Judges 15
1 And it came to pass after a time, in
the days of wheat harvest, that Sampson visited his wife with a kid, and said,
I will go in to my wife even into the chamber: but her father did not suffer
him to go in. 2 And her father spoke,
saying, I said that thou didst surely hate her, and I gave her to one of thy
friends: is not her younger sister better than she?
let her be to thee instead of her.
3 And Sampson said to them, Even for
once am I guiltless with regard to the Philistines, in that I do mischief
among them. 4 And Sampson went and
caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put
a torch between two tails, and fastened it.
5 And he set fire to the torches, and
sent the foxes into the corn of the Philistines; and
every thing was burnt from the threshing floor to the standing corn, and even
to the vineyard and
aGr. olive.olives. 6 And the Philistines said,
Who has done these things? and they said, Sampson the
son-in-law of the Thamnite, because he has taken his wife, and given her to
one of his friends; and the Philistines went up, and burnt her and her
father's house with fire.
7 And Sampson said to them, Though ye
may have dealt thus with her, verily I will be avenged of you, and afterwards
I will cease. 8 And he smote them leg
on thigh with a great overthrow; and went down and
dwelt in a cave of the rock Etam.
9 And the Philistines went up, and
encamped in Juda, and spread themselves abroad in Lechi.
10 And the
bGr. man.men of Juda said, Why are ye come up against us? and the Philistines said, We
are come up to bind Sampson, and to do to him as he has done to us.
11 And the three thousand men of Juda
went down to the hole of the rock Etam, and they said to Sampson, Knowest thou
not that the Philistines rule over us? and what
is this that thou hast done
to us? and Sampson said to them, As they did to me, so have I done to them.
12 And they said to him, We are come
down to bind thee to deliver thee into the hand of the Philistines: and
Sampson said to them, Swear to me that ye will not fall upon me yourselves.
13 And they spoke to him, saying,
Nay, but we will only bind thee fast, and deliver thee into their hand, and
will by no means slay thee: and they bound him with two new ropes, and brought
him from that rock.
14 And they came to
cGr. the jaw.Lechi: and the Philistines shouted, and ran to meet him: and the Spirit of
the Lord came mightily upon him, and the ropes that were upon his arms became
as tow which is burnt with fire; and his bonds were consumed from off his
hands. 15 And he found the jaw-bone
of an ass that had been cast away, and he put forth his hand and took it, and
smote with it a thousand men. 16 And
Sampson said, With the jaw-bone of an ass I have utterly destroyed them, for
with the jaw-bone of an ass I have smitten a thousand men.
17 And it came to pass when he ceased
speaking, that he cast the jaw-bone out of his hand; and he called that place
the
dThis, though unusual, is possibly the meaning of ἀναίρεσις here.Lifting of the jaw-bone.
18 And he was very thirsty, and wept
before the Lord, and said, Thou hast been well pleased to grant this great
deliverance by the hand of thy servant, and now shall I die for thirst, and
fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?
19 And God broke open a hollow place
in the jaw, and there came thence water, and he drank; and his spirit returned
and he revived: therefore the name of
eGr. it.the fountain was called ‘The well of the invoker,’ which is in Lechi, until
this day.
20 And he judged Israel in the days
of the Philistines twenty years.