the ground with salt.

⁴⁶When all the leading men in the fort at Shechem heard about this, they sought safety in the stronghold of the temple of Baal-of-the-Covenant.

⁴⁷Abimelech was told that they had gathered there,

⁴⁸so he went up to Mount Zalmon with his men. There he took an ax, cut a limb off a tree, and put it on his shoulder. He told his men to hurry and do the same thing.

⁴⁹So everyone cut off a tree limb; then they followed Abimelech and piled the wood up against the stronghold. They set it on fire, with the people inside, and all the people of the fort died—about a thousand men and women.

⁵⁰Then Abimelech went to Thebez, surrounded that city, and captured it.

⁵¹There was a strong tower there, and every man and woman in the city, including the leaders, ran to it. They locked themselves in and went up to the roof.

⁵²When Abimelech came to attack the tower, he went up to the door to set the tower on fire.

⁵³But a woman threw a millstone down on his head and fractured his skull.

⁵⁴Then he quickly called the young man who was carrying his weapons and told him, “Draw your sword and kill me. I don't want it said that a woman killed me.” So the young man ran him through, and he died.

⁵⁵When the Israelites saw that Abimelech was dead, they all went home.

⁵⁶And so it was that God paid Abimelech back for the crime that he committed against his father in killing his seventy brothers.

⁵⁷God also made the men of Shechem suffer for their wickedness, just as Jotham, Gideon's son, said they would when he cursed them.

Tola

¹After Abimelech's death Tola, the son of Puah and grandson of Dodo, came to free Israel. He was from the tribe of Issachar and lived at Shamir in the hill country of Ephraim.

²He was Israel's leader for twenty-three years. Then he died and was buried at Shamir.

Jair

³After Tola came Jair from Gilead. He led Israel for twenty-two years.

⁴He had thirty sons who rode thirty donkeys. They had thirty cities in the land of Gilead, which are still called the villages of Jair.

⁵Jair died and was buried at Kamon.

Jephthah

⁶Once again the Israelites sinned against the Lord by worshiping the Baals and the Astartes, as well as the gods of Syria, of Sidon, of Moab, of Ammon, and of Philistia. They abandoned the Lord and stopped worshiping him.

⁷So the Lord became angry with the Israelites, and let the Philistines and the Ammonites conquer them.

⁸For eighteen years they oppressed and persecuted all the Israelites who lived in Amorite country east of the Jordan River in Gilead.

⁹The Ammonites even crossed the Jordan to fight the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Ephraim. Israel was in great distress.

¹⁰Then the Israelites cried out to the Lord and said, “We have sinned against you, for we left you, our God, and worshiped the Baals.”

¹¹The Lord gave them this answer: “The Egyptians, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Philistines,

¹²the Sidonians, the Amalekites, and the Maonites oppressed you in the past, and you cried out to me. Did I not save you from them?

¹³But you still left me and worshiped other gods, so I am not going to rescue you again.

¹⁴Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them rescue you when you get in trouble.”

¹⁵But the people of Israel said to the Lord, “We have sinned. Do whatever you like, but please, save us today.”

¹⁶So they got rid of their foreign gods and worshiped the Lord; and he became troubled over Israel's distress.

¹⁷Then the Ammonite army prepared for battle and camped in Gilead. The people of Israel came together and camped at Mizpah in Gilead.

¹⁸There the people and the leaders of the Israelite tribes asked one another, “Who will lead the fight against the Ammonites? Whoever does will be the leader of everyone in Gilead.”

¹Jephthah, a brave soldier from Gilead, was the son of a prostitute. His father Gilead

²had other sons by his wife, and when they grew up, they forced Jephthah to leave home. They told him, “You will not inherit anything from our father; you are the son of another woman.”

³Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob. There he attracted a group of worthless men, and they went around with him.

⁴It was some time later that the Ammonites went to war against Israel.

⁵When this happened, the leaders of Gilead went to bring Jephthah back from the land of Tob.

