Chapter 15
1 But after a while , in the time of wheat harvest , Samson visited his wife with a young goat . He said, " I will go in to my wife’s room ." But her father wouldn’t allow him to go in .
2 Her father said, " I most certainly thought that you 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 I will be blameless in the case of the Philistines when I harm them ."
4 Samson went and caught three hundred foxes , and took torches , and turned tail to tail , and put a torch in the middle between every two tails .
5 When he had set the torches on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines , and burned 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 burned her and her father with fire.
7 Samson said to them , " If you behave like this , surely I will take revenge on 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 cave in Etam ’s rock .
9 Then the Philistines went up , encamped in Judah , and spread themselves in Lehi .
10 The men of Judah said, " Why have you come up against us ?" They said, " We have come up to bind Samson , to do to him as he has done to us ."
11 Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave in Etam ’s rock , 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 I have 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 attack me yourselves ."
13 They spoke to him , saying, " No , but we will bind you securely and deliver you into their hands ; 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 . Then Yahweh ’s Spirit came mightily on him , and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that was burned with fire; and his bands dropped from off his hands .
15 He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey , put out his hand , took it , and struck a thousand men with it .
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 When he had finished speaking , he threw 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 of thirst , and fall into the hands 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 . Therefore its name was called En Hakkore, which is in Lehi , to this day .
20 He judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines .