1
And it comes to pass after [some] days, in the days of wheat-harvest, that Samson looks after his wife, with a kid of the goats, and says, “I go in to my wife, to the inner chamber”; and her father has not permitted him to go in,
2
and her father says, “I certainly said that you surely hated her, and I give her to your companion; is her younger sister not better than she? Please let her be to you instead of her.”
3
And Samson says of them, “I am more innocent this time than the Philistines, though I am doing evil with them.”
4
And Samson goes and catches three hundred foxes, and takes torches, and turns tail to tail, and puts a torch between the two tails, in the midst,
5
and kindles fire in the torches, and sends [them] out into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burns [it] from heap even to standing grain, even to vineyard [and] olive-yard.
6
And the Philistines say, “Who has done this?” And they say, “Samson, son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken away his wife, and gives her to his companion”; and the Philistines go up, and burn her and her father with fire.
7
And Samson says to them, “Though you do thus, nevertheless I am avenged on you, and afterward I cease!”
8
And he strikes them hip and thigh [with] a great striking, and goes down and dwells in the cleft of the rock of Etam.
9
And the Philistines go up, and encamp in Judah, and are spread out in Lehi,
10
and the men of Judah say, “Why have you come up against us?” And they say, “We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he has done to us.”
11
And three thousand men of Judah go down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and say to Samson, “Have you now known that the Philistines are rulers over us? And what [is] this you have done to us?” And he says to them, “As they did to me, so I did to them.”
12
And they say to him, “We have come down to bind you—to give you into the hand of the Philistines.” And Samson says to them, “Swear to me, lest you fall on me yourselves.”
13
And they speak to him, saying, “No, but we certainly bind you, and have given you into their hand, and we certainly do not put you to death”; and they bind him with two thick bands, new ones, and bring him up from the rock.
14
He has come to Lehi—and the Philistines have shouted at meeting him—and the Spirit of YHWH prospers over him, and the thick bands which [are] on his arms are as flax which they burn with fire, and his bands are melted from off his hands,
15
and he finds a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and puts forth his hand and takes it, and strikes down one thousand men with it.
16
And Samson says, “With the jawbone of a donkey, heap on heaps—I have struck down one thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey!”
17
And it comes to pass, when he finishes speaking, that he casts away the jawbone out of his hand, and calls that place Ramath-Lehi;
18
and he thirsts exceedingly, and calls to YHWH, and says, “You have given this great salvation by the hand of Your servant; and now, I die with thirst, and have fallen into the hand of the uncircumcised.”
19
And God cleaves the hollow place which [is] in Lehi, and waters come out of it, and he drinks, and his spirit comes back, and he revives; therefore [one] has called its name “The fountain of him who is calling,” which [is] in Lehi to this day.
20
And he judges Israel in the days of the Philistines [for] twenty years.
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