^17 (A)You will not have to fight this battle. Just take up your positions and wait; you will see the Lord give you victory. People of Judah and Jerusalem, do not hesitate or be afraid. Go out to battle, and the Lord will be with you!”

15 Some time later Samson went to visit his wife during the wheat harvest and took her a young goat. He told her father, “I want to go to my wife's room.”

But he wouldn't let him go in. ² He told Samson, “I really thought that you hated her, so I gave her to your friend. But her younger sister is prettier, anyway. You can have her, instead.”

³ Samson said, “This time I'm not going to be responsible for what I do to the Philistines!” ⁴ So he went and caught three hundred foxes. Two at a time, he tied their tails together and put torches in the knots. ⁵ Then he set fire to the torches and turned the foxes loose in the Philistine wheat fields. In this way he burned up not only the wheat that had been harvested but also the wheat that was still in the fields. The olive orchards were also burned. ⁶ When the Philistines asked who had done this, they learned that Samson had done it because his father-in-law, a man from Timnah, had given Samson's wife to a friend of Samson's. So the Philistines went and burned the woman to death and burned down her father's house.^[a]

⁷ Samson told them, “So this is how you act! I swear that I won't stop until I pay you back!” ⁸ He attacked them fiercely and killed many of them. Then he went and stayed in the cave in the cliff at Etam.

Samson Defeats the Philistines

⁹ The Philistines came and camped in Judah, and attacked the town of Lehi. ¹⁰ The men of Judah asked them, “Why are you attacking us?”

They answered, “We came to take Samson prisoner and to treat him as he treated us.” ¹¹ So these three thousand men of Judah went to the cave in the cliff at Etam and said to Samson, “Don't you know that the Philistines are our rulers? What have you done to us?”

He answered, “I did to them just what they did to me.”

¹² They told him, “We have come here to tie you up, so we can hand you over to them.”

Samson said, “Give me your word that you won't kill me yourselves.”

¹³ “All right,” they said, “we are only going to tie you up and hand you over to them. We won't kill you.” So they tied him up with two new ropes and brought him back from the cliff.

¹⁴ When he got to Lehi, the Philistines came running toward him, shouting at him. Suddenly the power of the Lord made him strong, and he broke the ropes around his arms and hands as if they were burnt thread. ¹⁵ Then he found a jawbone of a donkey that had recently died. He reached down and picked it up, and killed a thousand men with it. ¹⁶ So Samson sang,

¹⁷ After that, he threw the jawbone away. The place where this happened was named Ramath Lehi.^[c]

¹⁸ Then Samson became very thirsty, so he called to the Lord and said, “You gave me this great victory; am I now going to die of thirst and be captured by these heathen Philistines?” ¹⁹ Then God opened a hollow place in the ground there at Lehi, and water came out of it. Samson drank it and began to feel much better. So the spring was named Hakkore;^[d] it is still there at Lehi.

²⁰ Samson led Israel for twenty years while the Philistines ruled the land.

The Question about Food Offered to Idols

8 Now, concerning what you wrote about food offered to idols.

It is true, of course, that “all of us have knowledge,” as they say. Such knowledge, however, puffs a person up with pride; but love builds up. ² Those who think they know something really don't know as they ought to know. ³ But the person who loves God is known by him.

⁴ So then, about eating the food offered to idols: we know that an idol stands for something that does not really exist; we know that there is only the one God. ⁵ Even if there are so-called “gods,” whether in heaven or on earth, and even though there are many of these “gods” and “lords,” ⁶ yet there is for us only one God, the Father, who is the Creator of all things and for whom we live; and there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things were created and through whom we live.

⁷ But not everyone knows this truth. Some people have been so used to idols that to this day when they eat such food they still think of it as food that belongs to an idol; their conscience is weak, and they feel they are defiled by the food. ⁸ Food, however, will not improve our relation with God; we shall not lose anything if we do not eat, nor shall we gain anything if we do eat.

⁹ Be careful, however, not to let your freedom of action make those who are weak in the faith fall into sin. ¹⁰ Suppose a person whose conscience is weak in this matter sees you, who have so-called “knowledge,” eating in the temple of an idol; will not this encourage him to eat food offered to idols? ¹¹ And so this weak person, your brother for whom Christ died, will perish because of your “knowledge”! ¹² And in this way you will be sinning against Christ by sinning against other Christians and wounding their weak conscience. ¹³ So then, if food makes a believer sin, I will never eat meat again, so as not to make a believer fall into sin.

The Foolishness of Trusting in Riches^[a]