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¹ But it came to pass after awhile, in the time of wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a young goat; and he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber. But her father would not allow him to go in.

² And her father said, I truly thought that you had completely hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion: isn't her younger sister fairer than she? take her, I pray you, instead of her.

³ And Samson said to them, This time I shall be innocent in regard of the Philistines, when I do them a mischief.

⁴ And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between every two tails.

⁵ And when he had set the brands 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 oliveyards.

⁶ Then the Philistines said, Who has done this? And they said, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife, and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire.

⁷ And Samson said to them, If you act after this manner, surely I will be avenged of you, and after that I will cease.

⁸ And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

⁹ Then the Philistines went up, and encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi.

¹⁰ And the men of Judah said, Why have you come up against us? And they said, we have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he has done to us.

¹¹ Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, 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? And he said to them, As they did to me, so I have done to them.

¹² And they said to him, We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines. And Samson said to them, Swear to me, or else you will fall on me yourselves.

¹³ And they spoke to him, saying, No; but we will bind you fast, and deliver you into their hand: but surely we will not kill you. And they bound him with two new ropes, and brought him up from the rock.

¹⁴ When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him: and the Spirit of Yahweh 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.

¹⁵ And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put forth his hand, and took it, and smote a thousand men therewith.

¹⁶ And Samson said, With the jawbone of a donkey, I have thrashed them good, With the jawbone of a donkey I have smitten a thousand men.

¹⁷ And it came to pass, when he had finished speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand; and that place was called Ramath-lehi.

¹⁸ And he was very thirsty, and called on Yahweh, and said, You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your slave; and now I shall die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised.

¹⁹ But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and there came water thereout; and when he drank, his spirit came again, and he revived: therefore the name thereof was called En-hakkore, which is in Lehi, to this day.

²⁰ And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.