But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat. And he said, “I will go into my wife into the inner room.” But her father would not allow him to go in.
Her father said, “I said to myself, I said, indeed, I thought that you hated, yes, hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Isn’t her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her instead.”
Samson said to them, “This time I will be blameless in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm.”
So Samson went and caught 300 jackals and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the middle between every two tails.
When he had set the torches on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines and burned up both the stacked grain and the standing grain, and also the vineyards and olive trees.
Then 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.” So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire.
So Samson said to them, “Since you do things like this, surely I will be avenged of you, and only after that will I stop.”
And he struck them leg on thigh with a great slaughter, and he went down and stayed in the cave of the rock of Etam.
Then the Philistines went up and encamped in Judah, and spread themselves out in Lehi.
The 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.”
Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cave of the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” And he said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.”
They said to him, “We have come down to bind you and to give you into the hand of the Philistines.” Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.”
And they spoke to him, saying, “No, but we will bind, yes, bind you, and give you into their hand, but kill—we will not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.
When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him, but the spirit of Yahweh rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that has been burned with fire, and his bonds melted from off his hands.
And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey and stretched out his hand and took it, and struck down 1,000 men with it.
Then Samson said, “With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps on heaps; with the jawbone of a donkey I have struck 1,000 men.”
And it came to pass when he had finished speaking that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand. And that place was called Ramath-lehi.
And he was very thirsty and called on Yahweh and said, “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant, and now will I die for thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”
So God split open the hollow place that is in Lehi and water came out of it. And when he drank, his spirit came again and he revived; therefore its name was called En-hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day.
And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines 20 years.