Old/New Testament
16 One day Samson went to the Philistine city of Gaza and spent the night with a prostitute. 2 Word soon spread that he had been seen in the city, so the police were alerted and many men of the city lay in wait all night at the city gate to capture him if he tried to leave.
“In the morning,” they thought, “when there is enough light, we’ll find him and kill him.”
3 Samson stayed in bed with the girl until midnight, then went out to the city gates and lifted them, with the two gateposts, right out of the ground. He put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the mountain across from Hebron!
4 Later on he fell in love with a girl named Delilah over in the valley of Sorek. 5 The five heads of the Philistine nation went personally to her and demanded that she find out from Samson what made him so strong, so that they would know how to overpower and subdue him and put him in chains.
“Each of us will give you a thousand dollars for this job,” they promised.
6 So Delilah begged Samson to tell her his secret. “Please tell me, Samson, why you are so strong,” she pleaded. “I don’t think anyone could ever capture you!”
7 “Well,” Samson replied, “if I were tied with seven raw-leather bowstrings, I would become as weak as anyone else.”
8 So they brought her the seven bowstrings, and while he slept[a] she tied him with them. 9 Some men were hiding in the next room, so as soon as she had tied him up she exclaimed, “Samson! The Philistines are here!”
Then he snapped the bowstrings like cotton thread,[b] and so his secret was not discovered.
10 Afterward Delilah said to him, “You are making fun of me! You told me a lie! Please tell me how you can be captured!”
11 “Well,” he said, “if I am tied with brand new ropes which have never been used, I will be as weak as other men.”
12 So that time, as he slept,[c] Delilah took new ropes and tied him with them. The men were hiding in the next room, as before. Again Delilah exclaimed, “Samson! The Philistines have come to capture you!”
But he broke the ropes from his arms like spiderwebs!
13 “You have mocked me again and told me more lies!” Delilah complained. “Now tell me how you can really be captured.”
“Well,” he said, “if you weave my hair into your loom . . . !”
14 So while he slept, she did just that and then screamed, “The Philistines have come, Samson!” And he woke up and yanked his hair away, breaking the loom.
15 “How can you say you love me when you don’t confide in me?” she whined. “You’ve made fun of me three times now, and you still haven’t told me what makes you so strong!”
16-17 She nagged at him every day until he couldn’t stand it any longer and finally told her his secret.
“My hair has never been cut,” he confessed, “for I’ve been a Nazirite to God since before my birth. If my hair were cut, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as anyone else.”
18 Delilah realized that he had finally told her the truth, so she sent for the five Philistine leaders.
“Come just this once more,” she said, “for this time he has told me everything.”
So they brought the money with them. 19 She lulled him to sleep with his head in her lap, and they brought in a barber and cut off his hair. Delilah began to hit him, but she could see that his strength was leaving him.
20 Then she screamed, “The Philistines are here to capture you, Samson!” And he woke up and thought, “I will do as before; I’ll just shake myself free.” But he didn’t realize that the Lord had left him. 21 So the Philistines captured him and gouged out his eyes and took him to Gaza, where he was bound with bronze chains and made to grind grain in the prison. 22 But before long his hair began to grow again.
23-24 The Philistine leaders declared a great festival to celebrate the capture of Samson. The people made sacrifices to their god Dagon and excitedly praised him.
“Our god has delivered our enemy Samson to us!” they gloated as they saw him there in chains. “The scourge of our nation who killed so many of us is now in our power!” 25-26 Half drunk by now, the people demanded, “Bring out Samson so we can have some fun with him!”
So he was brought from the prison and made to stand at the center of the temple, between the two pillars supporting the roof. Samson said to the boy who was leading him by the hand, “Place my hands against the two pillars. I want to rest against them.”
27 By then the temple was completely filled with people. The five Philistine leaders were there as well as three thousand people in the balconies[d] who were watching Samson and making fun of him.
28 Then Samson prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord Jehovah, remember me again—please strengthen me one more time, so that I may pay back the Philistines for the loss of at least one of my eyes.”
29 Then Samson pushed against the pillars with all his might.
30 “Let me die with the Philistines,” he prayed.
And the temple crashed down upon the Philistine leaders and all the people. So those he killed at the moment of his death were more than those he had killed during his entire lifetime. 31 Later, his brothers and other relatives came down to get his body, and they brought him back home and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol, where his father, Manoah, was buried. He had led Israel for twenty years.
