1A while later, in the time of the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, bringing a young goat. He said, "I will go in to my wife in her room." But her father would not let him go in.
2Her father said, "I really thought that you hated her completely, so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister better looking than she is? Please take her instead."
3Samson said about them, "This time I will not be to blame when I do harm to the Philistines."
4So Samson went and caught three hundred foxes. He took torches, and he turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails.
5He set the torches on fire and let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned up the stacked grain and the standing grain, and the vineyards and olive trees as well.
6Then the Philistines said, "Who has done this?" And they were told, "Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion." So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire.
7Samson said to them, "Since you have done this, I will pay you back, and after that I will stop."
8He struck them hip and thigh, and killed a great many of them. Then he went down and stayed in a cave in the rock of Etam.
10The men of Judah said, "Why have you come up against us?" They answered, "We have come up to tie up Samson, to do to him as he has done to us."
11Then three thousand men of Judah went to the cave in the rock of Etam. They said to Samson, "Do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? What is this 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 tie you up, so that we can hand you over to the Philistines." Samson said to them, "Swear to me that you yourselves will not attack me."
13They said to him, "No. We will only tie you up tightly and hand you over to them. We will surely not kill you." So they tied 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 Spirit of the LORD came powerfully on him. The ropes on his arms became like flax that has been burned with fire, and the bonds fell off his hands.
15He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey. He reached out his hand and took it, and with it he killed a thousand men.
16And Samson said, "With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps; with the jaw of a donkey I have killed a thousand men."
17When he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone out of his hand, and he called that place Ramathlehi.
18He was very thirsty, and he called on the LORD and said, "You have given this great victory by the hand of your servant. And now must I die of thirst, and fall into the hands of these men who are not circumcised?"
19But God split open the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out of it. When Samson had drunk, his strength came back and he revived. So he called the place Enhakkore, and it is in Lehi to this day.
20He judged Israel in the days of the Philistines for twenty years.