Judges 15 · שופטים

But it came to pass after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, that Shimshon visited his wife with a kid; and he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber. But her father would not permit him to go in.

And her father said, I thought indeed that thou didst hate her; therefore I gave her to thy companion: is not her younger sister fairer than she? take her, I pray thee, instead of her.

And Shimshon said concerning them, Now shall I be blameless in regard to the Pelishtim, when I do them a mischief.

And Shimshon went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the midst between two tails.

And when he had set the torches on fire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Pelishtim, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, together with the oliveyards.

Then the Pelishtim said, Who has done this? And they answered, Shimshon, the son in law of the Timni, because he had taken his wife, and given her to his companion. And the Pelishtim went up, and burnt her and her father with fire.

And Shimshon said to them, If this is what you have done, I will be avenged on you, and after that I will cease.

And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock ῾Etam.

Then the Pelishtim went up, and pitched in Yehuda, and ranged themselves against Leĥi.

And the men of Yehuda said, Why are you come up against us? And they answered, To bind Shimshon are we come up, to do to him as he has done to us.

Then three thousand men of Yehuda went to the cleft of the rock ῾Etam, and said to Shimshon, Knowst thou not that the Pelishtim are rulers over us? what is this that thou hast done to us? And he said to them, As they did to me, so have I done to them.

And they said to him, We have come down to bind thee, that we may deliver thee into the hand of the Pelishtim. And Shimshon said to them, Swear to me, that you will not fall upon me yourselves.

And they spoke to him, saying, No; but we will bind thee fast, and deliver thee into their hand: but surely we will not kill thee. And they bound him with two new cords, and brought him up from the rock.

And when he came to Leĥi, the Pelishtim shouted against him: and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him: and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands melted from off his hands.

And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put out his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men with it.

And Shimshon said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps; with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.

And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramat-leĥi.

And he was very thirsty, and called on the Lord, and said, Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of Thy servant: and now shall I die of thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?

But God split the hollow place that was in Leĥi, and water came out; and when he had drunk, his spirit was restored, and he revived: therefore he called the name of it ῾En-haqqore, which is in Leĥi to this day.

And he judged Yisra᾽el in the days of the Pelishtim for twenty years.