Judges 15:11–20

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

¹⁴When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him; and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and the ropes which were on his arms became as flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. ¹⁵And he found a fresh jawbone of an ass, and put out his hand and seized it, and with it he slew a thousand men. ¹⁶And Samson said,

“With the jawbone of an ass,

heaps upon heaps,

with the jawbone of an ass

have I slain a thousand men.”

¹⁷When he had finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone out of his hand; and that place was called Ramath-lehi.^u

¹⁸And he was very thirsty, and he called on the Lord and said, “Thou hast granted this great deliverance by the hand of thy servant; and shall I now die of thirst, and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” ¹⁹And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and there came water from it; and when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore the name of it was called En-hakkore;^v it is at Lehi to this day. ²⁰And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.