Judges 15:9-20

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

⁹ Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah and made a raid on Lehi.^{(A) 10} The men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” They said, “We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he did to us.” ¹¹ Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and they said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then have you done to us?” He replied, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.”^{(B) 12} They said to him, “We have come down to bind you, so that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines.” Samson answered them, “Swear to me that you yourselves will not attack me.” ¹³ They said to him, “No, we will only bind you and give you into their hands; we will not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.

¹⁴ When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him, and the spirit of the Lord rushed on him, and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands.^{(C) 15} Then he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached down and took it, and with it he killed a thousand men.^{(D) 16} And Samson said,

¹⁷ When he had finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone, and that place was called Ramath-lehi.^[a]

¹⁸ By then he was very thirsty, and he called on the Lord, saying, “You have granted this great victory by the hand of your servant. Am I now to die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”^{(E) 19} So God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came from it. When he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore it was named En-hakkore,^[b] which is at Lehi to this day.^{(F) 20} And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.^(G)