⁶They told him, “Come and lead us, so that we can fight the Ammonites.”

⁷But Jephthah answered, “You hated me so much that you forced me to leave my father's house. Why come to me now that you're in trouble?”

⁸They said to Jephthah, “We are turning to you now because we want you to go with us and fight the Ammonites and lead all the people of Gilead.”

⁹Jephthah said to them, “If you take me back home to fight the Ammonites and the Lord gives me victory, I will be your ruler.”

¹⁰They replied, “We agree. The Lord is our witness.”

¹¹So Jephthah went with the leaders of Gilead, and the people made him their ruler and leader. Jephthah stated his terms at Mizpah in the presence of the Lord.

¹²Then Jephthah sent messengers to the king of Ammon to say, “What is your quarrel with us? Why have you invaded our country?”

¹³The king of Ammon answered Jephthah's messengers, “When the Israelites came out of Egypt, they took away my land from the Arnon River to the Jabbok River and the Jordan River. Now you must give it back peacefully.”

¹⁴Jephthah sent messengers back to the king of Ammon

¹⁵with this answer: “It is not true that Israel took away the land of Moab or the land of Ammon.

¹⁶This is what happened: when the Israelites left Egypt, they went through the desert to the Gulf of Aqaba and came to Kadesh.

¹⁷Then they sent messengers to the king of Edom to ask permission to go through his land. But the king of Edom would not let them. They also asked the king of Moab, but neither would he let them go through his land. So the Israelites stayed at Kadesh.

¹⁸Then they went on through the desert, going around the land of Edom and the land of Moab until they came to the east side of Moab, on the other side of the Arnon River. They camped there, but they did not cross the Arnon because it was the boundary of Moab.

¹⁹Then the Israelites sent messengers to Sihon, the Amorite king of Heshbon, and asked him for permission to go through his country to their own land.

²⁰But Sihon would not let Israel do it. He brought his whole army together, camped at Jahaz, and attacked Israel.

²¹But the Lord, the God of Israel, gave the Israelites victory over Sihon and his army. So the Israelites took possession of all the territory of the Amorites who lived in that country.

²²They occupied all the Amorite territory from the Arnon in the south to the Jabbok in the north and from the desert on the east to the Jordan on the west.

²³So it was the Lord, the God of Israel, who drove out the Amorites for his people, the Israelites.

²⁴Are you going to try to take it back? You can keep whatever your god Chemosh has given you. But we are going to keep everything that the Lord, our God, has taken for us.

²⁵Do you think you are any better than Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab? He never challenged Israel, did he? Did he ever go to war against us?

²⁶For three hundred years Israel has occupied Heshbon and Aroer, and the towns around them, and all the cities on the banks of the Arnon River. Why haven't you taken them back in all this time?

²⁷No, I have not done you any wrong. You are doing wrong by making war on me. The Lord is the judge. He will decide today between the Israelites and the Ammonites.”

²⁸But the king of Ammon paid no attention to this message from Jephthah.

²⁹Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah. He went through Gilead and Manasseh and returned to Mizpah in Gilead and went on to Ammon.

³⁰Jephthah promised the Lord: “If you will give me victory over the Ammonites,

³¹I will burn as an offering the first person that comes out of my house to meet me, when I come back from the victory. I will offer that person to you as a sacrifice.”

³²So Jephthah crossed the river to fight the Ammonites, and the Lord gave him victory.

³³He struck at them from Aroer to the area around Minnith, twenty cities in all, and as far as Abel Keramim. There was a great slaughter, and the Ammonites were defeated by Israel.

Jephthah's Daughter

³⁴When Jephthah went back home to Mizpah, there was his daughter coming out to meet him, dancing and playing the tambourine. She was his only child.

³⁵When he saw her, he tore his clothes in sorrow and said, “Oh, my daughter! You are breaking my heart! Why must it be you that causes me pain? I have made a solemn promise to the Lord, and I cannot take it back!”

