Judges 15:11–20

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.” ¹²They said to him, “We have come down to bind you and give you over into the hand of the Philistines.” And Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.” ¹³They said to him, “No, we will only bind you and give you into their hand; we will certainly not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes, and they brought him up from the rock.

¹⁴As he came up to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him; and the Spirit of Yahweh rushed on him, and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that has burned with fire, and his bindings melted from his hands. ¹⁵And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey; he reached down and took it and killed one thousand men with it. ¹⁶And Samson said,

“With the jawbone of the donkey,

heap upon heap;

with the jawbone of the donkey,

I struck dead one thousand men.”

¹⁷And it happened, when he finished speaking he threw the jawbone from his hand; and he called that place Ramath Lehi.^f

¹⁸And he was very thirsty, and he called to Yahweh and said, “You gave this great victory into the hand of your servant, but now I must die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?” ¹⁹So God split the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it; and he drank, and his spirit returned, and he was revived. Thus he called its name The Spring of Ha-Qore,^g which is at Lehi to this day. ²⁰And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.