Chapter 15

¹But it happened after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid; and he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber. But her father wouldn’t allow him to go in. ²Her father said, I most assuredly thought that you had utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion: isn’t her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her, instead. ³Samson said to them, This time shall I be blameless in regard of the Philistines, when I do them a mischief. ⁴Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between every two tails. ⁵When he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the olive groves. ⁶Then the Philistines said, Who has done this? They said, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife, and given her to his companion. The Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire. ⁷Samson said to them, If you do after this manner, surely I will be avenged of you, and after that I will cease. ⁸He struck them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and lived in the cleft of the rock of Etam. ⁹Then the Philistines went up, and encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. ¹⁰The men of Judah said, Why are you come up against us? They said, To bind Samson are we come up, to do to him as he has done to us. ¹¹Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, “Don’t you know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” He said to them, As they did to me, so have I done to them. ¹²They said to him, We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines. Samson said to them, Swear to me that you will not fall on me yourselves. ¹³They spoke to him, saying, No; but we will bind you fast, and deliver you into their hand: but surely we will not kill you. They bound him with two new ropes, and brought him up from the rock. ¹⁴When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him: and the Spirit of Yahweh came mightily on him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands dropped from off his hands. ¹⁵He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put forth his hand, and took it, and struck a thousand men therewith. ¹⁶Samson said, With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps on heaps, With the jawbone of a donkey I have struck a thousand men. ¹⁷It happened, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand; and that place was called Ramath Lehi. ¹⁸He was very thirsty, and called on Yahweh, and said, You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant; and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised. ¹⁹But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out of it. When he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: therefore the name of it was called En Hakkore, which is in Lehi, to this day. ²⁰He judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.