Judges 15, verse 1. Soon after these days, in the days of the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat. And he said, “I will go to my wife in her private chamber.” But her father would not permit him to enter. Judges 15, verse 2. Her father said, “I thought that you thoroughly hated her; therefore I gave her to one of your friends. Is not her younger sister better than she? Please, take her instead.”
Samson Decimates the Philistines
Judges 15, verse 3. And Samson said to them, “This once I shall be blameless regarding the Philistines, for I will do mischief among them!” Judges 15, verse 4. Then Samson went and caught three hundred foxes; and he took torches, turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails, and tied it. Judges 15, verse 5. When he had set the torches on fire, he sent the foxes out into the standing grain of the Philistines, and they burned from the threshing floor even to the standing grain, as far as the vineyard and olive groves. Judges 15, verse 6. Then the Philistines said, “Who did this?” And they answered, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to one of his friends.” So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. Judges 15, verse 7. Samson said to them, “Whereas you dealt thus with her, surely I will take revenge upon you for a month and I will finally stop.” Judges 15, verse 8. So he struck them upon the thigh of the leg with a great blow. Afterward he went down and dwelt in a cave at the rock of Etam. Judges 15, verse 9. Now the Philistines went up and encamped in Judah, and they spread out across Levi. Judges 15, verse 10. And the men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” So the Philistines answered, “We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he has done to us.” Judges 15, verse 11. Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave at the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? Why did you do this to us?” And Sampson said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.” Judges 15, verse 12. But they said to him, “We have come down to bind you so that we may deliver you to the Philistines.” Then Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not kill me yourselves.” Judges 15, verse 13. So they spoke to him, saying, “No, but we will bind you securely and deliver you into their hand; but we will surely not put you to death.” And they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from that rock. Judges 15, verse 14. When they came to Lehi, the Philistines wailed loudly and ran to engage him. But the Spirit of the Lord leapt upon him, and the ropes on his arms became like flax burned with fire, and his bonds fell away from his hands. Judges 15, verse 15. He found the jawbone of an ass that had been cast aside, and he reached out and took it, and struck a thousand men with it. Judges 15, verse 16. Then Samson said: “With the jawbone of an ass I utterly destroyed them, For with the jawbone of an ass I struck down a thousand men!” Judges 15, verse 17. And so when he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand, and called that place the Ramath Lehi. Judges 15, verse 18. Then he became exceedingly thirsty, and wept before the Lord and said, “You were well-pleased to grant this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant; and now I shall die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised.” Judges 15, verse 19. And God broke open a hollow in the ground, and out from it water came forth, and he drank. His spirit returned and he was revived. Therefore he called it “the Spring of the One Who Called,” which is in Lehi to this day. Judges 15, verse 20. And in the days of the Philistines, he judged Israel twenty years.