¹ And it happened afterward, in the days of wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid of the goats. And he said, I will go in to my wife, to the inner room. And her father would not allow him to go in.

² And her father said, I certainly said that you would surely hate her, and I gave her to your companion. Is not her sister, the young one, better than she? Please let her belong to you, instead of her.

³ And Samson said to them, This time I will be blameless regarding the Philistines, though I am doing evil with them.

⁴ And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch between he two tails, in the middle.

⁵ And he kindled fire on the torches, and sent them out into the grain-stalks of the Philistines, and burned from the stacks and the grain-stalks, and to the vineyard and the oliveyard.

⁶ And the Philistines said, Who has done this? And they said, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took away his wife and gave her to his companion. And the Philistines went and burned her and her father with fire.

⁷ And Samson said to them, Though you do this, yet I shall be avenged on you; and afterwards I will stop.

⁸ And he struck them hip on thigh, a great slaughter, and went down and lived in the cleft of the rock Etam.

⁹ And the Philistines went up and pitched in Judah, and were spread out 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 And three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock Etam, and said to Samson, Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? And what is this that you have done 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 hands of the Philistines. And Samson said to them, Swear to me that you will not fall on me yourselves.

¹³ And they spoke to him, saying, No, but we will certainly bind you, and will give you into their hand. But we certainly will not kill you. And they bound him with two thick cords, new ones, and brought him up from the rock.

¹⁴ He came to Lehi, and the Philistines shouted to meet him, And the Spirit of Jehovah came upon him, and the thick cords which were on his arms were as flax which they burn with fire. And his bonds melted from his hands.

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

¹⁶ And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, a heap, two heaps, with the jawbone of an ass I have killed a thousand men.

¹⁷ And it happened when he finished speaking, he threw the jawbone out of his hand. And he called that place Jawbone Height.

¹⁸ And he was exceedingly thirsty, and called to Jehovah and said, Surely You have given this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant. And now I am dying with thirst, and will fall into the hand of the uncircumcised.

¹⁹ And God broke open the hollow place which is in Lehi, and water came out of it. And he drank, and his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore its name is called the Fountain of the Praying One, which is in Lehi to this day.

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