Samson Strikes Down the Philistines

1Now it happened that after a while, in the time of the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat and said, “I will go in to my wife in her room.” But her father did not let him enter. 2And her father said, “I really thought that you hated her intensely; so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister better than she? Please let her be yours [†]instead.” 3Samson then said to them, “This time I shall be innocent in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm.” 4So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches and turned the foxes tail to tail and put one torch in the middle between two tails. 5Then he set fire to the torches and sent [†]the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines. So he caused both the shocks and the standing grain, along with the vineyards and groves, to burn. 6Then the Philistines said, “Who did this?” And they said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because [†]he took his wife and gave her to his companion.” So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. 7Then Samson said to them, “If you act like this, then I will surely take revenge on you, but after that I will cease.” 8And he struck them [†]ruthlessly with a great slaughter; and he went down and lived in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

9Then the Philistines went up and camped in Judah and spread out in Lehi. 10So the men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” And they said, “We have come up to bind Samson in order to do to him as he did to us.” 11Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” And he said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.” 12And they said to him, “We have come down to bind you so that we may give you into the hand of the Philistines.” And Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you yourselves will not [†]kill me.” 13So they said to [†]him, “No, but we will bind you fast and give you into their hands; yet surely we will not put you to death.” Then they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.

14When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him. And the Spirit of Yahweh [†]came upon him mightily so that the ropes that were on his arms were as flax that is burned with fire, and his bonds [†]dropped from his hands. 15And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, so he sent forth his hand and took it and struck down 1,000 men with it. 16Then Samson said,

“With the jawbone of a donkey,

[†]Heaps upon heaps,

With the jawbone of a donkey

I have struck down 1,000 men.”

17Now it happened that when he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand; and he named that place [†]Ramath-lehi. 18Then he became very thirsty, and he called to Yahweh and said, “You have given this great salvation by the hand of Your slave, but now [†]shall I die of thirst [†]and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19So God split the hollow place that is in Lehi and water came out of it. Then he drank, and his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore he named it [†]En-hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day. 20And he judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines.