Judges 15:1–11

Samson Defeats the Philistines

15After a while, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat.^a He said, “I want to go to my wife’s private room.” But her father would not allow him to enter. ²Her father said, “I really thought that you hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please, take her instead.”^{b 3}And Samson said to them, “This time, as far as the Philistines are concerned, when I do something evil I am without blame.” ⁴And Samson went and captured three hundred foxes, and he took torches. He turned them tail to tail, and he put one torch between two tails. ⁵He set fire to the torches and let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and he burned both the stacks^c of sheaves and the standing grain, up to the vineyards^d of olive groves. ⁶And the Philistines said, “Who has done this?” And they said, “Samson the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion.” And the Philistines went up and burned her and her father with fire. ⁷Samson said to them, “If you want to behave like this, I swear I will not rest unless I have taken revenge on you.” ⁸And he gave them a thorough beating,^e and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

⁹Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah, and they overran Lehi. ¹⁰And the men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” And they said, “To bind Samson; to do to him just as he did to us.” ¹¹Then three thousand men from Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and they said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are ruling over us? What is this that you have done to us?” And he said to them, “Just as they did to me, so I have done to them.”