Judges 13-16

Living Bible

13 Once again Israel sinned by worshiping other gods, so the Lord let them be conquered by the Philistines, who kept them in subjection for forty years.

^2-3 Then one day the Angel of the Lord appeared to the wife of Manoah, of the tribe of Dan, who lived in the city of Zorah. She had no children, but the Angel said to her, “Even though you have been barren so long, you will soon conceive and have a son! ⁴ Don’t drink any wine or beer and don’t eat any food that isn’t kosher. ⁵ Your son’s hair must never be cut, for he shall be a Nazirite, a special servant of God from the time of his birth; and he will begin to rescue Israel from the Philistines.”

⁶ The woman ran and told her husband, “A man from God appeared to me and I think he must be the Angel of the Lord, for he was almost too glorious to look at. I didn’t ask where he was from, and he didn’t tell me his name, ⁷ but he told me, ‘You are going to have a baby boy!’ And he told me not to drink any wine or beer and not to eat food that isn’t kosher, for the baby is going to be a Nazirite—he will be dedicated to God from the moment of his birth until the day of his death!”

⁸ Then Manoah prayed, “O Lord, please let the man from God come back to us again and give us more instructions about the child you are going to give us.” ⁹ The Lord answered his prayer, and the Angel of God appeared once again to his wife as she was sitting in the field. But again she was alone—Manoah was not with her— ¹⁰ so she quickly ran and found her husband and told him, “The same man is here again!”

¹¹ Manoah ran back with his wife and asked, “Are you the man who talked to my wife the other day?”

“Yes,” he replied, “I am.”

¹² So Manoah asked him, “Can you give us any special instructions about how we should raise the baby after he is born?”

^13-14 And the Angel replied, “Be sure that your wife follows the instructions I gave her. She must not eat grapes or raisins, or drink any wine or beer, or eat anything that isn’t kosher.”

¹⁵ Then Manoah said to the Angel, “Please stay here until we can get you something to eat.”

¹⁶ “I’ll stay,” the Angel replied, “but I’ll not eat anything. However, if you wish to bring something, bring an offering to sacrifice to the Lord.” (Manoah didn’t yet realize that he was the Angel of the Lord.)

¹⁷ Then Manoah asked him for his name. “When all this comes true and the baby is born,” he said to the Angel, “we will certainly want to tell everyone that you predicted it!”

¹⁸ “Don’t even ask my name,” the Angel replied, “for it is a secret.”

¹⁹ Then Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered it as a sacrifice to the Lord; and the Angel did a strange and wonderful thing, ²⁰ for as the flames from the altar were leaping up toward the sky, and as Manoah and his wife watched, the Angel ascended in the fire! Manoah and his wife fell face downward to the ground, ²¹ and that was the last they ever saw of him. It was then that Manoah finally realized that it had been the Angel of the Lord.

²² “We will die,” Manoah cried out to his wife, “for we have seen God!”

²³ But his wife said, “If the Lord were going to kill us, he wouldn’t have accepted our burnt offerings and wouldn’t have appeared to us and told us this wonderful thing and done these miracles.”

²⁴ When her son was born they named him Samson, and the Lord blessed him as he grew up. ²⁵ And the Spirit of the Lord began to excite him whenever he visited the parade grounds of the army of the tribe of Dan, located between the cities of Zorah and Eshtaol.

14 One day when Samson was in Timnah he noticed a certain Philistine girl, ² and when he got home he told his father and mother that he wanted to marry her. ³ They objected strenuously.

“Why don’t you marry a Jewish girl?” they asked. “Why must you go and get a wife from these heathen Philistines? Isn’t there one girl among all the people of Israel you could marry?”

But Samson told his father, “She is the one I want. Get her for me.”

⁴ His father and mother didn’t realize that the Lord was behind the request, for God was setting a trap for the Philistines, who at that time were the rulers of Israel.

⁵ As Samson and his parents were going to Timnah, a young lion attacked Samson in the vineyards on the outskirts of the town. ⁶ At that moment the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him and since he had no weapon, he ripped the lion’s jaws apart and did it as easily as though it were a young goat! But he didn’t tell his father or mother about it. ⁷ Upon arriving at Timnah, he talked with the girl and found her to be just what he wanted, so the arrangements were made.^[a]

⁸ When he returned for the wedding, he turned off the path to look at the carcass of the lion. And he found a swarm of bees in it and some honey! ⁹ He took some of the honey with him, eating as he went, and gave some of it to his father and mother. But he didn’t tell them where he had gotten it.

