Quotes About Courage

Then Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites, saying, “What do you have against me that you have come to fight against my land?”

Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh, then through Mizpah of Gilead. And from there he advanced against the Ammonites.

So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the LORD delivered them into his hand.

“My father,” she replied, “you have given your word to the LORD. Do to me as you have said, for the LORD has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites.”

When I saw that you would not save me, I risked my life and crossed over to the Ammonites, and the LORD delivered them into my hand. Why then have you come today to fight against me?”

Jephthah then gathered all the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. And the men of Gilead struck them down because the Ephraimites had said, “You Gileadites are fugitives in Ephraim, living in the territories of Ephraim and Manasseh.”

Jephthah judged Israel six years, and when he died, he was buried in one of the cities of Gilead.

So the woman gave birth to a son and named him Samson. The boy grew, and the LORD blessed him.

One day Samson went down to Timnah, where he saw a young Philistine woman.

Then Samson went down to Timnah with his father and mother and came to the vineyards of Timnah. Suddenly a young lion came roaring at him,

and the Spirit of the LORD came powerfully upon him, and he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as one would tear a young goat. But he did not tell his father or mother what he had done.

And when the Philistines saw him, they selected thirty men to accompany him.

Samson said to them, “This time I will be blameless in doing harm to the Philistines.”

And Samson told them, “Because you have done this, I will not rest until I have taken vengeance upon you.”

And he struck them ruthlessly with a great slaughter, and then went down and stayed in the cave at the rock of Etam.

In response, three thousand men of Judah went to the cave at the rock of Etam, and they asked Samson, “Do you not realize that the Philistines rule over us? What have you done to us?” “I have done to them what they did to me,” he replied.

But they said to him, “We have come down to arrest you and hand you over to the Philistines.” Samson replied, “Swear to me that you will not kill me yourselves.”

“No,” they answered, “we will not kill you, but we will tie you up securely and hand you over to them.” So they bound him with two new ropes and led him up from the rock.

When Samson arrived in Lehi, the Philistines came out shouting against him. And the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him. The ropes on his arms became like burnt flax, and the bonds broke loose from his hands.

He found the fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and struck down a thousand men.

Then Samson said: “With the jawbone of a donkey I have piled them into heaps. With the jawbone of a donkey I have slain a thousand men.”

And when Samson had finished speaking, he cast the jawbone from his hand; and he named that place Ramath-lehi.

And Samson judged Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.

But Samson lay there only until midnight, when he got up, took hold of the doors of the city gate and both gateposts, and pulled them out, bar and all. Then he put them on his shoulders and took them to the top of the mountain overlooking Hebron.