Scriptures

New Living Translation (NLT)

Judges 16
²⁸ Then Samson prayed to the LORD, “Sovereign LORD, remember me again. O God, please strengthen me just one more time. With one blow let me pay back the Philistines for the loss of my two eyes.”
²⁹ Then Samson put his hands on the two center pillars that held up the temple. Pushing against them with both hands,
³⁰ he prayed, “Let me die with the Philistines.” And the temple crashed down on the Philistine rulers and all the people. So he killed more people when he died than he had during his entire lifetime.
³¹ Later his brothers and other relatives went down to get his body. They took him back home and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol, where his father, Manoah, was buried. Samson had judged Israel for twenty years.
Judges 17
¹ There was a man named Micah, who lived in the hill country of Ephraim.
² One day he said to his mother, “I heard you place a curse on the person who stole 1,100 pieces of silver from you. Well, I have the money. I was the one who took it.” “The LORD bless you for admitting it,” his mother replied.
³ He returned the money to her, and she said, “I now dedicate these silver coins to the LORD. In honor of my son, I will have an image carved and an idol cast.”
⁴ So when he returned the money to his mother, she took 200 silver coins and gave them to a silversmith, who made them into an image and an idol. And these were placed in Micah’s house.
⁵ Micah set up a shrine for the idol, and he made a sacred ephod and some household idols. Then he installed one of his sons as his personal priest.
⁶ In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.
⁷ One day a young Levite, who had been living in Bethlehem in Judah, arrived in that area.