Chapters of the Bible

Israel is oppressed by the Midianites. God calls Gideon, a fearful man hiding in a winepress, to lead. Gideon asks for two signs using a fleece to confirm God's will.

God reduces Gideon’s army from 32,000 to just 300 men to ensure the victory belongs to God alone. Gideon’s small force defeats the vast Midianite army using just trumpets, jars, and torches.

Gideon pursues the remaining Midianite kings. He refuses the people's request to be king, but he later makes an ephod (a golden cult object) that leads Israel back into idolatry.

Abimelech, Gideon's ambitious son by a concubine, murders all 70 of his brothers to seize power. He reigns brutally for three years until a woman drops a millstone on his head.

The cycle continues. The people turn to idol worship, and the Ammonites oppress them. God raises the judges Tola and Jair, who serve to deliver Israel from its oppressors.

The Gileadites appoint Jephthah, the son of a prostitute, as their leader. Jephthah makes a rash vow to God: if victorious, he will sacrifice the first thing that comes from his house—which turns out to be his daughter.

Jephthah defeats the Ammonites. The Ephraimites challenge his authority, leading to a bloody civil war where the Gileadites use the password "Shibboleth" to identify and kill the Ephraimites.

Israel is oppressed by the Philistines. An angel of the Lord appears to the barren wife of Manoah, promising the birth of Samson, who will be consecrated as a Nazarite from birth.

Samson breaks his Nazarite vow by marrying a Philistine woman. He kills a lion and later eats honey from its carcass. At his wedding feast, he kills thirty Philistines over a riddle.

Samson enacts vengeance on the Philistines by tying 300 foxes to torches and setting them loose in their grain fields. He later kills 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey.

Samson falls for Delilah, a Philistine woman who constantly pressures him to reveal the secret of his strength (his uncut hair). She betrays him, he is blinded, but his strength returns for one final act of vengeance.

The second half of Judges shifts to moral anarchy. A man named Micah steals silver and builds a shrine and idols, then hires a Levite to serve as his personal priest.