[1] But 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. [2] Her
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. [3] Samson said to them, This
time shall I be blameless in regard of the Philistines, when I do them a
mischief. [4] Samson 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. [5] When 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. [6] Then 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. [7] Samson
said to them, If you do after this manner, surely I will be avenged of you,
and after that I will cease. [8] He struck them hip and thigh with a great
slaughter: and he went down and lived in the cleft of the rock of Etam. [9]
Then the Philistines went up, and encamped in Judah, and spread themselves
in Lehi. [10] The 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.
[11] Then 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. [12] They 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.
[13] They 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. [14] When 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. [15] He
found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put forth his hand, and took it, and
struck a thousand men therewith. [16] Samson said, With the jawbone of a
donkey, heaps on heaps, With the jawbone of a donkey I have struck a
thousand men. [17] It 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. [18] He 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. [19]
But 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: why the name of
it was called En-hakkore, which is in Lehi, to this day. [20] He judged
Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.
