Judges 13–16

The Birth of Samson

13Again the people of Israel did what the Lord said was wrong. So he handed them over to the Philistines for forty years.

²There was a man named Manoah from the tribe of Dan, who lived in the city of Zorah. He had a wife, but she could not have children. ³The angel of the Lord appeared to Manoah’s wife and said, “You have not been able to have children, but you will become pregnant and give birth to a son. ⁴Be careful not to drink wine or beer or eat anything that is unclean, ⁵because you will become pregnant and have a son. You must never cut his hair, because he will be a Nazirite, given to God from birth. He will begin to save Israel from the power of the Philistines.”

⁶Then Manoah’s wife went to him and told him what had happened. She said, “A man from God came to me. He looked like an angel from God; his appearance was frightening. I didn’t ask him where he was from, and he didn’t tell me his name. ⁷But he said to me, ‘You will become pregnant and will have a son. Don’t drink wine or beer or eat anything that is unclean, because the boy will be a Nazirite to God from his birth until the day of his death.’ ”

⁸Then Manoah prayed to the Lord: “Lord, I beg you to let the man of God come to us again. Let him teach us what we should do for the boy who will be born to us.”

⁹God heard Manoah’s prayer, and the angel of God came to Manoah’s wife again while she was sitting in the field. But her husband Manoah was not with her. ¹⁰So she ran to tell him, “He is here! The man who appeared to me the other day is here!”

¹¹Manoah got up and followed his wife. When he came to the man, he said, “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?”

The man said, “I am.”

¹²So Manoah asked, “When what you say happens, what kind of life should the boy live? What should he do?”

¹³The angel of the Lord said, “Your wife must be careful to do everything I told her to do. ¹⁴She must not eat anything that grows on a grapevine, or drink any wine or beer, or eat anything that is unclean. She must do everything I have commanded her.”

¹⁵Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, “We would like you to stay awhile so we can cook a young goat for you.”

¹⁶The angel of the Lord answered, “Even if I stay awhile, I would not eat your food. But if you want to prepare something, offer a burnt offering to the Lord.” (Manoah did not understand that the man was really the angel of the Lord.)

¹⁷Then Manoah asked the angel of the Lord, “What is your name? Then we will honor you when what you have said really happens.”

¹⁸The angel of the Lord said, “Why do you ask my name? It is too amazing for you to understand.” ¹⁹So Manoah sacrificed a young goat on a rock and offered some grain as a gift to the Lord. Then an amazing thing happened as Manoah and his wife watched. ²⁰The flames went up to the sky from the altar. As the fire burned, the angel of the Lord went up to heaven in the flame. When Manoah and his wife saw that, they bowed facedown on the ground. ²¹The angel of the Lord did not appear to them again. Then Manoah understood that the man was really the angel of the Lord. ²²Manoah said, “We have seen God, so we will surely die.”

²³But his wife said to him, “If the Lord wanted to kill us, he would not have accepted our burnt offering or grain offering. He would not have shown us all these things or told us all this.”

²⁴So the woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew, and the Lord blessed him. ²⁵The Spirit of the Lord began to work in Samson while he was in the city of Mahaneh Dan, between the cities of Zorah and Eshtaol.

Samson’s First Marriage

14Samson went down to the city of Timnah where he saw a Philistine woman. ²When he returned home, he said to his father and mother, “I saw a Philistine woman in Timnah. I want you to get her for me so I can marry her.”

³His father and mother answered, “Surely there is a woman from Israel you can marry. Do you have to marry a woman from the Philistines, who are not circumcised?”

But Samson said, “Get that woman for me! She is the one I want!” ⁴(Samson’s parents did not know that the Lord wanted this to happen because he was looking for a way to challenge the Philistines, who were ruling over Israel at this time.) ⁵Samson went down with his father and mother to Timnah, as far as the vineyard near there. Suddenly, a young lion came roaring toward Samson! ⁶The Spirit of the Lord entered Samson with great power, and he tore the lion apart with his bare hands. For him it was as easy as tearing apart a young goat. But Samson did not tell his father or mother what he had done. ⁷Then he went down to the city and talked to the Philistine woman, and he liked her.

⁸Several days later Samson went back to marry her. On his way he went over to look at the body of the dead lion and found a swarm of bees and honey in it. ⁹Samson got some of the honey with his hands and walked along eating it. When he came to his parents, he gave some to them. They ate it, too, but Samson did not tell them he had taken the honey from the body of the dead lion.