^10-11 As his father was making final arrangements for the marriage, Samson threw a party for thirty young men of the village, as was the custom of the day. ¹² When Samson asked if they would like to hear a riddle, they replied that they would.

“If you solve my riddle during these seven days of the celebration,” he said, “I’ll give you thirty plain robes and thirty fancy robes. ¹³ But if you can’t solve it, then you must give the robes to me!”

“All right,” they agreed, “let’s hear it.”

¹⁴ This was his riddle: “Food came out of the eater, and sweetness from the strong!” Three days later they were still trying to figure it out.

¹⁵ On the fourth day they said to his new wife, “Get the answer from your husband, or we’ll burn down your father’s house with you in it. Were we invited to this party just to make us poor?”

¹⁶ So Samson’s wife broke down in tears before him and said, “You don’t love me at all; you hate me, for you have told a riddle to my people and haven’t told me the answer!”

“I haven’t even told it to my father or mother; why should I tell you?” he replied.

¹⁷ So she cried whenever she was with him and kept it up for the remainder of the celebration. At last, on the seventh day, he told her the answer and she, of course, gave the answer to the young men. ¹⁸ So before sunset of the seventh day they gave him their reply.

“What is sweeter than honey?” they asked, “and what is stronger than a lion?”

“If you hadn’t plowed with my heifer, you wouldn’t have found the answer to my riddle!” he retorted.

¹⁹ Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he went to the city of Ashkelon, killed thirty men, took their clothing, and gave it to the young men who had told him the answer to his riddle. But he was furious about it and abandoned his wife and went back home to live with his father and mother. ²⁰ So his wife was married instead to the fellow who had been best man at Samson’s wedding.

15 Later on, during the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat as a present to his wife, intending to sleep with her; but her father wouldn’t let him in.

² “I really thought you hated her,” he explained, “so I married her to your best man. But look, her sister is prettier than she is. Marry her instead.”

³ Samson was furious. “You can’t blame me for whatever happens now,” he shouted.

⁴ So he went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied their tails together in pairs, with a torch between each pair. ⁵ Then he lit the torches and let the foxes run through the fields of the Philistines, burning the grain to the ground along with all the sheaves and shocks of grain, and destroying the olive trees.

⁶ “Who did this?” the Philistines demanded.

“Samson,” was the reply, “because his wife’s father gave her to another man.” So the Philistines came and got the girl and her father and burned them alive.

⁷ “Now my vengeance will strike again!” Samson vowed. ⁸ So he attacked them with great fury and killed many of them. Then he went to live in a cave in the rock of Etam. ⁹ The Philistines in turn sent a huge posse into Judah and raided Lehi.

¹⁰ “Why have you come here?” the men of Judah asked.

And the Philistines replied, “To capture Samson and do to him as he has done to us.”

¹¹ So three thousand men of Judah went down to get Samson at the cave in the rock of Etam.

“What are you doing to us?” they demanded of him. “Don’t you realize that the Philistines are our rulers?”

But Samson replied, “I only paid them back for what they did to me.”

^12-13 “We have come to capture you and take you to the Philistines,” the men of Judah told him.

“All right,” Samson said, “but promise me that you won’t kill me yourselves.”

“No,” they replied, “we won’t do that.”

So they tied him with two new ropes and led him away. ¹⁴ As Samson and his captors arrived at Lehi, the Philistines shouted with glee; but then the strength of the Lord came upon Samson, and the ropes with which he was tied snapped like thread and fell from his wrists! ¹⁵ Then he picked up a donkey’s jawbone that was lying on the ground and killed a thousand Philistines with it. ^16-17 Tossing away the jawbone, he remarked,

(The place has been called “Jawbone Hill” ever since.)

¹⁸ But now he was very thirsty and he prayed to the Lord and said, “You have given Israel such a wonderful deliverance through me today! Must I now die of thirst and fall to the mercy of these heathen?” ¹⁹ So the Lord caused water to gush out from a hollow in the ground, and Samson’s spirit was revived as he drank. Then he named the place “The Spring of the Man Who Prayed,” and the spring is still there today.

²⁰ Samson was Israel’s leader for the next twenty years, but the Philistines still controlled the land.

16 One day Samson went to the Philistine city of Gaza and spent the night with a prostitute. ² Word soon spread that he had been seen in the city, so the police were alerted and many men of the city lay in wait all night at the city gate to capture him if he tried to leave.

