Juges 15

Samson burns the Philistines’ grain

¹Some time later, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, taking a young goat with him. He said, “I am going in to my wife in her room.” But her father would not let him go in. ²Her father said, “I was sure that you hated her completely, so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she is? Please take her instead.” ³Samson said to them, “This time no one can blame me when I do the Philistines harm.” ⁴So Samson went and caught 300 foxes. He took torches, tied the foxes together in pairs, tail to tail, and set a torch in the middle, between the two tails of every pair.^{a 5}He set the torches on fire and let the foxes loose in the Philistines’ standing grain. He burned up everything, from the stacked sheaves to the uncut grain, and the vineyards and olive groves as well. ⁶The Philistines asked, “Who did this?” They were told, “Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law, because the man took his wife and gave her to his companion.” So the Philistines went up and burned her to death, and her father with her.^{b 7}Samson said to them, “Since you have acted like this, I swear I will take revenge on you, and only after that will I stop.” ⁸He struck them down hip and thigh, a great slaughter. Then he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

The jawbone of a donkey

⁹Then the Philistines went up, camped in Judah, and spread out around Lehi. ¹⁰The men of Judah asked, “Why have you come to attack us?” They answered, “We have come to take Samson prisoner, to do to him what he did to us.” ¹¹Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft in the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Do you not know that we are ruled by the Philistines? What is this you have brought on us?” He answered them, “I only did to them what they did to me.” ¹²They told him, “We have come down to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.” Then Samson said, “Give me your oath that you yourselves will not attack me.” ¹³“No,” they told him, “we will only tie you up and hand you over to them. We will certainly not kill you.” So they tied him with two new ropes and took him up out of the cleft in the rock. ¹⁴As he came to Lehi, the Philistines ran shouting to meet him. Then the Spirit of the LORD rushed on him. The ropes on his arms became like flax caught in a fire, and his bonds melted away from his hands. ¹⁵He came upon the fresh jawbone of a donkey. He reached out and took hold of it, and with it he struck down 1,000 men. ¹⁶Then Samson said, \q “With a donkey’s jawbone, a heap, two heaps of them; \q with a donkey’s jawbone I struck down a thousand men!”^{cd 17}When he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone away, and that place was called Ramath-lehi.^{e 18}He was very thirsty, and he called out to the LORD, “You have given this great victory by the hand of your servant. Now must I die of thirst and fall into the power of these uncircumcised men?” ¹⁹So God split open the hollow at Lehi, and water flowed from it. Samson drank, his strength came back, and he revived. That is why he named it En-hakkore. It is still there at Lehi to this day.^{f 20}In the days of the Philistines, Samson judged Israel for twenty years.