Samson's Vengeance and Triumph over the Philistines
Judges 15:1-20
1And it came to pass after some days, in the days of the wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid of goats, and he said, I will go in to my wife, into the chamber. But her father would not permit him to go in.2And her father said, I said, for you surely hate her, and I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister better than she? Let her, please, be yours instead of her.3And Samson said to them, This time I am cleared from the Philistines, for I am doing them harm.4And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and he took torches, and he turned tail to tail, and he set one torch between the two tails in the middle.5And he set fire to the torches and released them into the standing grain of the Philistines, and he burned from the stack to the standing grain and to the vineyard of olives.6And the Philistines said, Who has done this? And they said, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion. And the Philistines went up and burned her and her father with fire.7And Samson said to them, If you do like this, then I will surely avenge myself on you, and after that I will cease.8And he struck them hip and thigh with a great blow, and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam.9And the Philistines went up and camped in Judah, and they spread out in Lehi.10And the men of Judah said, Why have you come up against us? And they said, To bind Samson we have come up, to do to him as he has done to us.11And 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 then is this that you have done to us? And he said to them, As they did to me, so I have done to them.12And they said to him, "We have come down to bind you, to give you into the hand of the Philistines." And Samson said to them, "Swear to me that you yourselves will not attack me."13And they said to him, "No, but we will surely bind you and give you into their hand, but we will not kill you." And they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.14When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted to meet him. And the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that has burned in fire, and his bonds melted from his hands.15And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and he reached out his hand and took it, and he struck down a thousand men with it.16And Samson said, With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps; with the jawbone of a donkey I have struck down a thousand men.17And when he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand, and he called that place Ramath-lehi.18And he became very thirsty, and he called to the LORD and said, You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant, and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?19And God split open the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out from it. And when he drank, his spirit returned and he revived. Therefore its name was called En-hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day.20And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.