17 In the hill country of Ephraim lived a man named Micah.
2 One day he said to his mother, “That thousand dollars you thought was stolen from you, and you were cursing about—well, I stole it!”
“God bless you for confessing it,” his mother replied. 3 So he returned the money to her.
“I am going to give it to the Lord as a credit for your account,” she declared. “I’ll have an idol carved for you and plate it with the silver.”
4-5 So his mother took a fifth of it to a silversmith, and the idol he made from it was placed in Micah’s shrine. Micah had many idols in his collection, also an ephod and some teraphim, and he installed one of his sons as the priest. 6 (For in those days Israel had no king, so everyone did whatever he wanted to—whatever seemed right in his own eyes.)
7-8 One day a young priest[e] from the town of Bethlehem, in Judah, arrived in that area of Ephraim, looking for a good place to live. He happened to stop at Micah’s house as he was traveling through.
9 “Where are you from?” Micah asked him.
And he replied, “I am a priest from Bethlehem, in Judah, and I am looking for a place to live.”
10-11 “Well, stay here with me,” Micah said, “and you can be my priest. I will give you one hundred dollars a year plus a new suit and your board and room.” The young man agreed to this and became as one of Micah’s sons. 12 So Micah consecrated him as his personal priest.
13 “I know the Lord will really bless me now,” Micah exclaimed, “because now I have a genuine priest working for me!”[f]
18 As has already been stated, there was no king in Israel at that time. The tribe of Dan was trying to find a place to settle, for they had not yet driven out the people living in the land assigned to them. 2 So the men of Dan chose five army heroes from the cities of Zorah and Eshtaol as scouts to go and spy out the land they were supposed to settle in. Arriving in the hill country of Ephraim, they stayed at Micah’s home. 3 Noticing the young Levite’s accent, they took him aside and asked him, “What are you doing here? Why did you come?” 4 He told them about his contract with Micah, and that he was his personal priest.
5 “Well, then,” they said, “ask God whether or not our trip will be successful.”
6 “Yes,” the priest replied, “all is well. The Lord is taking care of you.”
7 So the five men went on to the town of Laish and noticed how secure everyone felt. Their manner of life was Phoenician, and they were wealthy. They lived quietly and were unprepared for an attack, for there were no tribes in the area strong enough to try it. They lived a great distance from their relatives in Sidon, and had little or no contact with the nearby villages. 8 So the spies returned to their people in Zorah and Eshtaol.
“What about it?” they were asked. “What did you find?”
9-10 And the men replied, “Let’s attack! We have seen the land and it is ours for the taking—a broad, fertile, wonderful place—a real paradise. The people aren’t even prepared to defend themselves! Come on, let’s go! For God has given it to us!”
11 So six hundred armed troops of the tribe of Dan set out from Zorah and Eshtaol. 12 They camped first at a place west of Kiriath-jearim in Judah (which is still called “The Camp of Dan”), 13 then they went on up into the hill country of Ephraim.
As they passed the home of Micah, 14 the five spies told the others. “There is a shrine in there with an ephod, some teraphim, and many plated idols. It’s obvious what we ought to do!”
15-16 So the five men went over to the house and with all of the armed men standing just outside the gate, they talked to the young priest and asked him how he was getting along. 17 Then the five spies entered the shrine and took the idols, the ephod, and the teraphim.
18 “What are you doing?” the young priest demanded when he saw them carrying them out.
19 “Be quiet and come with us,” they said. “Be a priest to all of us. Isn’t it better for you to be a priest to a whole tribe in Israel instead of just to one man in his private home?”
20 The young priest was then quite happy to go with them, and he took along the ephod, the teraphim, and the idols. 21 They started on their way again, placing their children, cattle, and household goods at the front of the column. 22 When they were quite a distance from Micah’s home, Micah and some of his neighbors came chasing after them, 23 yelling at them to stop.
“What do you want, chasing after us like this?” the men of Dan demanded.
24 “What do you mean, ‘What do I want’!” Micah retorted. “You’ve taken away all my gods and my priest, and I have nothing left!”
25 “Be careful how you talk, mister,” the men of Dan replied. “Somebody’s apt to get angry and kill every one of you.”
