Judges 15
1 After some days, during the time of wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat and went to visit his wife. He said to himself, “I will go to my wife's room.” But her father would not allow 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 Her father said, “I really thought you hated her, so I gave her to your friend. Her younger sister is more beautiful than she is, is she not? Take her instead.”
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 Samson said to them, “This time I will be innocent in regard to the Philistines when I hurt them.”
Samson replied, “No! And this time I have a right to get revenge on you Philistines!”
4 Samson went and caught three hundred foxes and he tied together each pair, tail to tail. Then he took torches and tied them in the middle of each pair of tails.
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 When he had set the torches on fire, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and they set fire to both the stacked grain and the grain standing in the field, along with the vineyards and the olive orchards.
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 The Philistines asked, “Who did this?” They were told, “Samson, the Timnite's son-in-law, did this because the Timnite took Samson's wife and gave her to his friend.” Then the Philistines went and burned up her and her father.
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 Samson said to them, “If this is what you do, I will get my revenge against you, and after that is done, I will stop.”
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 Then he cut them to pieces, hip and thigh, with a great slaughter. Then he went down and lived in a cave in the cliff of 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 Then the Philistines came up and they prepared for battle in Judah and set up their army in Lehi.
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 The men of Judah said, “Why have you come up to attack us?” They said, “We are attacking so we may capture Samson, and do to him as he has 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 Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave in the cliff of Etam, and they said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What is this you have done to us?” Samson said to them, “They did to me, and so I have done to 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 They said to Samson, “We have come down to tie you up and give you into the hands of the Philistines.” Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not kill 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 They said to him, “No, we will only tie you with ropes and hand you over to them. We promise we will not kill you.” Then they tied him up with two new ropes 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 came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting as they met him. Then Yahweh's Spirit came on him with power. The ropes on his arms became like burnt flax, and they fell 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 Samson found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and he picked it up and killed a thousand men with it.
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 Samson said, “With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey I have killed 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 When Samson finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone, and he called the place Ramath Lehi.
When he finished killing those men, he threw the jawbone away, and later that place was called Jawbone Hill.
18 Samson was very thirsty and called on Yahweh and said, “You have given this great victory to your servant. But now will I die of thirst and fall into the hands of those who are 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 God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi and water came out. When he drank, his strength returned and he revived. So he called the name of that place En Hakkore, and it is at Lehi to 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 Samson judged Israel in the days of the Philistines for 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].
