The announcement of Samson’s birth to righteous parents marks and exciting beginning to the life of God’s strongman. With such a remarkable beginning we come to hope for a glorious ending but it would not to be.

After Jephthah defeated the Ammonite invaders, he is confronted by one of his own tribes. This same tribe gave Gideon a hard time after he defeated the Midianites. But Jephthah was the wrong person to try to bully.

Ammon had gathered for war against the Israelites to take the land of Gilead away from them. Israel’s leaders realized that their only hope was in the son of a harlot, Jephthah. Then there was that vow.

Two righteous judges issued in forty-five years of peace. After them, the people again gravitated to idolatry, suffered as the cycle repeated itself, then they cried to God for deliverance. His rebuke included His delay.

After the death of Gideon, his son from a concubine seized power by killing 69 of his half-brothers. One survived and gave a prophetic parable which spoke of Abimelech’s worthlessness life and death.