26 So the men of Dan kept going. When Micah saw that there were too many of them for him to handle, he turned back home.
27 Then, with Micah’s idols and the priest, the men of Dan arrived at the city of Laish. There weren’t even any guards, so they went in and slaughtered all the people and burned the city to the ground. 28 There was no one to help the inhabitants, for they were too far away from Sidon, and they had no local allies, for they had no dealings with anyone. This happened in the valley next to Beth-rehob. Then the people of the tribe of Dan rebuilt the city and lived there. 29 The city was named “Dan” after their ancestor, Israel’s son, but it had originally been called Laish.
30 Then they set up the idols and appointed a man named Jonathan (son of Gershom and grandson of Moses!) and his sons as their priests. This family continued as priests until the city was finally conquered by its enemies. 31 So Micah’s idols were worshiped by the tribe of Dan as long as the Tabernacle remained at Shiloh.
7 When Jesus had finished his sermon he went back into the city of Capernaum.
2 Just at that time the highly prized slave of a Roman[a] army captain was sick and near death. 3 When the captain heard about Jesus, he sent some respected Jewish elders to ask him to come and heal his slave. 4 So they began pleading earnestly with Jesus to come with them and help the man. They told him what a wonderful person the captain was.
“If anyone deserves your help, it is he,” they said, 5 “for he loves the Jews and even paid personally to build us a synagogue!”
6-8 Jesus went with them; but just before arriving at the house, the captain sent some friends to say, “Sir, don’t inconvenience yourself by coming to my home, for I am not worthy of any such honor or even to come and meet you. Just speak a word from where you are, and my servant boy will be healed! I know, because I am under the authority of my superior officers, and I have authority over my men. I only need to say ‘Go!’ and they go; or ‘Come!’ and they come; and to my slave, ‘Do this or that,’ and he does it. So just say, ‘Be healed!’ and my servant will be well again!”
9 Jesus was amazed. Turning to the crowd he said, “Never among all the Jews in Israel have I met a man with faith like this.”
10 And when the captain’s friends returned to his house, they found the slave completely healed.
11 Not long afterwards Jesus went with his disciples to the village of Nain, with the usual great crowd at his heels. 12 A funeral procession was coming out as he approached the village gate. The boy who had died was the only son of his widowed mother, and many mourners from the village were with her.
13 When the Lord saw her, his heart overflowed with sympathy. “Don’t cry!” he said. 14 Then he walked over to the coffin and touched it, and the bearers stopped. “Laddie,” he said, “come back to life again.”
15 Then the boy sat up and began to talk to those around him! And Jesus gave him back to his mother.
16 A great fear swept the crowd, and they exclaimed with praises to God, “A mighty prophet has risen among us,” and, “We have seen the hand of God at work today.”
17 The report of what he did that day raced from end to end of Judea and even out across the borders.
18 The disciples of John the Baptist soon heard of all that Jesus was doing. When they told John about it, 19 he sent two of his disciples to Jesus to ask him, “Are you really the Messiah?[b] Or shall we keep on looking for him?”
20-22 The two disciples found Jesus while he was curing many sick people of their various diseases—healing the lame and the blind and casting out evil spirits. When they asked him John’s question, this was his reply: “Go back to John and tell him all you have seen and heard here today: how those who were blind can see. The lame are walking without a limp. The lepers are completely healed. The deaf can hear again. The dead come back to life. And the poor are hearing the Good News. 23 And tell him, ‘Blessed is the one who does not lose his faith in me.’”[c]
24 After they left, Jesus talked to the crowd about John. “Who is this man you went out into the Judean wilderness to see?” he asked. “Did you find him weak as grass, moved by every breath of wind? 25 Did you find him dressed in expensive clothes? No! Men who live in luxury are found in palaces, not out in the wilderness. 26 But did you find a prophet? Yes! And more than a prophet. 27 He is the one to whom the Scriptures refer when they say, ‘Look! I am sending my messenger ahead of you, to prepare the way before you.’ 28 In all humanity there is no one greater than John. And yet the least citizen of the Kingdom of God is greater than he.”
29 And all who heard John preach—even the most wicked of them[d]—agreed that God’s requirements were right, and they were baptized by him. 30 All, that is, except the Pharisees and teachers of Moses’ law. They rejected God’s plan for them and refused John’s baptism.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.