1
And it came to pass after days, in the days of the wheat harvest, that Shimshon visited his ishah with a young goat. And he said, “Let me go in to my ishah, into the chamber.” But her father would not permit him to go in.
2
And her father said, “Saying, I surely said that hating, you hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister better than she? Please let her be yours instead of her.”
3
And Shimshon said concerning them, “This time I shall be blameless concerning the Pelishtim when I do evil to them.”
4
And Shimshon went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and placed one torch between every two tails in the midst.
5
And he kindled the torches with fire and sent them into the standing grain of the Pelishtim, and burned from the stacked grain even to the standing grain, and the vineyards and the olive groves.
6
And the Pelishtim said, “Who has done this?” And they said, “Shimshon, son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his ishah and gave her to his companion.” And the Pelishtim went up and burned her and her father with fire.
7
And Shimshon said to them, “If you do according to this, then surely I will take vengeance upon you, and afterward I will cease.”
8
And he struck them leg upon thigh with a great slaughter. And he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock of Etam.
9
And the Pelishtim went up and encamped in Yehudah and spread themselves out in Lechi.
10
And the ish of Yehudah said, “Why have you come up against us?” And they said, “To bind Shimshon we have come up, to do to him according to what he did to us.”
11
And three thousand ish from Yehudah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam and said to Shimshon, “Do you not know that the Pelishtim rule over us? And what is this 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, “To bind you we have come down, to give you into the hand of the Pelishtim.” And Shimshon said to them, “Swear to me that you yourselves will not strike me.”
13
And they spoke to him, saying, “No, but binding, we will surely bind you and give you into their hand; but putting to death, we will not put you to death.” And they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.
14
He came as far as Lechi, and the Pelishtim shouted as they came to meet him. And the Ruach of Yahuah rushed upon him, and the ropes that were upon his arms became like flax that had burned with fire, and his bonds melted from upon his hands.
15
And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and stretched out his hand and took it, and struck one thousand ish with it.
16
And Shimshon said: “With the jawbone of a donkey, heap upon heaps; with the jawbone of a donkey I have struck one thousand ish.”
17
And it came to pass, when he finished speaking, that he cast the jawbone from his hand. And he called the name of that place Ramat-Lechi.
18
And he became exceedingly thirsty, and he called to Yahuah and said, “You have given this great salvation by the hand of Your servant, and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?”
19
And Elohim split open the hollow place that is in Lechi, and water went out from it. And he drank, and his ruach returned, and he lived. Therefore he called its name Ein-HaQore, which is in Lechi to this day.
20
And he judged Yisra’el in the days of the Pelishtim twenty years.