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The Book of Judges 15

15 Now it happened after some days, during the days of the harvest of wheat, that Samson visited his wife with a kid from the goats. for he said, “I will go in to my wife, to the inner room.” But her father did not allow him to go in. 2 Her father said, “Truly I said that surely you hated her, so I gave her to your close friend. Is not her younger sister better than she? Please may she be yours in her place.” 3 Samson said to them, “This time I am blameless concerning the Philistines when I am inflicting calamity against them.” 4 Then Samson went and captured three hundred foxes and he made them turn tail to tail. He took torches, and he set one torch between two of the tails in the middle. 5 He kindled fire in the torches, he let them loose into the standing grain of the Philistines. As a result he burned both the stack of sheaves and also the standing grain, even a vineyard, and olive orchard. 6 So the Philistines said, “Who has done this?”, and they replied “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and he gave her to his close friend.” As a result the Philistines went up and they burned her and her father with fire. 7 Samson said to them, “Since you have actually acted like this, surely I have avenged myself against you, and afterwards, I will stop.” 8 He struck them on the lower leg as well as the thigh, a great slaughter. Then he went down and he remained in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

9 But the Philistines went up and they encamped in Judah and they had spread themselves out in Lehi. 10 Now the men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” They replied, “We have come up in order to bind Samson, to do to him just as he has done to us.” 11 Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and they said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are ruling over us? What is this you have done to us?” He replied to them, “Just as they have done to me, so I have done to them.” 12 They replied to him, “We have come down to bind you in order to give you over into the hand of the Philistines.” But Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not instead attack me yourselves.” 13 They replied to him saying, “No, however surely we will bind you and we will give you over into their hand. But truly we will not kill you.” Then they bound him with two new ropes and they brought him up from the rock.

14 He had come as far as Lehi, and then the Philistines shouted as they encountered him. Then the Spirit of Yahweh rushed upon him. The ropes which were on his arms became as flax stalks which they had burned in fire, so his bands were loosed from upon his hands. 15 He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and he stretched forth his hand and he took it and he slaughtered a thousand men with it. 16 Then Samson said,

“With the jawbone of the donkey, one heap, two heaps,

with the jawbone of the donkey I have slaughtered a thousand men.”

17 Now it happened when he finished speaking that he hurled the jawbone out of his hand, and he named that place Ramath Lehi. 18 Then he was very thirsty and cried out to Yahweh and he said, “You Yourself have given this great victory into the hand of Your servant. But now must I die with this thirst so that I will fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?” 19 So God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi and water came out of it. When he drank, his spirit returned so that he revived. Therefore he called the name of it En Hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day. 20 Thus he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.

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