CHAPTER 15
Later on,
at the time
of the wheat
harvest,
Samson
took
a young goat
and went to visit
his wife.
“I want to go
to
my wife
in her room,”
he said.
But her father
would not
let
him enter.
“I was sure
you thoroughly hated her,”
said
her father,
“so I gave
her to one of the men who accompanied yo
Is not
her younger
sister
more beautiful
than she?
Please
take
her instead.”
Then Samson
went out
and caught
three
hundred
foxes.
And he took
torches,
turned
the foxes tail-to-tail,
and fastened
a
torch
between
each pair
of tails.
Then he lit
the torches
and released the foxes
into the standing grain
of the Philistines,
burning up
the piles of grain
and the standing grain,
as well as
the vineyards
and olive groves.
“Who
did
this?”
the Philistines
demanded.
“It was Samson,
the son-in-law
of the Timnite,”
they were told.
“For
his wife
was given
to his companion.”
So the Philistines
went up
and burned
her and her father
to death.
And Samson
told them,
“Because
you have done
this,
I will not rest
until
I have taken vengeance
upon you.”
And he struck
them ruthlessly
with a great
slaughter,
and then went down
and stayed
in the cave
at the rock
of Etam.
“Why
have you attacked
us?”
said
the men
of Judah.
The Philistines replied,
“We have come
to arrest
Samson
and pay him back
for what
he has done
to us.”
In response, three
thousand
men
of Judah
went
to
the cave
at the rock
of Etam,
and they asked
Samson,
“Do you not
realize
that
the Philistines
rule
over us?
What
have you done
to us?”
“I have done
to them what
they did to me,”
he replied.
But they said
to him,
“We have come down
to arrest you
and hand you over to
the Philistines.”
Samson
replied,
“Swear
to me
that
you will not kill
me yourselves.”
“No,”
they answered,
“we will not
kill you,
but
we will tie you up securely
and hand you over to
them.”
So they bound him
with two
new
ropes
and led him up
from
the rock.
When
Samson arrived
in
Lehi,
the Philistines
came out shouting
against him.
And the Spirit
of the LORD
came mightily
upon him.
The ropes
on
his arms
became
like burnt
flax,
and the bonds
broke loose
from
his hands.
He found
the fresh
jawbone
of a donkey,
reached out
his hand
and took it,
and struck down
a thousand
men.
Then Samson
said:
“With the jawbone
of a donkey
I have piled them
into heaps.
With the jawbone
of a donkey
I have slain
a thousand
men.”
And
when Samson had finished
speaking,
he cast
the jawbone
from his hand;
and he named
that
place
Ramath-lehi.
And being very
thirsty,
Samson cried out
to
the LORD,
“You
have accomplished
this
great
deliverance
through
Your servant.
Must I now
die
of thirst
and fall
into the hands
of the uncircumcised?”
So God
opened up
the hollow place
in Lehi,
and water
came out
of it.
When Samson drank,
his strength
returned,
and he was revived.
That is why
he named it
En-hakkore,
and it remains
in Lehi
to
this
day.