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The key moments of the book, in order, one picture at a time.
Judges 3:8-11
Othniel delivers Israel
The people of Israel forget God. They start worshiping other gods, statues of wood and stone. So God becomes angry. He lets a powerful king, Cushan-Rishathaim, crush Israel. For eight years, the people live under his rule, in fear and misery.
Tired of suffering, the Israelites cry out to God. They ask for help. God hears them. He chooses a man to save them: Othniel, a brave warrior, Caleb's nephew. The Spirit of God comes upon him and gives him extraordinary strength.
Othniel goes to fight Cushan-Rishathaim. He defeats him. The victory is complete. The foreign king goes back home, beaten. Thanks to Othniel, the land finally finds peace. For forty years, Israel lives quietly, without war or oppression. Then Othniel dies. This story will repeat again and again in the book of Judges.
Judges 3:15-26
Ehud kills Eglon
The Israelites cry out to God. For eighteen years, the king of Moab, Eglon, has crushed them under his power. God chooses a man named Ehud, left-handed, to deliver them. Ehud makes a short, double-edged sword and straps it under his clothes, against his right thigh, where no one looks.
Ehud goes to bring tribute to King Eglon, a very fat man. After delivering the gifts, he sends his servants away. Then he comes back alone and says: "I have a secret message for you, O king." Eglon rises from his seat. Ehud comes closer and says: "I have a message from God for you." He draws his sword from his right thigh and strikes the king in the belly. The blade goes in so deep that the fat closes over it. Ehud goes back out, shuts the doors behind him, and slips away quietly.
The king's servants wait a long time outside the closed door, thinking he is relieving himself. Meanwhile, Ehud flees to the hills of Ephraim, safe and sound.
Judges 4:4-22
Deborah, Barak and Jael defeat Sisera
In Israel, a woman judges the people. Her name is Deborah, and she is a prophetess. People come to see her under a palm tree to settle their disputes.
Deborah calls a man named Barak. She tells him: "God commands you to go fight Sisera, the enemy general. Take ten thousand men." Barak answers: "I will go, but only if you come with me." Deborah agrees, but adds: "Then the honor will not be yours. God will hand Sisera over to a woman."
The battle takes place. Sisera's army is crushed. Sisera flees on foot and hides in the tent of a woman named Jael. She gives him milk and covers him with a blanket. While he sleeps, Jael takes a tent peg and a hammer. She drives it into his temple. Sisera dies. Deborah's word comes true.
Judges 6:11-24
Gideon's calling
Gideon threshes his wheat in hiding, in a winepress, out of sight. The Midianites have been raiding the land for years, and everyone is afraid. Suddenly, an angel sits down under the oak tree, beside him.
"The Lord is with you, mighty warrior!" says the angel. Gideon answers: "If God is with us, why all this trouble? My family is the poorest, and I am the least in my father's house." The angel answers: "Go with the strength you have. I am sending you."
Gideon asks for a sign. He prepares a young goat and bread, and sets them on a rock. The angel touches the offering with his staff. Fire bursts out and burns everything, then the angel disappears. Gideon then understands who spoke to him. He builds an altar and calls it "The Lord is peace."
Judges 7:1-22
Gideon's 300 defeat Midian
Gideon gathers his army near the spring of Harod. Thirty-two thousand men stand ready against Midian. But God says: "You are too many. If I give you the victory, you will say your own strength saved you."
God sorts the men. First, those who are afraid go home: twenty-two thousand leave. Ten thousand remain. God says again: "Still too many." At the water's edge, he chooses those who lap the water like dogs, standing, without kneeling down. Only three hundred remain. Gideon keeps these three hundred men.
When night falls, Gideon splits his men into three groups. He gives each one a trumpet, an empty jar, and a torch hidden inside. They surround the camp of Midian. At the signal, they all blow their trumpets, break the jars, and shout: "A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!" The torches shine in the night. The Midianites panic, fight each other, and flee in confusion. The victory comes from God alone.
