THE BOOK OF JUDGES

Judges Chapter 15

1 ¶ But after a while, at the time of wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife taking along a young goat; and he said, I will go in to my wife in her chamber. But her father would not allow him to go in.

2 And her father said, I truly thought that you utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to one of the men who accompanied you: is not her younger sister fairer than she? take her sister, I pray you, instead of her.

3 And Samson said concerning them, Now I will be blameless in regard to the Philistines, though I do them harm.

4 And Samson went and caught three hundred jackals, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the middle between two tails.

5 And when he had set the brands on fire, he let the jackals go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing grain, as well as the olive orchards.

6 Then the Philistines said, Who has done this? And they were told, Samson, the son in law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife, and given her to one of the men who accompanied him. And the Philistines came up, and burned her and her father with fire.

7 And Samson said to them, If this is what you do, I will surely take revenge on you, before I am finished.

8 So he struck them hip and thigh slaughtering many: then he went down and stayed in the cleft of Etam rock.

9 ¶ Then the Philistines went up, and pitched camp, and spread out in Judah near Lehi.

10 And the men of Judah said, Why have you come up against us? And they answered, We have come to capture Samson, and to do to him as he has done to us.

11 Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of Etam rock, and said to Samson, Don’t you know that the Philistines are rulers over us? what is this that you have done to us? And he said to them, As they did to me, so have I done to them.

12 And they said to him, We have come down to bind you, that we may turn you over to the Philistines. And Samson said to them, Swear to me, that you will not fall upon me yourselves.

13 And they said to him, No; we will bind you securely, and deliver you to them: but we will certainly not kill you. And they bound him with two new ropes, and brought him up from the rock.

14 And when he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him: and the Spirit of the LORD came upon him mightily, and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that had caught fire, and his bonds dropped from his hands.

15 And he found a new jawbone from a donkey, and reached out, and took it, and slew a thousand men with it.

16 And Samson said, With the jawbone of a donkey, I have piled them in a heap, with the jaw of a donkey have I slain a thousand men.

17 And when he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone, and named that place Ramathlehi.

18 ¶ But he was very thirsty, and called on the LORD, saying, You have accomplished this great victory through the hand of your servant: shall I now die of thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?

19 So God opened an hollow place that was at Lehi, and water came out of it; and after he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived: therefore he named the spring Enhakkore, it is in Lehi to this day.

20 And he judged Israel for twenty years during the days of the Philistines.