Judges 15
1 And it came to pass after some time, in the time of wheat-harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid; and he said, Let me go in to my wife into the chamber; but her father would not suffer him to go in.
During the time that they harvested wheat, Samson took a young goat to Timnah as a present for his wife. He planned to sleep with [EUP] his wife, but her father would not let him go into [her room].
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 be thine, I pray thee, instead of her.
He said to Samson, “I really thought that you hated her. So I gave her to the man who had been your best man at the wedding, and she married him. But look, her younger sister is [RHQ] more beautiful than she is. You can marry her!”
3 And Samson said to them, Now shall I be more blameless than the Philistines, though I do them evil.
Samson replied, “No! And this time I have a right to get revenge on you Philistines!”
4 And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put one torch between two tails in the midst;
Then he went out [into the fields] and caught 300 foxes. He tied their tails together, two-by-two. He fastened torches to each pair of tails.
5 And he set the torches on fire, and let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both shocks and standing corn, as also olive-yards.
Then he lit the torches and let the foxes run through the fields of the Philistines. The fire [from the torches] burned all the grain to the ground, including the grain that had been cut and piled in bundles. The fire also burned down their grapevines and their olive trees.
6 Then said the Philistines, Who hath done this! And they answered, Samson, the son-in-law of the Thimnite, because he hath taken his wife, and given her to his companion. And the Philistines went up, and burnt her and her father with fire.
The Philistines asked, “Who did this?” Someone told them, “Samson did it. He married a woman from Timnah, but then his father-in-law gave her to the man who was Samson’s best man at the wedding, and she married him.” So the Philistines went [to Timnah] and got the woman and her father, and burned them to death.
7 And Samson said unto them, Since ye will do the like of this, I will surely be avenged on you, and after that will I cease.
Samson [found out about that, and he] said to them, “Because you have done this, I will not stop until I get revenge on you!”
8 And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; and he went down and tarried in the cleft of the rock 'Etam.
So he attacked the Philistines furiously, and killed many of them. Then he went [to hide] in a cave in the large rock at a place called Etam.
9 And the Philistines went up, and encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lechi.
The Philistines [did not know where he was, so they] went up to where the descendants of Judah lived, set up their tents near Lehi [town and then raided the town].
10 And the men of Judah said, Why are ye come up against us? And they answered, To bind Samson are we come up, to do to him as he hath done to us.
The men there asked the Philistines, “Why have you attacked us?” The Philistines replied, “We have come to capture Samson. We have come to get revenge on him for what he did to us.”
11 Thereupon went three thousand men of Judah down to the cleft of the rock 'Etam, and said to Samson, Knowest thou not that the Philistines rule over us? and what is this that thou hast done unto us? And he said unto them, As they did unto me, so have I done unto them.
[Someone there knew where Samson was hiding]. So 3,000 men from Judah went down to get Samson at the cave in the rock where he was hiding. They said to Samson, “Do you not realize that the people of Philistia are ruling over us? Do you not realize what they will do to us?” Samson replied, “The only thing I did was that I got revenge on them for what they did to me.”
12 And they said unto him, To bind thee are we come down, to deliver thee into the hand of the Philistines. And Samson said unto them, Swear unto me, that ye will not assail me yourselves.
But the men from Judah said to him, “We have come to tie you up and put you in the hands of the Philistines.” Samson said, “All right, but promise me that you yourselves will not kill me!”
13 And they said unto him, thus, No; for we will [only] bind thee fast, and deliver thee into their hand; but we will in no-wise kill thee. And they bound him with two new cords, and brought him up from the rock.
They replied, “We will just tie you up and take you to the Philistines. We will not kill you.” So they tied him with two new ropes, and led him away from the cave.
14 When he was come unto Lechi, the Philistines shouted against him; but the Spirit of the Lord came suddenly over him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax threads that are burnt with fire, and his bands melted from off his hands.
When they arrived at Lehi, the Philistines came toward him, shouting [triumphantly]. But Yahweh’s Spirit came upon Samson powerfully. He snapped the ropes on his arms as easily as if they were stalks of burned flax, and the ropes fell off his wrists.
15 And he found a fresh jaw-bone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and smote therewith a thousand men.
Then he saw a donkey’s jawbone lying on the ground. It was fresh, [so it was hard]. He picked it up and killed about 1,000 Philistine men with it.
16 And Samson said, With a jaw-bone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw-bone of an ass have I smitten a thousand men.
Then Samson wrote this poem: “With the jawbone of a donkey I have made them like a heap of [dead] donkeys. With the jawbone of a donkey I killed 1,000 men.”
17 And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jaw-bone out of his hand, and called that place Ramath-lechi.
When he finished killing those men, he threw the jawbone away, and later that place was called Jawbone Hill.
18 And he became very thirsty, and he called on the Lord, and said, Thou hast granted through the hand of thy servant this great deliverance; and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?
Then Samson was very thirsty, so he called out to Yahweh, “You have given me strength to win a great victory. So now must I die because of being thirsty, with the result that those heathen Philistines will take away my body [and mutilate it]?”
19 But God clave a hollow place that was at Lechi, and there came forth water out of it; and he drank, and his spirit came again, and he revived; wherefore he called the name thereof 'En-hakkore, which is in Lechi unto this day.
So God caused water to gush out of a depression in the ground at Lehi. Samson drank from it and soon felt strong again. He named that place ‘The spring of the one who called out’. That spring is still there at Lehi.
20 And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.
Samson was the leader of the Israeli people for 20 years, but during that time the Philistines [were the ones who really ruled over the land].
