Chapter 15

Samson Burns Philistine Crops

1 But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife awith a young goat, and said, “I will go in to my wife in her room.” But her father did not let him enter.

2 Her father said, “I really thought that you hated her intensely; so I agave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister 1more beautiful than she? Please let her be yours 2instead.”

3 Samson then said to them, “This time I shall be blameless in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm.”

4 Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned the foxes tail to tail and put one torch in the middle between two tails.

5 When he had set fire to the torches, he released 1the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines, thus burning up both the shocks and the standing grain, along with the vineyards and groves.

6 Then the Philistines said, “Who did this?” And they said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because 1he took his wife and gave her to his companion.” So the Philistines came up and aburned her and her father with fire.

7 Samson said to them, “Since you act like this, I will surely take revenge on you, but after that I will quit.”

8 He struck them 1ruthlessly with a great slaughter; and he went down and lived in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

9 Then the Philistines went up and camped in Judah, and spread out in Lehi.

10 The men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” And they said, “We have come up to bind Samson in order to do to him as he did to us.”

11 Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Do you not know athat 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 I have done to them.”

12 They said to him, “We have come down to bind you so that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines.” And Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not 1kill me.”

13 So they said to 1him, “No, but we will bind you fast and give you into their hands; yet surely we will not kill you.” Then they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.

14 When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him. And athe Spirit of the Lord 1came upon him mightily so that the ropes that were on his arms were as flax that is burned with fire, and his bonds 2dropped from his hands.

15 He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, so he 1reached out and took it and 2killed aa thousand men with it.

16 Then Samson said,

“With the jawbone of a donkey,

1Heaps upon heaps,

With the jawbone of a donkey

I have 2killed a thousand men.”

17 When he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand; and he named that place 1Ramath-lehi.

18 Then he became very thirsty, and he acalled to the Lord and said, “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant, and now 1shall I die of thirst 2and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”

19 But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi so that water came out of it. When he drank, ahis 1strength returned and he revived. Therefore he named it 2En-hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day.

20 So ahe judged Israel twenty years in bthe days of the Philistines.