Judges 15:9-20

Holman Christian Standard Bible

⁹ The Philistines went up, camped in Judah, and raided Lehi. ¹⁰ So the men of Judah said, “Why have you attacked us?”

They replied, “We have come to arrest Samson and pay him back for what he did to us.”

¹¹ Then 3,000 men of Judah went to the cave at the rock of Etam, and they asked Samson, “Don’t you realize that the Philistines rule over us?^(A) What have you done to us?”

“I have done to them what they did to me,” he answered.^[a]

¹² They said to him, “We’ve come to arrest you and hand you over to the Philistines.”

Then Samson told them, “Swear to me that you yourselves won’t kill me.”

¹³ “No,” they said,^[b] “we won’t kill you, but we will tie you up securely and hand you over to them.” So they tied him up with two new ropes^(B) and led him away from the rock.

¹⁴ When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came to meet him shouting. The Spirit of the Lord took control of^[c] him, and the ropes that were on his arms became like burnt flax and his bonds fell off his wrists. ¹⁵ He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand, took it, and killed 1,000 men with it. ¹⁶ Then Samson said:

¹⁷ When he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone and named that place Ramath-lehi.^{[d] 18} He became very thirsty and called out to the Lord: “You have accomplished this great victory through^[e] Your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” ¹⁹ So God split a hollow place in the ground at Lehi, and water came out of it. After Samson drank, his strength returned, and he revived.^(C) That is why he named it En-hakkore,^[f] which is in Lehi to this day. ²⁰ And he judged Israel 20 years in the days of the Philistines.