“In the morning,” they thought, “when there is enough light, we’ll find him and kill him.”

³ Samson stayed in bed with the girl until midnight, then went out to the city gates and lifted them, with the two gateposts, right out of the ground. He put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the mountain across from Hebron!

⁴ Later on he fell in love with a girl named Delilah over in the valley of Sorek. ⁵ The five heads of the Philistine nation went personally to her and demanded that she find out from Samson what made him so strong, so that they would know how to overpower and subdue him and put him in chains.

“Each of us will give you a thousand dollars for this job,” they promised.

⁶ So Delilah begged Samson to tell her his secret. “Please tell me, Samson, why you are so strong,” she pleaded. “I don’t think anyone could ever capture you!”

⁷ “Well,” Samson replied, “if I were tied with seven raw-leather bowstrings, I would become as weak as anyone else.”

⁸ So they brought her the seven bowstrings, and while he slept^[b] she tied him with them. ⁹ Some men were hiding in the next room, so as soon as she had tied him up she exclaimed, “Samson! The Philistines are here!”

Then he snapped the bowstrings like cotton thread,^[c] and so his secret was not discovered.

¹⁰ Afterward Delilah said to him, “You are making fun of me! You told me a lie! Please tell me how you can be captured!”

¹¹ “Well,” he said, “if I am tied with brand new ropes which have never been used, I will be as weak as other men.”

¹² So that time, as he slept,^[d] Delilah took new ropes and tied him with them. The men were hiding in the next room, as before. Again Delilah exclaimed, “Samson! The Philistines have come to capture you!”

But he broke the ropes from his arms like spiderwebs!

¹³ “You have mocked me again and told me more lies!” Delilah complained. “Now tell me how you can really be captured.”

“Well,” he said, “if you weave my hair into your loom . . . !”

¹⁴ So while he slept, she did just that and then screamed, “The Philistines have come, Samson!” And he woke up and yanked his hair away, breaking the loom.

¹⁵ “How can you say you love me when you don’t confide in me?” she whined. “You’ve made fun of me three times now, and you still haven’t told me what makes you so strong!”

^16-17 She nagged at him every day until he couldn’t stand it any longer and finally told her his secret.

“My hair has never been cut,” he confessed, “for I’ve been a Nazirite to God since before my birth. If my hair were cut, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as anyone else.”

¹⁸ Delilah realized that he had finally told her the truth, so she sent for the five Philistine leaders.

“Come just this once more,” she said, “for this time he has told me everything.”

So they brought the money with them. ¹⁹ She lulled him to sleep with his head in her lap, and they brought in a barber and cut off his hair. Delilah began to hit him, but she could see that his strength was leaving him.

²⁰ Then she screamed, “The Philistines are here to capture you, Samson!” And he woke up and thought, “I will do as before; I’ll just shake myself free.” But he didn’t realize that the Lord had left him. ²¹ So the Philistines captured him and gouged out his eyes and took him to Gaza, where he was bound with bronze chains and made to grind grain in the prison. ²² But before long his hair began to grow again.

^23-24 The Philistine leaders declared a great festival to celebrate the capture of Samson. The people made sacrifices to their god Dagon and excitedly praised him.

“Our god has delivered our enemy Samson to us!” they gloated as they saw him there in chains. “The scourge of our nation who killed so many of us is now in our power!” ^25-26 Half drunk by now, the people demanded, “Bring out Samson so we can have some fun with him!”

So he was brought from the prison and made to stand at the center of the temple, between the two pillars supporting the roof. Samson said to the boy who was leading him by the hand, “Place my hands against the two pillars. I want to rest against them.”

²⁷ By then the temple was completely filled with people. The five Philistine leaders were there as well as three thousand people in the balconies^[e] who were watching Samson and making fun of him.

²⁸ Then Samson prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord Jehovah, remember me again—please strengthen me one more time, so that I may pay back the Philistines for the loss of at least one of my eyes.”

²⁹ Then Samson pushed against the pillars with all his might.

³⁰ “Let me die with the Philistines,” he prayed.

And the temple crashed down upon the Philistine leaders and all the people. So those he killed at the moment of his death were more than those he had killed during his entire lifetime. ³¹ Later, his brothers and other relatives came down to get his body, and they brought him back home and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol, where his father, Manoah, was buried. He had led Israel for twenty years.