1But it happened after a while, 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 room." But her father wouldn't allow him to go in. 2Her father said, "I most certainly thought that you had utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Isn't her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her, instead." 3Samson said to them, "This time I will be blameless in regard of the Philistines, when I harm them." 4Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the midst between every two tails. 5When 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 olive groves. 6Then the Philistines said, "Who has done this?" They said, "Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife, and given her to his companion." The Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire. 7Samson said to them, "If you behave like this, surely I will be avenged of you, and after that I will cease." 8He struck them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and lived in the cleft of the rock of Etam. 9Then the Philistines went up, and encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. 10The men of Judah said, "Why have you come up against us?" They said, "We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he has done to us." 11Then 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?" He said to them, "As they did to me, so have I done to them." 12They said to him, "We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines." Samson said to them, "Swear to me that you will not fall on me yourselves." 13They spoke to him, saying, "No; but we will bind you fast, and deliver you into their hand; but surely we will not kill you." They bound him with two new ropes, and brought him up from the rock. 14When 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. 15He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put forth his hand, and took it, and struck a thousand men therewith. 16Samson said, "With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps on heaps; with the jawbone of a donkey I have struck a thousand men." 17It happened, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand; and that place was called Ramath Lehi. 18He was very thirsty, and called on Yahweh, and said, "You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant; and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?" 19But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out of it. When he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: therefore its name was called En Hakkore, which is in Lehi, to this day. 20He judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.
The Book ofJudges 15Chapter XV 15
· 20 verses · 3 minute read
About this chapter
Judges 15 — Period of the Judges
Unknown, possibly Samuel — Compiler of Israel's history during the chaotic period of the judges. Set in Philistine territory and the rock of Etam. Samson's revenge spiral escalates into full-scale warfare. After the Philistines burn his wife and father-in-law alive in retaliation for his earlier pranks, Samson unleashes devastating violence, slaughtering thousands with nothing but a donkey's jawbone. His own people, terrified of Philistine reprisals, tie him up and hand him over — but God's power breaks every rope.
“Judges 15:14”— 15:14
Read when: Read this when anger is consuming you and you need to understand both the power and danger of unchecked rage.
Key verses in Judges 15
Judges 15:16Judges 15:15Judges 15:14
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