Judges 15:1–11

Samson Defeats the Philistines

¹⁵After a while, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, bringing along a kid. He said, “I want to go into my wife’s room.” But her father would not allow him to go in. ²Her father said, “I was sure that you had rejected her, so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister prettier than she? Why not take her instead?”^{* 3}Samson said to them, “This time, when I do mischief to the Philistines, I will be without blame.” ⁴So Samson went and caught three hundred foxes and took some torches, and he turned the foxes^e tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails. ⁵When he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines and burned up the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and^f olive groves. ⁶Then the Philistines asked, “Who has done this?” And they said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken Samson’s wife and given her to his companion.” So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father.^{* 7}Samson said to them, “If this is what you do, I swear I will not stop until I have taken revenge on you.” ⁸He struck them down hip and thigh with a massive defeat, and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

⁹Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah and made a raid on Lehi.^{* 10}The men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” They said, “We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he did to us.” ¹¹Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and they said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then have you done to us?” He replied, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.”^*