Judges 13–16

The Birth of Samson

13The Israelites sinned against the Lord again, and he let the Philistines rule them for 40 years.

²At that time there was a man named Manoah from the town of Zorah. He was a member of the tribe of Dan. His wife had never been able to have children. ³The Lord’s angel appeared to her and said, “You have never been able to have children, but you will soon be pregnant and have a son. ⁴Take care not to drink any wine or beer, or eat any forbidden food; ^5*and after your son is born, you must never cut his hair, because from the day of his birth he will be dedicated to God as a nazirite.^x He will begin the work of rescuing Israel from the Philistines.”

⁶Then the woman went and said to her husband, “A man of God has come to me, and he looked as frightening as the angel^y of God. I didn’t ask him where he came from, and he didn’t tell me his name. ⁷But he did tell me that I would become pregnant and have a son. He told me not to drink any wine or beer, or eat any forbidden food, because the boy is to be dedicated to God as a nazirite as long as he lives.”

⁸Then Manoah prayed to the Lord, “Please, Lord, let the man of God that you sent come back to us and tell us what we must do with the boy when he is born.”

⁹God did what Manoah asked, and his angel came back to the woman while she was sitting in the fields. Her husband Manoah was not with her, ¹⁰so she ran at once and said to him, “Look! The man who came to me the other day has appeared to me again.”

¹¹Manoah got up and followed his wife. He went to the man and asked, “Are you the man who was talking to my wife?”

“Yes,” he answered.

¹²Then Manoah asked, “When your words come true, what must the boy do? What kind of a life must he lead?”

¹³The Lord’s angel answered, “Your wife must be sure to do everything that I have told her. ¹⁴She must not eat anything that comes from the grapevine; she must not drink any wine or beer, or eat any forbidden food. She must do everything that I have told her.”

^15–16Manoah did not know that it was the Lord’s angel, so he said to him, “Please do not go yet. Let us cook a young goat for you.”

But the angel said, “If I do stay, I will not eat your food. But if you want to prepare it, burn it as an offering to the Lord.”

¹⁷Manoah replied, “Tell us your name, so that we can honour you when your words come true.”

¹⁸The angel asked, “Why do you want to know my name? It is a name of wonder.”^z

¹⁹So Manoah took a young goat and some grain, and offered them on the rock altar to the Lord who works wonders.^{a 20–21}While the flames were going up from the altar, Manoah and his wife saw the Lord’s angel go up towards heaven in the flames. Manoah realized then that the man had been the Lord’s angel, and he and his wife threw themselves face downwards on the ground. They never saw the angel again.

²²Manoah said to his wife, “We are sure to die, because we have seen God!”

²³But his wife answered, “If the Lord had wanted to kill us, he would not have accepted our offerings; he would not have shown us all this or told us such things now.”

²⁴The woman gave birth to a son and named him Samson. The child grew and the Lord blessed him. ²⁵And the Lord’s power began to strengthen him while he was between Zorah and Eshtaol in the Camp of Dan.

Samson and the Girl from Timnah

14One day Samson went down to Timnah, where he noticed a certain Philistine woman. ²He went back home and said to his father and mother, “There is a Philistine woman down at Timnah who has caught my attention. Get her for me; I want to marry her.”

³But his father and mother asked him, “Why do you have to go to those heathen Philistines to get a wife? Can’t you find a girl in our own clan, among all our people?”

But Samson said to his father, “She is the one I want you to get for me. I like her.”

⁴His parents did not know that it was the Lord who was leading Samson to do this, for the Lord was looking for a chance to fight the Philistines. At this time the Philistines were ruling Israel.

⁵So Samson went down to Timnah with his father and mother. As they were going through the vineyards there, he heard a young lion roaring. ⁶Suddenly the power of the Lord made Samson strong, and he tore the lion apart with his bare hands, as if it were a young goat. But he did not tell his parents what he had done.

⁷Then he went and talked to the woman, and he liked her. ⁸A few days later Samson went back to marry her. On the way he left the road to look at the lion he had killed, and he was surprised to find a swarm of bees and some honey inside the dead body. ⁹He scraped the honey out into his hands and ate it as he walked along. Then he went to his father and mother and gave them some. They ate it, but Samson did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the dead body of a lion.

¹⁰His father went to the woman’s house, and Samson gave a banquet there. This was a custom among the young men. ¹¹When the Philistines saw him, they sent 30 young men to stay with him. ^12–13Samson said to them, “Let me ask you a riddle. I’ll bet each one of you a piece of fine linen and a change of fine clothes that you can’t tell me its meaning before the seven days of the wedding feast are over.”

