Judges 14:12–19

^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,