Judges 15:1–11

¹After a while, at the time of wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife with a kid; and he said, “I will go in to my wife in the chamber.” But her father would not allow him to go in. ²And her father said, “I really thought that you utterly hated her; so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister fairer than she? Pray take her instead.” ³And Samson said to them, “This time I shall be blameless in regard to the Philistines, when I do them mischief.” ⁴So Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches; and he turned them tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails. ⁵And when 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 olive orchards. ⁶Then the Philistines said, “Who has done this?” And they said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.” And the Philistines came up, and burned her and her father with fire. ⁷And Samson said to them, “If this is what you do, I swear I will be avenged upon you, and after that I will quit.” ⁸And he smote them hip and thigh with great slaughter; 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. ¹⁰And 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 said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” And he said to them, “As they did to me, so have I done to them.”