The Father Delivers Through Samson
15 1 After some time, during the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, bringing a young goat. He said, "I want to go to my wife in her room." But her father would not let him go in.
2 "I was sure you utterly hated her," her father said, "so I gave her to your companion. Isn't her younger sister more beautiful than she is? Please take her instead."
3 Samson said to them, "This time I will be blameless toward the Philistines when I do them harm." 4 So Samson went and caught three hundred foxes. He took torches, turned the foxes tail to tail, and fastened a torch between each pair of tails. 5 When he had set the torches ablaze, he turned the foxes loose in the standing grain of the Philistines, burning up the stacked grain and the standing grain, along with the vineyards and olive groves.
6 The Philistines asked, "Who did this?" They were told, "Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because the Timnite took Samson's wife and gave her to his companion." So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father to death.
7 Samson said to them, "Since this is how you act, I will not stop until I have taken my revenge on you." 8 He struck them down, hip and thigh, in a great slaughter. Then he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam. 9 The Philistines went up and camped in Judah, raiding as far as Lehi.
10 The men of Judah asked, "Why have you come up against us?" They answered, "We have come to capture Samson and to do to him as he did to us."
11 Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam and said to Samson, "Don't you know that the Philistines rule over us? What is this you have done to us?" He answered, "I only did to them what they did to me."
12 They said to him, "We have come to bind you and hand you over to the Philistines." Samson said, "Swear to me that you yourselves will not kill me."
13 "Agreed," they answered. "We will only bind you and hand you over to them; we will certainly not kill you." So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.
14 When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. Then the Spirit of our Father rushed upon him; the ropes on his arms became like flax burned in fire, and the bonds melted off his hands. 15 Finding the fresh jawbone of a donkey, he reached out, took it, and struck down a thousand men with it. 16 Then Samson said, "With the jawbone of a donkey, heap upon heap; with the jawbone of a donkey I have struck down a thousand men." 1 1 v16 The Hebrew here is a play on words: the word for "donkey" and the word for "heap" sound the same, so Samson's boast rings like "with a donkey's jaw I made donkey-heaps of them." 17 When he finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand; and that place was named Ramath-lehi. 2 2 v17 Ramath-lehi means "the height of the jawbone" — the place was named for the weapon Samson cast aside there.
18 Now he was very thirsty, and he cried out to our Father: "You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?"
19 So our Father split open the hollow place at Lehi, and water came out of it. When Samson drank, his spirit returned and he revived. That is why the spring was named En-hakkore, and it is at Lehi to this day. 3 3 v19 En-hakkore means "the spring of the one who called" — named for Samson's cry to his Father, which the Father answered with water. 20 Samson judged Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.