Judges 15

Judges 15:1 Days later, during the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat as a gift and visited his wife. “I want to go to my wife in her room,” he said. But her father would not let him enter.

Judges 15:2 “I was sure you hated her,” her father said, “so I gave her to one of the groomsmen who accompanied you. Isn’t her younger sister more beautiful than she is? Why not take her instead?”

Judges 15:3 Samson said to them, “This time I will be blameless when I harm the Philistines.”

Judges 15:4 So he went out and caught three hundred foxes. He took torches, turned the foxes tail-to-tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails.

Judges 15:5 Then he ignited the torches and released the foxes into the standing grain fields of the Philistines. He burned the piles of grain and also the standing grain as well as the vineyards and olive groves.

Judges 15:6 Then the Philistines asked, “Who did this?” They were told, “It was Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law because he took Samson’s wife and gave her to his companion.” So the Philistines went to her and her father and burned them to death.

Judges 15:7 Then Samson told them, “Because you did this, I swear that I won’t rest until I have taken vengeance on you.”

Judges 15:8 He struck them down the leg on the thigh and then went down and stayed in the cave at the rock of Etam.

Judges 15:9 The Philistines went up, camped in Judah, and raided Lehi.

Judges 15:10 The men of Judah said, “Why have you attacked us?” They replied, “We have come to take Samson prisoner and pay him back for what he did to us.”

Judges 15:11 Then three thousand men of Judah went to the cave at the rock of Etam, and they asked Samson, “Don’t you realize that the Philistines govern us? What have you done to us?” “I have done to them what they did to me,” he answered.

Judges 15:12 They said to him, “We’ve come to take you prisoner and hand you over to the Philistines.” Then Samson told them, “Swear to me that you yourselves won’t kill me.”

Judges 15:13 “No,” they said, “we won’t kill you, but we will tie you securely and hand you over to them.” So they tied him up with two new ropes and led him away from the rock.

Judges 15:14 When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came to meet him shouting. The Breath of Yahveh came powerfully on him, and the ropes that were on his arms and wrists became like burnt flax and fell off.

Judges 15:15 He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand, took it, and struck down a thousand men with it.

Judges 15:16 Then Samson said: With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps on heaps. With the jawbone of a donkey, I have struck down a thousand men.

Judges 15:17 When he finished saying that, he threw away the jawbone and named that place Ramath-lehi.

Judges 15:18 He became very thirsty and called out to Yahveh: “You have accomplished this great victory through your servant. Do I now have to die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”

Judges 15:19 So God split a hollow place in the ground at Lehi, and water came out of it. After Samson drank, his breath returned, and he revived. That is why he named it En-hakkore, which is still in Lehi today.

Judges 15:20 And he judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines.

Judges 15 quotes:

“The Judahites thus serve as mediators between the Philistines and Samson. As is often the case for those caught within ethnic violence, they just desire some degree of peace. Notice the way in which Samson’s excuse for acting violently echoes that of the Philistines in a quintessential expression of what David Little (1995: 3-9) calls “the pathology of violence”: “to do to them as he did to us.” The Judahites negotiate with the hero (15:12—13), promising merely to restrain him and hand him over. They take an oath not to kill Samson, for although he is a superhero, he is not immortal. The “new ropes” used by them anticipate the scene with Delilah (16:11—12), as does Samson’s capacity to extricate himself (16:9). The ropes melt as if in fire. Again, the image of burning captures the intensity of Samson’s actions and testifies to the divine spirit that operates within him, for Yhwh is a god of fire.”

Niditch Susan. Judges: A Commentary. 1st ed. Westminster John Knox Press 2008. p. 159.

Judges 15 links:

emotions and the Spirit
stable servants
where did all the spirits go?

The JUDGES shelf in Jeff’s library