SHOPHETIM 15

1 And it came to be, after some I time, in the days of wheat harvest, that Shimshon visited his wife with a young goat. And he said, “Let me go in to my wife, into her room.” But her father would not permit him to go in.

2 And her father said, “Indeed, I thought that you hated her intensely; so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister better than she? Please, take her instead.”

3 And Shimshon said to them, “This time I am blameless regarding the Pelishtites if I do evil to them!”

4 And Shimshon went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned them tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails,

5 and lit the torches on fire, and sent them out into the standing grain of the Pelishtites, and burned up both the shocks and the standing grain, even the vineyards and olive trees.

6 And the Pelishtites said, “Who did this?” And they answered, “Shimshon, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took away his wife and gave her to his companion.” Then the Pelishtites went up and burned her and her father with fire.

7 And Shimshon said to them, “Though you do this, yet I shall take revenge on you, and after that I cease.”

8 And he smote them hip and thigh, a great smiting, and went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock of Ĕytam.

9 The Pelishtites then went up and encamped in Yahuḏah, and spread out against Leḥi.

10 And the men of Yahuḏah said, “Why have you come up against us?” And they answered, “We have come up to bind Shimshon, to do to him as he has done to us.”

11 Then three thousand men of Yahuḏah went down to the cleft of the rock of Ĕytam and said to Shimshon, “Do you not know that the Pelishtites are rulers over us? Why have you done this to us?” And he said to them, “As they did to me, so I did to them.”

12 And they said to him, “We have come down to bind you, to give you into the hand of the Pelishtites.” And Shimshon said to them, “Swear to me not to fall on me yourselves.”

13 And they spoke to him, saying, “No, but we are certainly going to bind you, and shall give you into their hand but certainly not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.

14 When he came to Leḥi, the Pelishtites came shouting to meet him. And the Ruaḥ of 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 came mightily upon him. And the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that is burned with fire, and his bonds broke loose from his hands.

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

16 And Shimshon said, “With the jawbone of a donkey, one heap, two heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey I have smitten a thousand men!”

17 And it came to be, when he had ended speaking, that he threw the jawbone from his hand, and called that place Ramath Leḥi.

18 And he became very thirsty, and cried out to 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 and said, “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant. And now, am I to die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?”

19 And Elohim split the hollow place that is in Leḥi, and water came out, and he drank. And his spirit came back, and he revived. So he called its name Ĕyn ha’Qorĕ, which is in Leḥi to his day.

20 And he ruled Yisra’ĕl twenty years in the days of the Pelishtites.