Judges 15
1 And it came to pass after a time, in the days of the wheat-harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid of the goats. And he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber; but her father would not suffer him to go in.
Some time later when the wheat was being harvested, Samson went to pay his wife a visit, taking with him a young goat as a present. “I want to go to my wife in her bedroom,” he said when he arrived, but her father would not let him go in.
2 And her father said, I verily thought that thou didst utterly hate her; therefore I gave her to thy companion. Is not her younger sister fairer than she? Let her, I pray thee, be thine instead of her.
“I thought you must totally hate her, so I gave her to your best man,” he told Samson. “But her younger sister is even more attractive—why don't you marry her instead?”
3 And Samson said to them, This time I am blameless toward the Philistines, though I do them harm.
“This time I can't be blamed for the trouble I'm going to cause the Philistines,” Samson declared.
4 And Samson went and caught three hundred jackals, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the midst between the two tails.
He went and caught three hundred foxes and tied their tails together, two by two.
5 And he set the torches on fire, and let [them] run into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, and the olive gardens.
He attached a torch to each of the tied tails and set them on fire. Then he let them loose in the grain fields of the Philistines, setting fire to all the grain, harvested and unharvested, as well as the vineyards and olive groves.
6 And the Philistines said, Who has done this? And they answered, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burned her and her father with fire.
“Who did this?” the Philistines asked. “It was Samson, the son-in-law of the man from Timnah,” they were told. “That man gave Samson's wife to Samson's best man.” So the Philistines went and burned her and her father to death.
7 And Samson said to them, If ye act thus, for a certainty I will avenge myself on you, and then I will cease.
Samson told them, “If this is the way you're going to act, then I won't stop until I take my revenge on you!”
8 And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter. And he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the cliff Etam.
He attacked them violently, killing them, and then left to go and live in a cave at the rock of Etam.
9 And the Philistines went up, and encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi.
So the Philistine army came and camped in Judah, drawn up for battle near Lehi.
10 And the men of Judah said, Why are ye come up against us? And they said, To bind Samson are we come up, to do to him as he has done to us.
The people of Judah asked, “Why have you invaded us?” “We've come to capture Samson, to do to him what he's done to us!” they replied.
11 Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the cliff Etam, and said to Samson, Knowest thou not that the Philistines rule over us? And what is this that thou hast done to us? And he said to them, As they did to me, so have I done to them.
Three thousand men of Judah went to the cave at the rock of Etam and asked Samson, “Don't you understand that the Philistines rule over us? What do you think you're doing to us?” “I only did what they did to me,” he replied.
12 And they said to him, We are come down to bind thee, that we may give thee into the hand of the Philistines. And Samson said to them, Swear to me that ye will not fall on me yourselves.
“Well, we've come to take you prisoner and hand you over to the Philistines,” they told him. “Just swear to me that you're not going to kill me yourselves,” Samson answered.
13 And they spoke to him, saying, No; but we will bind thee fast, and deliver thee into their hand; but we certainly shall not put thee to death. And they bound him with two new cords, and brought him up from the cliff.
“No, we won't,” they assured him. “We'll only tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines. We certainly aren't going to kill you!” They tied him using two new ropes and led him up from the rock.
14 When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him. And the Spirit of Jehovah came upon him, and the cords that were on his arms became as threads of flax that are burned with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands.
When Samson got close to Lehi, the Philistines ran towards him, shouting at him. But the Spirit of the Lord swept over him, and the ropes tying his arms together became as weak as burnt flax, and his hands broke free.
15 And he found a fresh jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand and took it, and slew with it a thousand men.
He grabbed the fresh jawbone of a donkey, using it to kill a thousand Philistines.
16 And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, a heap, two heaps, With the jawbone of an ass have I slain a thousand men.
Then Samson declared, “With a donkey's jawbone I have piled the dead into heaps. With a donkey's jawbone I have killed a thousand men.”
17 And it came to pass when he had ended speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramath-Lehi.
After Samson had finished his speech, he threw away the jawbone, and he named the place Hill of the Jawbone.
18 And he was very thirsty, and called on Jehovah, and said, Thou hast given by the hand of thy servant this great deliverance, and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?
He was now extremely thirsty, and he Samson called out to the Lord, saying, “You have achieved this amazing victory through your servant, but now do I have to die of thirst and be captured by the heathen?”
19 And God clave the hallow rock which was in Lehi, and water came out of it. And he drank, and his spirit came again, and he revived. Therefore its name was called En-hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day.
So God split open a rock seam in Lehi, and water came out of it. Samson drank and his strength returned—he felt much better. That's why he named it the Spring of the Caller, and it's still there in Lehi to this very day.
20 And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.
Samson led Israel as judge for twenty years during the time of the Philistines.
