Judges 15:11–20

¹¹Then three thousand men of Judah went to the cave at the rock of Etam, and they asked Samson, “Don’t you realize that the Philistines rule us?^e What have you done to us?”

“I have done to them what they did to me,” he answered.^A

¹²They said to him, “We’ve come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.”

Then Samson told them, “Swear to me that you yourselves won’t kill me.”

¹³“No,” they said,^B “we won’t kill you, but we will tie you up securely and hand you over to them.” So they tied him up with two new ropes^f and led him away from the rock.

¹⁴When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came to meet him shouting. The Spirit of the Lord came powerfully on him, and the ropes that were on his arms and wrists became like burnt flax and fell off. ¹⁵He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand, took it, and killed a thousand men with it. ¹⁶Then Samson said:

With the jawbone of a donkey

I have piled them in heaps.

With the jawbone of a donkey

I have killed a thousand men.

¹⁷When he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone and named that place Jawbone Hill.^{C 18}He became very thirsty and called out to the Lord, “You have accomplished this great victory through your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” ¹⁹So God split a hollow place in the ground at Lehi, and water came out of it. After Samson drank, his strength returned, and he revived.^g That is why he named it Hakkore Spring,^D which is still in Lehi today. ²⁰And he judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines.