Samuel judge over Israel

The First Book of Samuel, chapter 7

   So for a long while the Ark was housed at Kiriath-jearim; and       
after some time, twenty years later, there was a movement throughout         
Israel to follow the Lord.  So Samuel addressed these words to the whole        
nation: 'If your return to the Lord is whole-hearted, banish the foreign          
gods and the Ashtaroth from your shrines; turn to the Lord with heart        
and mind, and worship him alone, and he will deliver you from the Philis-         
tines.'  The Israelites then banished the Baalim and the Ashtaroth, and         
worshipped the Lord alone.        
   Samuel summoned all Israel to an assembly at Mizpah, so that he might         
intercede with the Lord for them.  When they had assembled there, they      
drew water and poured it out before the Lord and fasted all day, confessing        
that they had sinned against the Lord.  It was at Mizpah and Samuel acted         
as judge over Israel.        
   When the Philistines heard that the Israeklites had assembled at Mizpah,       
their princes marched against them.  The Israelites heard that the Philis-         
tines were advancing, and they were afraid.  They said to Samuel, 'Do       
not cease to pray for us to the Lord our God to save us from the power of         
the Philistines.'  Thereupon Samuel took a sucking lamb, offered it up         
complete as a whole-offering and prayed aloud to the Lord on behalf of      
Israel; and the Lord answered his prayer.  As Samuel was offering the        
sacrifice and the Philistines were advancing to battle with the Israelites,       
the Lord thundered loud and long over the Philistines and threw them into        
confusion.  They fled in panic before the Israelites, who set out from Mizpah        
in pursuit and kept up the slaughter of the Philistines till they reached a         
point below Beth-car.  There Samuel took a stone and set it up as a monu-         
ment between Mizpah and Jeshanah, naming it Eben-ezer, 'for to this            
point', he said, 'the Lord has helped us.'  Thus the Philistines were sub-       
dued and no longer encroached on the territory of Israel; and the hand       
of the Lord was against them as long as Samuel lived.  The cities they had        
captured were restored to Israel, and from Ekron to Gath the borderland       
was freed from their control.  Between Israel and the Amorites peace was       
maintained.  Samuel acted as judge in Israel as long as he lived, and every        
year went on circuit to Bethel and Gilgal and Mizpah; he dispensed justice        
at all these places, returning always to Ramah.  That was his home and        
the place from which he governed Israel, and there he built an altar to       
the Lord.   
 

The New English Bible (with Apocrypha)
Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, 1970