1 But after a while, in the time of wheat
harvest, Samson visited his wife with a
young goat. He said, “I will go in to my
wife’s room.”
But her father wouldn’t allow him to go
in.
2 Her father said, “I most certainly
thought that you utterly hated her; therefore
I gave her to your companion. Isn’t
her younger sister more beautiful than
she? Please, take her instead.”
3 Samson said to them, “This time I will
be blameless in the case of the Philistines
when I harm them.”
4 Samson went and caught three hundred
foxes, and took torches, and turned
tail to tail, and put a torch in the middle
between every two tails.
5 When he had set the torches on fire, he
let them go into the standing grain of the
Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks
and the standing grain, and also the olive
groves.
6 Then the Philistines said, “Who has
done this?”
They said, “Samson, the son-in-law of
the Timnite, because he has taken his wife
and given her to his companion.” The
Philistines came up, and burnt her and her
father with fire.
7 Samson said to them, “If you behave
like this, surely I will take revenge on you,
and after that I will cease.”
8 He struck them hip and thigh with a
great slaughter; and he went down and
lived in the cave in Etam’s rock.
9 Then the Philistines went up, encamped
in Judah, and spread themselves
in Lehi.
10 The men of Judah said, “Why have you
come up against us?”
They said, “We have come up to bind
Samson, to do to him as he has done to us.”
11 Then three thousand men of Judah
went down to the cave in Etam’s rock, and
said to Samson, “Don’t you know that the
Philistines are rulers over us? What then
is this that you have done to us?”
He said to them, “As they did to me, so I
have done to them.”
12 They said to him, “We have come
down to bind you, that we may deliver you
into the hand of the Philistines.”
Samson said to them, “Swear to me that
you will not attack me yourselves.”
13 They spoke to him, saying, “No, but
we will bind you securely and deliver you
into their hands; but surely we will not kill
you.” They bound him with two new ropes,
and brought him up from the rock.
14 When he came to Lehi, the Philistines
shouted as they met him. Then the LORD’s
Spirit came mightily on him, and the ropes
that were on his arms became as flax
that was burnt with fire; and his bands
dropped from off his hands.
15 He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey,
put out his hand, took it, and struck a
thousand men with it.
16 Samson said, “With the jawbone of a
donkey, heaps on heaps; with the jawbone
of a donkey I have struck a thousand men.”
17 When he had finished speaking, he
threw the jawbone out of his hand; and
that place was called Ramath Lehi.†
18 He was very thirsty, and called on the
LORD and said, “You have given this great
deliverance by the hand of your servant;
and now shall I die of thirst, and fall into
the hands of the uncircumcised?”
19 But God split the hollow place that is
in Lehi, and water came out of it. When
he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he
revived. Therefore its name was called En
Hakkore, which is in Lehi, to this day.
20 He judged Israel twenty years in the
days of the Philistines.
