Judges Chapter 15

Samson’s Vengeance on the Philistines

¹ After a while at the time of wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife with a kid. He said, “I’ll sleep with my wife in her room.”

But her father wouldn’t let him go in, ² “I thought you utterly hated her; so I gave her to your companion. Isn’t her younger sister better looking? Take her instead.”

³ Samson told them, “This time I’ll be blameless for harming the Philistines.”     

⁴ Samson caught 300 foxes, turned them tail to tail, and put a torch between each set of tails. ⁵ He lit the torches and released the foxes in the Philistines’ standing grain and olive orchards. ⁶ The Philistines asked, “Who did this?” They said, “Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law, because he gave his wife to his companion.” The Philistines came up and burned her and her father. ⁷ Samson told them, “If this is what you do, I swear I’ll take my revenge on you, and after that I’ll quit.” ⁸ He struck them hip and thigh with a great slaughter and went down to stay in the cave at Etam.   Jud 15:1-8

⁹ Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah and made a raid on Lehi. ¹⁰ The men in Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?”

They said, “We’ve come to tie up Samson and do to him as he did to us.”

¹¹ Then 3,000 men from Judah went down to the cave in the rock at Etam, and said to Samson, “Don’t you know the Philistines rule us? What have you done to us? ¹² We’ve come down to tie you up and give you to the Philistines.”

 “Swear that you won’t fall on me yourselves.”

¹³ “We’ll tie you up and give you to them. We won’t kill you.”

So they tied him up with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.                   Jud 15:9-13

¹⁴ When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him, and the Spirit of the LORD came on him powerfully. The ropes on his arms became like smoldering flax, and his bonds melted off his hands. ¹⁵ He found a fresh jawbone from a donkey and killed 1,000 men with it. ¹⁶ He said,

            “With a donkey’s ‘jawbone,’

                        piles on piles,

            With a donkey’s jawbone,

                        I killed 1,000 men.”

¹⁷ After he said that, he threw it away. That place was called Ramath-lehi [Jawbone Hill].

            ¹⁸ He was thirsty and “cried out” to the LORD, “You’ve granted me this great deliverance. Am I to die from thirst and fall into the hands of uncircumcised men?” ¹⁹ God split open the hollow place that’s in Lehi, and water started coming out of it. When he drank it, his energy returned, and he revived. So he named it En-hakkore; it’s still at Lehi. ²⁰ He judged Israel 20 years during the time of the Philistines.       Jud 15:14-20