Judges 13-15 (Amplified Bible)

Judges 13

 ¹AND THE Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.

    ²And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and had no children.

    ³And the ^[a]Angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, Behold, you are barren and have no children, but you shall become pregnant and bear a son.

    ⁴Therefore beware and drink no wine or strong drink and eat nothing unclean.

    ⁵For behold, you shall become pregnant and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from birth, and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines.

    ⁶Then the woman went and told her husband, saying, A ^[b]Man of God came to me and his face was like the face of the Angel of God, to be greatly and reverently feared. I did not ask him from where he came, and he did not tell me his name.

    ⁷But he said to me, Behold, you shall become pregnant and bear a son, and now drink no wine or strong drink and eat nothing unclean, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from birth to the day of his death.

    ⁸Then Manoah entreated the Lord and said, O Lord, let the Man of God whom You sent come again to us and teach us what we shall do with the child that shall be born.

    ⁹And God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the Angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field; but Manoah her husband was not with her.

    ¹⁰And the woman ran in haste and told her husband and said to him, Behold, the Man who came to me the other day has appeared to me.

    ¹¹And Manoah arose and went after his wife and came to the Man and said to him, Are you the Man who spoke to this woman? And he said, I am.

    ¹²And Manoah said, Now when your words come true, how shall we manage the child, and what is he to do?

    ¹³And the Angel of the Lord said to Manoah, Let the mother beware of all that I told her.

    ¹⁴She may not eat of anything that comes from the grapevine, nor drink wine or strong drink nor eat any unclean thing. All that I commanded her let her observe.

    ¹⁵And Manoah said to the Angel of the Lord, Pray, let us detain you that we may prepare a kid for you.

    ¹⁶And the Angel of the Lord said to Manoah, Though you detain me, I will not eat of your food, but if you make ready a burnt offering, offer it to the Lord. For Manoah did not know that he was the Angel of the Lord.

    ¹⁷And Manoah said to the Angel of the Lord, What is your name, so that when your words come true, we may do you honor?

    ¹⁸And the Angel of the Lord said to him, Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?^(A)

    ¹⁹So Manoah took the kid with the cereal offering and offered it upon a rock to the Lord, the Angel working wonders, while Manoah and his wife looked on.

    ²⁰For when the flame went up toward the heavens from the altar, the Angel of the Lord ascended in the altar flame. And Manoah and his wife looked on, and they fell on their faces to the ground.

    ²¹The Angel of the Lord did not appear again to Manoah or to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was the Angel of the Lord.

    ²²And Manoah said to his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God.

    ²³But his [sensible] wife said to him, If the Lord were pleased to kill us, He would not have received a burnt offering and a cereal offering from our hands, nor have shown us all these things or now have announced such things as these.

    ²⁴And the woman [in due time] bore a son and called his name Samson; and the child grew and the Lord blessed him.

    ²⁵And the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in Mahaneh-dan [the camp of Dan] between Zorah and Eshtaol.

   

Judges 14

 ¹SAMSON WENT down to Timnah and at Timnah saw one of the daughters of the Philistines.

    ²And he came up and told his father and mother, I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah; now get her for me as my wife.

    ³But his father and mother said to him, Is there not a woman among the daughters of your kinsmen or among all our people, that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines? And Samson said to his father, Get her for me, for she is all right in my eyes.

    ⁴His father and mother did not know that it was of the Lord, and that He sought an occasion for assailing the Philistines. At that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel.

    ⁵Then Samson and his father and mother went down to Timnah and came to the vineyards of Timnah. And behold, a young lion roared against him.

    ⁶And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he tore the lion as he would have torn a kid, and he had nothing in his hand; but he did not tell his father or mother what he had done.

    ⁷And he went down and talked with the woman, and she pleased Samson well.

    ⁸And after a while he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the body of the lion, and behold, a swarm of bees and honey were in the body of the lion.

    ⁹And he scraped some of the honey out into his hands and went along eating. And he came to his father and mother and gave them some, and they ate it; but he did not tell them he had taken the honey from the body of the lion.

