Judges 15:11–20

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.