Judges 15

1After some days, during the wheat harvest, Samson went to his wife with a young goat and said, "I will go in to my wife in the bedroom," but her father would not let him enter.

2Her father said, "I was sure you hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Isn't her younger sister better than her? Please let her be yours instead of her."

3Samson said to them, "This time I am blameless toward the Philistines, because I am doing them harm."

4Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, took torches, turned tail to tail, and placed one torch in the midst between two tails.

5He lit the torches and released them into the standing grain of the Philistines, burning the shocks and the standing grain, along with the olive groves.

6The Philistines said, “Who did this?” They answered, “Samson, the Timnite's son-in-law, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion.” The Philistines came up, burned her and her father with fire.

7Samson said to them, "If you do such a thing, then I will take vengeance on you, and after that I will cease."

8He struck them leg and thigh with a great blow, went down, and lived in the cleft of the rock Etam.

9The Philistines came up and encamped in Judah, and spread out in Lehi.

10Judah's men said, "Why did you come up against us?" They said, "We came up to bind Samson, to do to him as he did to us."

11Three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock Etam and said to Samson, "Do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? What is this you have done to us?" He said to them, "As they did to me, so I have done to them."

12They said to him, "We came down to bind you and hand you over to the Philistines." Samson said to them, "Swear to me that you yourselves will not fall upon me."

13They said to him, saying, "No, but we will surely bind you and give you into their hand; we will certainly not kill you." They bound him with two new ropes and led him up from the rock.

14As he reached Lehi, the Philistines shouted to confront him, but Yahweh's Spirit rushed over him, and the ropes upon his arms became like flax scorched in fire, his bonds melting from his hands.

15He found a fresh donkey jawbone, stretched out his hand and took it, and struck a thousand men with it.

16Samson said, "With a donkey's jawbone, heap upon heap; with a donkey's jawbone I have struck a thousand men."

17When he finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand and called that place Ramath-lehi.

18He thirsted exceedingly, called to Yahweh, and said, "You have granted this great deliverance by your servant's hand; now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?"

19God split open the hollow place in Lehi, and water came out from it. He drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. So he called its name En-hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day.

20He judged Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.