The Father Delivers Through Samson
Denied his wife, Samson burns the Philistine harvest with three hundred foxes, and they burn her and her father alive. Judah hands him over bound, but the Spirit of our Father rushes on him and a jawbone leaves a thousand dead. Then, dying of thirst, he cries out.
15 1Some time later, at wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat, saying, "Let me go to my wife, into her room." Her father wouldn't let him in.
2Her father said, "I thought you truly hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Isn't her younger sister prettier? Take her instead."
3Samson said to them, "This time I'm blameless toward the Philistines when I harm them." 4Samson went and caught 300 foxes, took torches, turned tail to tail, and tied one torch between each pair of tails. 5He lit torches, released the foxes into the Philistines' standing grain, burning stacked grain, standing grain, and vineyards and olive groves.
6The Philistines asked, "Who did this?" "Samson, the Timnite's son-in-law," they said, "since the Timnite took Samson's wife, giving her to his friend." So they went up and burned her and her father with fire.
7Samson said to them, "Since you act like this, I will not stop until I have taken my revenge on you." 8He struck them down, hip and thigh, a great slaughter, then went down to stay in the crevice of the rock of Etam. 9The Philistines went up and camped in Judah, raiding as far as Lehi.
10Judah's men asked, "Why attack us?" They said, "To bind Samson, to do to him as he did to us."
113,000 men of Judah went down to the crevice in Etam's rock and asked Samson, "Don't you know the Philistines rule over us? What have you done to us?" He answered, "I only did to them what they did to me."
12They said, "We've come to bind you and give you to the Philistines." Samson said, "Swear you won't kill me yourselves."
13"Agreed," they said. "We'll only tie and hand you over—not kill you." Then they tied him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.
14At Lehi the Philistines met him shouting. The Spirit of our Father rushed on him; the ropes on his arms became like flax burned by fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. 15He found a fresh donkey jawbone, reached out, grabbed it, and killed 1,000 men with it. 16Samson said, "With the jawbone of a donkey, heap upon heap; with the jawbone of a donkey I killed 1,000 men." a a 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." 17When he finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand; and that place was named Ramath-lehi. b b v17 Ramath-lehi means "the height of the jawbone" — the place was named for the weapon Samson cast aside there.
18Very thirsty, he cried to our Father: "You gave this great victory through your servant. Now must I die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?"
19So our Father split open the hollow at Lehi; water flowed out. When Samson drank, his spirit returned and he revived. So the spring is named En-hakkore, still at Lehi today. c c 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. 20Samson judged Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.
