Quotes About Identity

For if you turn away and cling to the rest of these nations that remain among you, and if you intermarry and associate with them,

But if it is unpleasing in your sight to serve the LORD, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD!”

“Please, my Lord,” Gideon replied, “how can I save Israel? Indeed, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my fatherís house.”

“Who did this?” they said to one another. And after they had investigated thoroughly, they were told, “Gideon son of Joash did it.”

Next, Gideon asked Zebah and Zalmunna, “What kind of men did you kill at Tabor?” “Men like you,” they answered, “each one resembling the son of a king.”

And when his motherís brothers spoke all these words about him in the presence of all the leaders of Shechem, their hearts were inclined to follow Abimelech, for they said, “He is our brother.”

Then Gaal son of Ebed said, “Who is Abimelech, and who is Shechem, that we should serve him? Is he not the son of Jerubbaal, and is not Zebul his officer? You are to serve the men of Hamor, the father of Shechem. Why should we serve Abimelech?

He quickly called his armor-bearer, saying, “Draw your sword and kill me, lest they say of me, ëA woman killed him.í” So Abimelechís armor-bearer ran his sword through him, and he died.

Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valor; he was the son of a prostitute, and Gilead was his father.

And Gileadís wife bore him sons who grew up, drove Jephthah out, and said to him, “You shall have no inheritance in our fatherís house, because you are the son of another woman.”

So Jephthah fled from his brothers and settled in the land of Tob, where worthless men gathered around him and traveled with him.

Jephthah replied to the elders of Gilead, “Did you not hate me and expel me from my fatherís house? Why then have you come to me now, when you are in distress?”

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?”

The king of the Ammonites answered Jephthahís messengers, “When Israel came up out of Egypt, they seized my land, from the Arnon to the Jabbok and all the way to the Jordan. Now, therefore, restore it peaceably.”

to tell him, “This is what Jephthah says: Israel did not take away the land of Moab or of the Ammonites.

Do you not possess whatever your god Chemosh grants you? So also, we possess whatever the LORD our God has granted us.

She also said to her father, “Let me do this one thing: Let me wander for two months through the mountains with my friends and mourn my virginity.”

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.”

The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a fugitive from Ephraim would say, “Let me cross over,” the Gileadites would ask him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he answered, “No,”

they told him, “Please say Shibboleth.” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce it correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. So at that time 42,000 Ephraimites were killed.

So he returned and told his father and mother, “I have seen a daughter of the Philistines in Timnah. Now get her for me as a wife.”

But his father and mother replied, “Canít you find a young woman among your relatives or among any of our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife?” But Samson told his father, “Get her for me, for she is pleasing to my eyes.”

Samson told her, “If they tie me up with seven fresh bowstrings that have not been dried, I will become as weak as any other man.”

He replied, “If they tie me up with new ropes that have never been used, I will become as weak as any other man.”