Judges, Chapter 15

1. But it came to pass some time later, 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 would not permit him to go in.    2. And her father said, I truly thought that you had completely hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion: is not her younger sister fairer than she? take her, I pray you, instead of her.    3. And Samson said concerning them, Now shall I be more blameless than the Philistines, though I do them a displeasure.    4. And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the midst between two tails.    5. And when he had set the torches on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burnt up both the stacks, and also the standing grain, with the vineyards and olives.    6. Then the Philistines said, Who has done this? And they answered, Samson, the son in law of the Timnite, because he had taken his wife, and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire.    7. And Samson said to them, Though you have done this, yet will I be avenged on you, and after that I will cease.    8. And he struck them down hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and dwelt in the top of the rock Etam.    9. Then the Philistines went up, and pitched in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi.    10. And the men of Judah said, Why are you come up against us? And they answered, 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 to the top of the rock Etam, and said to Samson, Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? what is this that you have done to us? And he said to them, As they did to me, so have I done to them.    12. And they said to him, We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines. And Samson said to them, Swear to me, that you will not fall upon me yourselves.    13. And they spoke to him, saying, No; but we will bind you securely, and deliver you into their hand: but surely we will not kill you. And they bound him with two new cords, and brought him up from the rock.    14. And when he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him: and the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed off from his hands.    15. And he found a new jawbone of a donkey, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men with it.    16. And Samson said, With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of a donkey have I slain a thousand men.    17. And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he threw away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramath-lehi.    18. And he was very thirsty, and called on the LORD, and said, You have given this great deliverance into the hand of your servant: and now shall I die of thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?    19. But God opened a hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water out of it; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: wherefore he called the name of it En-hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day.    20. And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.