Judges 15
1 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].
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.
2 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!”
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.
3 Samson replied, “No! And this time I have a right to get revenge on you Philistines!”
And Samson said to them, This time I am blameless toward the Philistines, though I do them harm.
4 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.
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.
5 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.
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.
6 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.
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.
7 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!”
And Samson said to them, If ye act thus, for a certainty I will avenge myself on you, and then I will cease.
8 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.
And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter. And he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the cliff Etam.
9 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].
And the Philistines went up, and encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi.
10 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.”
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.
11 [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.”
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.
12 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!”
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.
13 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.
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.
14 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.
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.
15 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.
And he found a fresh jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand and took it, and slew with it a thousand men.
16 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.”
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.
17 When he finished killing those men, he threw the jawbone away, and later that place was called Jawbone Hill.
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.
18 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]?”
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?
19 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.
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.
20 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].
And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.