    ¹⁰His father went down to the woman, and Samson made a feast there, for that was the customary thing for young men to do.

    ¹¹And when the people saw him, they brought thirty companions to be with him.

    ¹²And Samson said to them, I will now put forth a riddle to you; if you can tell me what it is within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty linen undergarments and thirty changes of raiment.

    ¹³But if you cannot declare it to me, then shall you give me thirty linen undergarments and thirty changes of festive [costly] raiment. And they said to him, Put forth your riddle, that we may hear it.

    ¹⁴And he said to them, Out of the eater came forth food, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not solve the riddle in three days.

    ¹⁵And on the seventh day they said to Samson's wife, Entice your husband to declare to us the riddle, lest we burn you and your father's household with fire. Have you invited us to make us poor? Is this not true?

    ¹⁶And Samson's wife wept before him and said, You only hate me, you do not love me; you have put forth a riddle to my countrymen and have not told the answer to me. And he said to her, Behold, I have not told my father or my mother, and shall I tell you?

    ¹⁷And Samson's wife wept before him the seven days their feast lasted, and on the seventh day he told her because she pressed him with entreaties. Then she told the riddle to her countrymen.

    ¹⁸And the men of the city said to [Samson] on the seventh day before sundown, What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion? And he said to them, If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have solved my riddle.

    ¹⁹And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon and slew thirty men of them and took their apparel [as spoil], and gave the changes of garments to those who explained the riddle. And his anger was kindled, and he went up to his father's house.

    ²⁰But Samson's wife was [given] to his companion who was his [best] friend.

   

Judges 15

 ¹BUT SOME days later, in the time of wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, taking along a kid [as a token of reconciliation]; and he said, I will go unto my wife in the inner chamber. But her father would not allow him to go in.

    ²And her father said, I truly thought you utterly hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Is her younger sister not fairer than she? Take her, I pray you, instead.

    ³And Samson said of them, This time shall I be blameless as regards the Philistines, though I do them evil.

    ⁴So Samson went and caught 300 foxes or jackals and took torches and turning the foxes tail to tail, he put a torch between each pair of tails.

    ⁵And when he had set the torches ablaze, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and he burned up the shocks and the standing grain, along with the olive orchards.

    ⁶Then the Philistines said, Who has done this? And they were told, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he [the Timnite] has taken his [Samson's] wife and has given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire.

    ⁷And Samson said to them, If this is the way you act, surely I will take revenge on you, and after that I will quit.

    ⁸And he smote them hip and thigh [unsparingly], a great slaughter; and he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

    ⁹Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah and spread themselves in Lehi.

    ¹⁰And the men of Judah said, Why have you come up against us? And they answered, We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he has done to us.

    ¹¹Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock Etam and said to Samson, Have you not known that the Philistines are rulers over us? What is this that you have done to us? He said to them, As they did to me, so have I done to them.

    ¹²And they said to him, We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hands of the Philistines. And Samson said to them, Swear to me that you will not fall upon me yourselves.

    ¹³And they said to him, No, we will bind you fast and give you into their hand; but surely we will not kill you. So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.

    ¹⁴And when he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon [Samson], and the ropes on his arms became as flax that had caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands.

    ¹⁵And he found a still moist jawbone of a donkey and reached out and took it and slew 1,000 men with it.

    ¹⁶And Samson said, With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey I have slain 1,000 men!

    ¹⁷And when he stopped speaking, he cast the jawbone from his hand; and that place was called Ramath-lehi [the hill of the jawbone].

    ¹⁸Samson was very thirsty, and he prayed to the Lord and said, You have given this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant, and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?

    ¹⁹And God split open the hollow place that was at Lehi, and water came out of it. And when he drank, his spirit returned and he revived. Therefore the name of it was called En-hakkore [the spring of him who prayed], which is at Lehi to this day.

    ²⁰And [Samson] judged (defended) Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.^(B)