¹⁰Samson’s father went down to see the Philistine woman. And Samson gave a feast, as was the custom for the bridegroom. ¹¹When the people saw him, they sent thirty friends to be with him.

Samson’s Riddle

¹²Samson said to them, “Let me tell you a riddle. Try to find the answer during the seven days of the feast. If you can, I will give you thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of clothes. ¹³But if you can’t, you must give me thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of clothes.”

So they said, “Tell us your riddle so we can hear it.”

¹⁴Samson said,

“Out of the eater comes something to eat.

Out of the strong comes something sweet.”

After three days, they had not found the answer.

¹⁵On the fourth ⁿ day they said to Samson’s wife, “Did you invite us here to make us poor? Trick your husband into telling us the answer to the riddle. If you don’t, we will burn you and everyone in your father’s house.”

¹⁶So Samson’s wife went to him, crying, and said, “You hate me! You don’t really love me! You told my people a riddle, but you won’t tell me the answer.”

Samson said, “I haven’t even told my father or mother. Why should I tell you?”

¹⁷Samson’s wife cried for the rest of the seven days of the feast. So he finally gave her the answer on the seventh day, because she kept bothering him. Then she told her people the answer to the riddle.

¹⁸Before sunset on the seventh day of the feast, the Philistine men had the answer. They came to Samson and said,

“What is sweeter than honey?

What is stronger than a lion?”

Then Samson said to them,

“If you had not plowed with my young cow,

you would not have solved my riddle!”

¹⁹Then the Spirit of the Lord entered Samson and gave him great power. Samson went down to the city of Ashkelon and killed thirty of its men and took all that they had and gave the clothes to the men who had answered his riddle. Then he went to his father’s house very angry. ²⁰And Samson’s wife was given to his best man.

Samson Troubles the Philistines

15At the time of the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, taking a young goat with him. He said, “I’m going to my wife’s room,” but her father would not let him go in.

²He said to Samson, “I thought you really hated your wife, so I gave her to your best man. Her younger sister is more beautiful. Take her instead.”

³But Samson said to them, “This time no one will blame me for hurting you Philistines!” ⁴So Samson went out and caught three hundred foxes. He took two foxes at a time, tied their tails together, and then tied a torch to the tails of each pair of foxes. ⁵After he lit the torches, he let the foxes loose in the grainfields of the Philistines so that he burned up their standing grain, the piles of grain, their vineyards, and their olive trees.

⁶The Philistines asked, “Who did this?”

Someone told them, “Samson, the son-in-law of the man from Timnah, did because his father-in-law gave his wife to his best man.”

So the Philistines burned Samson’s wife and her father to death. ⁷Then Samson said to the Philistines, “Since you did this, I won’t stop until I pay you back!” ⁸Samson attacked the Philistines and killed many of them. Then he went down and stayed in a cave in the rock of Etam.

⁹The Philistines went up and camped in the land of Judah, near a place named Lehi. ¹⁰The men of Judah asked them, “Why have you come here to fight us?”

They answered, “We have come to make Samson our prisoner, to pay him back for what he did to our people.”

¹¹Then three thousand men of Judah went to the cave in the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “What have you done to us? Don’t you know that the Philistines rule over us?”

Samson answered, “I only paid them back for what they did to me.”

¹²Then they said to him, “We have come to tie you up and to hand you over to the Philistines.”

Samson said to them, “Promise me you will not hurt me yourselves.”

¹³The men from Judah said, “We agree. We will just tie you up and give you to the Philistines. We will not kill you.” So they tied Samson with two new ropes and led him up from the cave in the rock. ¹⁴When Samson came to the place named Lehi, the Philistines came to meet him, shouting for joy. Then the Spirit of the Lord entered Samson and gave him great power. The ropes on him weakened like burned strings and fell off his hands! ¹⁵Samson found the jawbone of a dead donkey, took it, and killed a thousand men with it!

¹⁶Then Samson said,

“With a donkey’s jawbone

I made donkeys out of them.

With a donkey’s jawbone

I killed a thousand men!”

¹⁷When he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone. So that place was named Ramath Lehi. ⁿ

¹⁸Samson was very thirsty, so he cried out to the Lord, “You gave me, your servant, this great victory. Do I have to die of thirst now? Do I have to be captured by people who are not circumcised?” ¹⁹Then God opened up a hole in the ground at Lehi, and water came out. When Samson drank, he felt better; he felt strong again. So he named that spring Caller’s Spring,…