Judges 15:1-8

Evangelical Heritage Version

15 After a number of days, during the wheat harvest, Samson came to visit his wife and brought a kid goat with him. He said, “Let me go in to my wife’s room,” but her father did not let him go in.

² Her father said, “I was so convinced that you hated her that I gave her to your companion. Isn’t her younger sister better than she is? Please take her for yourself instead of her older sister.”

³ Samson said to them, “I am not responsible for the harm I am about to do to the Philistines.” ⁴ Then Samson went and captured three hundred foxes,^[a] took torches, tied the foxes tail to tail, and fastened a torch between each pair of tails. ⁵ He set fire to the torches and released the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned up sheaves of grain, the standing grain, the vineyards, and the olive groves.

⁶ The Philistines asked, “Who did this?” They were told, “Samson, the son-in-law of the man from Timnah, did it, because the man took Samson’s wife and gave her to his companion.” So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father to death.

⁷ At that, Samson said to them, “Since you would do something like this, I will take revenge on you. Then I will stop.” ⁸ He ripped them to pieces^[b] in a devastating attack. Then he went down and stayed in the cleft in the Rock of Etam.