“Tell us your riddle,” they said. “Let’s hear it.”

¹⁴He said,

“Out of the eater came something to eat;

Out of the strong came something sweet.”

Three days later they had still not solved the riddle.

¹⁵On the fourth^b day they said to Samson’s wife, “Trick your husband into telling us what the riddle means. If you don’t, we’ll set fire to your father’s house and burn you with it.^c You two invited us so that you could rob us, didn’t you?”

¹⁶So Samson’s wife went to him in tears and said, “You don’t love me! You just hate me! You asked my friends a riddle and didn’t tell me what it means!”

He said, “Look, I haven’t even told my father and mother. Why should I tell you?” ¹⁷She cried about it for the whole seven days of the feast. But on the seventh day he told her what the riddle meant, for she nagged him about it so much. Then she told the Philistines. ¹⁸So on the seventh day, before Samson went into the bedroom,^d the men of the city said to him,

“What could be sweeter than honey?

What could be stronger than a lion?”

Samson replied,

“If you hadn’t been ploughing with my cow,

You wouldn’t know the answer now.”

¹⁹Suddenly the power of the Lord made him strong, and he went down to Ashkelon, where he killed 30 men, stripped them, and gave their fine clothes to the men who had solved the riddle. After that, he went back home, furious about what had happened, ²⁰and his wife was given to the man that had been his best man at the wedding.

15Some time later Samson went to visit his wife during the wheat harvest and took her a young goat. He said to her father, “I want to go to my wife’s room.”

But he wouldn’t let him go in. ²He said to Samson, “I really thought that you hated her, so I gave her to your friend. But her younger sister is prettier, anyway. You can have her, instead.”

³Samson said, “This time I’m not going to be responsible for what I do to the Philistines!” ⁴So he went and caught 300 foxes. Two by two, he tied their tails together and put torches in the knots. ⁵Then he set fire to the torches and turned the foxes loose in the Philistine cornfields. In this way he burnt up not only the corn that had been harvested but also the corn that was still in the fields, and the olive orchards as well. ⁶When the Philistines asked who had done this, they learnt that Samson had done it because his father-in-law, a man from Timnah, had given Samson’s wife to a friend of Samson’s. So the Philistines went and burnt the woman to death and burnt down her father’s house.^e

⁷Samson told them, “So this is how you act! I swear that I won’t stop until I pay you back!” ⁸He attacked them fiercely and killed many of them. Then he went and stayed in the cave in the cliff at Etam.

Samson Defeats the Philistines

⁹The Philistines came and made camp in Judah, and attacked the town of Lehi. ¹⁰The men of Judah asked them, “Why are you attacking us?”

They answered, “We came to take Samson prisoner and to treat him as he treated us.” ¹¹So 3,000 men of Judah went to the cave in the cliff at Etam and said to Samson, “Don’t you know that the Philistines are our rulers? What have you done to us?”

He answered, “I did to them just what they did to me.”

¹²They said, “We have come here to tie you up, so that we can hand you over to them.”

Samson said, “Give me your word that you won’t kill me yourselves.”

¹³“All right,” they said, “we are only going to tie you up and hand you over to them. We won’t kill you.” So they tied him up with two new ropes and brought him back from the cliff.

¹⁴When he got to Lehi, the Philistines came running towards him, shouting at him. Suddenly the power of the Lord made him strong, and he broke the ropes round his arms and hands as if they were burnt thread. ¹⁵Then he found the jawbone of a donkey that had recently died. He bent down and picked it up, and killed a thousand men with it. ¹⁶So Samson sang,

“With the jawbone of a donkey I killed a thousand men;

With the jawbone of a donkey I piled them up in piles.”^f

¹⁷After that, he threw the jawbone away. The place where this happened was named Ramath Lehi.^g

¹⁸Then Samson became very thirsty, so he called to the Lord and said, “You gave me this great victory; am I now going to die of thirst and be captured by these heathen Philistines?” ¹⁹Then God opened a hollow place in the ground there at Lehi, and water came out of it. Samson drank it and began to feel much better. So the spring was named Hakkore;^h it is still there at Lehi.

²⁰Samson led Israel for twenty years while the Philistines ruled the land.

Samson at Gaza

16One day Samson went to the Philistine city of Gaza, where he met a prostitute and went to bed with her. ²The people of Gaza found out that Samson was there, so they surrounded the place and waited for him all night long at the city gate.…