Judges 15: 1 - 16: 31
| 1But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat. He said, “I will go in to my wife’s room.” |
| But her father wouldn’t allow him to go in. 2Her father said, “I most certainly thought that you utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Isn’t her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please, take her instead.” |
| 3Samson said to them, “This time I will be blameless in the case of the Philistines when I harm them.” 4Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the middle between every two tails. 5When he had set the torches on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the olive groves. |
| 6Then the Philistines said, “Who has done this?” |
| They said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.” The Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire. |
| 7Samson said to them, “If you behave like this, surely I will take revenge on you, and after that I will cease.” 8He struck them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; and he went down and lived in the cave in Etam’s rock. 9Then the Philistines went up, encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. |
| 10The men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” |
| They said, “We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he has done to us.” |
| 11Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave in Etam’s rock, and said to Samson, “Don’t you know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” |
| He said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.” |
| 12They said to him, “We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines.” |
| Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.” |
| 13They spoke to him, saying, “No, but we will bind you securely and deliver you into their hands; but surely we will not kill you.” They bound him with two new ropes, and brought him up from the rock. |
| 14When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him. Then the LORD’s Spirit came mightily on him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire; and his bands dropped from off his hands. 15He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, put out his hand, took it, and struck a thousand men with it. 16Samson said, “With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps on heaps; with the jawbone of a donkey I have struck a thousand men.” 17When he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone out of his hand; and that place was called Ramath Lehi. |
| 18He was very thirsty, and called on 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 hands of the uncircumcised?” |
| 19But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out of it. When he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived. Therefore its name was called En Hakkore, which is in Lehi, to this day. 20He judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines. |
| 1Samson went to Gaza, and saw there a prostitute, and went in to her. 2The Gazites were told, “Samson is here!” They surrounded him and laid wait for him all night in the gate of the city, and were quiet all the night, saying, “Wait until morning light; then we will kill him.” 3Samson lay until midnight, then arose at midnight and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city, with the two posts, and plucked them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders and carried them up to the top of the mountain that is before Hebron. |
| 4It came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. 5The lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, “Entice him, and see in which his great strength lies, and by what means we may prevail against him, that we may bind him to afflict him; and we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.” |
| 6Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me where your great strength lies, and what you might be bound to afflict you.” |
| 7Samson said to her, “If they bind me with seven green cords that were never dried, then shall I become weak, and be as another man.” |
| 8Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven green cords which had not been dried, and she bound him with them. 9Now she had an ambush waiting in the inner room. She said to him, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” He broke the cords as a flax thread is broken when it touches the fire. So his strength was not known. |
| 10Delilah said to Samson, “Behold, you have mocked me, and told me lies. Now please tell me how you might be bound.” |
| 11He said to her, “If they only bind me with new ropes with which no work has been done, then shall I become weak, and be as another man.” |
| 12So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them, then said to him, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” The ambush was waiting in the inner room. He broke them off his arms like a thread. |
| 13Delilah said to Samson, “Until now, you have mocked me and told me lies. Tell me with what you might be bound.” |
| He said to her, “If you weave the seven locks of my head with the fabric on the loom.” |
| 14She fastened it with the pin, and said to him, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” He awakened out of his sleep, and plucked away the pin of the beam and the fabric. |
| 15She said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and have not told me where your great strength lies.” |
| 16When she pressed him daily with her words and urged him, his soul was troubled to death. 17He told her all his heart and said to her, “No razor has ever come on my head; for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I am shaved, then my strength will go from me and I will become weak, and be like any other man.” |
| 18When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, “Come up this once, for he has told me all his heart.” Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hand. 19She made him sleep on her knees; and she called for a man and shaved off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him. 20She said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” |
| He awoke out of his sleep, and said, “I will go out as at other times, and shake myself free.” But he didn’t know that the LORD had departed from him. 21The Philistines laid hold on him and put out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza and bound him with fetters of bronze; and he ground at the mill in the prison. 22However, the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaved. |
| 23The lords of the Philistines gathered together to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god, and to rejoice; for they said, “Our god has delivered Samson our enemy into our hand.” 24When the people saw him, they praised their god; for they said, “Our god has delivered our enemy and the destroyer of our country, who has slain many of us, into our hand.” |
| 25When their hearts were merry, they said, “Call for Samson, that he may entertain us.” They called for Samson out of the prison; and he performed before them. They set him between the pillars; 26and Samson said to the boy who held him by the hand, “Allow me to feel the pillars on which the house rests, that I may lean on them.” 27Now the house was full of men and women; and all the lords of the Philistines were there; and there were on the roof about three thousand men and women, who saw while Samson performed. 28Samson called to the LORD, and said, “Lord GOD, remember me, please, and strengthen me, please, only this once, God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.” 29Samson took hold of the two middle pillars on which the house rested and leaned on them, the one with his right hand and the other with his left. 30Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” He bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell on the lords, and on all the people who were in it. So the dead that he killed at his death were more than those who he killed in his life. |
| 31Then his brothers and all the house of his father came down and took him, and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the burial site of Manoah his father. He judged Israel twenty years. |
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