Judges 9:1-57
Abimelech crowns himself and dies
Abimelech is Gideon's son, born of a slave woman. He goes to see his brothers in Shechem. He tells the people: "Do you want to be ruled by seventy sons of Gideon, or by one man, me?" The people of Shechem give him money. With this money, Abimelech hires reckless men. Together, they kill his seventy brothers on a single stone. Only one survives, Jotham, the youngest, hidden in time.
Jotham climbs a mountain and shouts a fable to the people of Shechem. The trees look for a king. The olive tree refuses, the fig tree refuses, the vine refuses. Only the thornbush accepts, and threatens to burn everyone. Jotham announces disaster, then flees.
Three years pass. Abimelech rules, but Shechem rebels against him. War breaks out. Abimelech destroys the city, burns a tower full of people. Then, while attacking Thebez, a woman drops a millstone on his head from a wall. Mortally wounded, he asks his servant to finish him off with a sword, so he will not be killed by a woman.
Judges 11:30-39
Jephthah's vow and his daughter
Jephthah goes to fight the Ammonites. Before the battle, he makes a vow to God. He says: "If you give me the victory, when I return, the first person who comes out of my house to welcome me, I will offer as a sacrifice."
Jephthah wins the war. He comes home, full of joy. But it is his only daughter who comes out first, dancing to the sound of tambourines to celebrate her father. Jephthah tears his clothes in grief. "My daughter, you break my heart! I made a vow, I cannot take it back."
His daughter accepts her fate with courage. She asks for two months to mourn her youth in the mountains, with her friends. Then she returns, and Jephthah keeps his terrible promise. Since that day, the daughters of Israel take time each year to remember her.
Judges 14:5-20
Samson kills the lion and poses his riddle
Samson walks toward Timnah with his father and mother. A young lion springs out, roaring. Samson tears it apart with his bare hands, as one tears a young goat. He tells no one.
Later, he comes back the same way. Inside the dead lion's body, bees have made honey. Samson eats some, and gives some to his parents, without telling them where the honey came from.
On the wedding day, Samson poses a riddle to the thirty Philistine companions: "Out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong came something sweet." They cannot solve it. They threaten Samson's wife, saying they will burn her house down if she does not get the answer from him. Weeping for seven days, she finally learns it, and betrays her husband. Furious at being tricked, Samson kills thirty men at Ashkelon to pay his debt, then goes back alone to his father's house.
Judges 16:4-21
Delilah betrays Samson
Samson falls in love with a woman named Delilah. The Philistine leaders come to her in secret. "Find out the secret of his strength," they say, "and we will give you a great deal of money."
Delilah presses him day after day. Three times, Samson lies to her about the source of his strength. Three times, she betrays him by calling the Philistines to capture him, but he breaks every bond with ease.
Delilah weeps and nags him constantly: "You do not love me, since you tell me nothing!" Worn down, Samson finally tells her everything: "My hair has never been cut. If it is shaved, I lose my strength."
While he sleeps on her lap, Delilah has his seven braids shaved off. The Philistines arrive. Samson gets up, thinking he can fight as before, but the Lord has left him. They capture him, gouge out his eyes, and chain him in the prison at Gaza.
Judges 19:22-30
The crime at Gibeah
A Levite travels with his concubine. Night falls in Gibeah, a town of the tribe of Benjamin. An old man takes them into his home to sleep.
Men of the town surround the house. They pound on the door and shout: "Bring out that man, we want to know him!" The old man begs: "No, my brothers, do not do this evil thing." But the men listen to nothing. The Levite pushes his concubine out the door. The men abuse her all night, until morning.
At dawn, she falls at the door. The Levite finds her there, dead. He puts her on his donkey and goes home. He takes a knife, cuts her body into twelve pieces, one for each tribe of Israel. He sends the pieces all over the land. Everywhere, people are horrified. They say: "Nothing like this has ever been seen since we came out of Egypt. Something must be done!"
