¹Later, during the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife. He took a young goat along for her. He said, “I’m going to sleep with my wife in her bedroom.”

But her father would not let him go in. ²Her father said, “I thought you hated her. So I gave her to your best man. Isn’t her younger sister better looking? Marry her instead!”

³Samson said to him, “This time I won’t be guilty when I get even with the Philistines, even though I’m going to do something terrible to them.” ⁴So Samson caught 300 foxes. He tied them together in pairs by their tails. Then he fastened a torch between their tails. ⁵He set the torches on fire and released the foxes in the Philistines’ grain fields. So he set fire to all their grain, whether it was stacked or in the fields. Their olive orchards also caught on fire.

⁶Some Philistines asked, “Who did this?”

They were told, “Samson! He’s the son-in-law of the man at Timnah. Samson did it because the man at Timnah took Samson’s wife and gave her to his best man.” So the Philistines burned Samson’s wife and her father to death.

⁷Samson said to them, “If that’s how you’re going to act, I’ll get even with you before I stop.” ⁸So he attacked them violently and slaughtered them. Then he went to live in a cave in the cliff at Etam.

⁹The Philistines came, camped in Judah, and overran Lehi. ¹⁰The men of Judah asked, “Why did you come to fight us?”

The Philistines answered, “We’ve come to tie up Samson and do to him what he did to us.”

¹¹So 3,000 men from Judah went to the cave in the cliff at Etam. They said to Samson, “Don’t you know that the Philistines rule us? Why have you done this to us?”

Samson replied, “I did to them what they did to me.”

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