³⁶She told him, “If you have made a promise to the Lord, do what you said you would do to me, since the Lord has given you revenge on your enemies, the Ammonites.”

³⁷But she asked her father, “Do this one thing for me. Leave me alone for two months, so that I can go with my friends to wander in the mountains and grieve that I must die a virgin.”

³⁸He told her to go and sent her away for two months. She and her friends went up into the mountains and grieved because she was going to die unmarried and childless.

³⁹After two months she came back to her father. He did what he had promised the Lord, and she died still a virgin. This was the origin of the custom in Israel

⁴⁰that the Israelite women would go out for four days every year to grieve for the daughter of Jephthah of Gilead.

Boaz Marries Ruth

¹Boaz went to the meeting place at the town gate and sat down there. Then Elimelech's nearest relative, the man whom Boaz had mentioned, came by, and Boaz called to him, “Come over here, my friend, and sit down.” So he went over and sat down.

²Then Boaz got ten of the leaders of the town and asked them to sit down there too. When they were seated,

³he said to his relative, “Now that Naomi has come back from Moab, she wants to sell the field that belonged to our relative Elimelech,

⁴and I think you ought to know about it. Now then, if you want it, buy it in the presence of these men sitting here. But if you don't want it, say so, because the right to buy it belongs first to you and then to me.” The man said, “I will buy it.”

⁵Boaz said, “Very well, if you buy the field from Naomi, then you are also buying Ruth, the Moabite widow, so that the field will stay in the dead man's family.”

⁶The man answered, “In that case I will give up my right to buy the field, because it would mean that my own children would not inherit it. You buy it; I would rather not.”

⁷Now in those days, to settle a sale or an exchange of property, it was the custom for the seller to take off his sandal and give it to the buyer. In this way the Israelites showed that the matter was settled.

⁸So when the man said to Boaz, “You buy it,” he took off his sandal and gave it to Boaz.

⁹Then Boaz said to the leaders and all the others there, “You are all witnesses today that I have bought from Naomi everything that belonged to Elimelech and to his sons Chilion and Mahlon.

¹⁰In addition, Ruth the Moabite, Mahlon's widow, becomes my wife. This will keep the property in the dead man's family, and his family line will continue among his people and in his hometown. You are witnesses to this today.”

¹¹The leaders and the others said, “Yes, we are witnesses. May the Lord make your wife become like Rachel and Leah, who bore many children to Jacob. May you become rich in the clan of Ephrath and famous in Bethlehem.

¹²May the children that the Lord will give you by this young woman make your family like the family of Perez, the son of Judah and Tamar.”

Boaz and His Descendants

¹³So Boaz took Ruth home as his wife. The Lord blessed her, and she became pregnant and had a son.

¹⁴The women said to Naomi, “Praise the Lord! He has given you a grandson today to take care of you. May the boy become famous in Israel!

¹⁵Your daughter-in-law loves you, and has done more for you than seven sons. And now she has given you a grandson, who will bring new life to you and give you security in your old age.”

¹⁶Naomi took the child, held him close, and took care of him.

¹⁷The women of the neighborhood named the boy Obed. They told everyone, “A son has been born to Naomi!” Obed became the father of Jesse, who was the father of David.

^18-22This is the family line from Perez to David: Perez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David.

A Lament of Israelites in Exile

¹By the rivers of Babylon we sat down; there we wept when we remembered Zion.

²On the willows near by we hung up our harps.

³Those who captured us told us to sing; they told us to entertain them: “Sing us a song about Zion.”

⁴How can we sing a song to the Lord in a foreign land?

⁵May I never be able to play the harp again if I forget you, Jerusalem!

⁶May I never be able to sing again if I do not remember you, if I do not think of you as my greatest joy!

⁷Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did the day Jerusalem was captured. Remember how they kept saying, “Tear it down to the ground!”

⁸Babylon, you will be destroyed. Happy are those who pay you back for what you have done to us—

⁹who take your babies and smash them against a rock.