Samson Defeats the Philistines
1 After a while, in the time of wheat harvest, it happened that Samson visited his wife with ayoung goat. And he said, “Let me go in to my wife, intoherroom.” But her father would not permit him to go in.
2 Her father said, “I really thought that you thoroughlyhated her; therefore I gave her to your companion.Isnot her younger sister better than she? Please, take her instead.”
3 And Samson said to them, “This time I shall be blameless regarding the Philistines if I harm them!”
4 Then Samson went and caught three hundred foxes; and he took torches, turnedthefoxestail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails.
5 When he had set the torches on fire, he letthefoxesgo into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up both the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyardsandolive groves.
6 Then the Philistines said, “Who has done this?”
# And they answered, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.”So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire.
7 Samson said to them, “Since you would do a thing like this, I will surely take revenge on you, and after that I will cease.”
8 So he attacked them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; then he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock ofEtam.
9 Now the Philistines went up, encamped in Judah, and deployed themselvesagainst Lehi.
10 And the men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?”
So they answered, “We have come up to arrest Samson, to do to him as he has done to us.”
11 Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistinesrule over us? Whatisthis you have done to us?”
And he said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.”
12 But they said to him, “We have come down to arrest you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines.”
Then Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not kill me yourselves.”
13 So they spoke to him, saying, “No, but we will tie you securely and deliver you into their hand; but we will surely not kill you.” And they bound him with twonew ropes and brought him up from the rock.
14 When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting against him. Thenthe Spirit of theLordcame mightily upon him; and the ropes thatwereon his arms became like flax that is burned with fire, and his bonds broke loose from his hands.
15 He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, andkilled a thousand men with it.
16 Then Samson said:
“With the jawbone of a donkey,
Heaps upon heaps,
With the jawbone of a donkey
I have slain a thousand men!”
17 And so it was, when he had finished speaking, that he threw the jawbone from his hand, and called that place Ramath Lehi.
18 Then he became very thirsty; so he cried out to theLordand said,“You have given this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant; and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?”
19 So God split the hollow place thatisin Lehi, and water came out, and he drank; andhis spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore he called its name En Hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day.
20 Andhe judged Israeltwenty yearsin the days of the Philistines.