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Samson’s Revenge

15 After a while, during the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, taking a young goat. He said, “I’m going in to my wife in her bedroom,” but her father would not let him go in.

Her father said, “I thought that you thoroughly hated her, so I gave her to your best man. Is not her younger sister better than she? Please, let her be your wife instead.”

Samson said to them, “This time I cannot be blamed by the Philistines when I do them harm.” Samson went and caught three hundred foxes. He took torches and turned the foxes tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails. He set fire to the torches and sent the foxes into standing grain of the Philistines. He burned the harvested grain, standing grain, vineyards, and olive trees.

The Philistines asked, “Who did this?” They said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because the Timnite took the bride of Samson and gave her to his best man.”

So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father with fire. Samson said to them, “Because you have done this, I will take revenge on you, and afterwards I will stop.” He struck them down with a mighty blow, then went to live in a cave in Etam Rock.

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15 But it came to pass after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid; and he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber. But her father would not suffer him to go in. And her father said, I verily thought that thou hadst utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to thy companion: is not her younger sister fairer than she? take her, I pray thee, instead of her. And Samson said unto them, This time [a]shall I be blameless in regard of the Philistines, when I do them a mischief. And Samson went and caught three hundred [b]foxes, and took [c]firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between every two tails. And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the oliveyards. Then the Philistines said, Who hath done this? And they said, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he hath taken his wife, and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire. And Samson said unto them, If ye do after this manner, surely I will be avenged of you, and after that I will cease. And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

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Footnotes

  1. Judges 15:3 Or, shall I be quits with
  2. Judges 15:4 Or, jackals
  3. Judges 15:4 Or, torches