Samson Defeats the Philistines

15 After a while, in the time of wheat harvest, it happened that Samson visited his wife with a ^(A)young goat. And he said, “Let me go in to my wife, into her room.” But her father would not permit him to go in.

² Her father said, “I really thought that you thoroughly ^(B)hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister better than she? Please, take her instead.”

³ And Samson said to them, “This time I shall be blameless regarding the Philistines if I harm them!” ⁴ Then Samson went and caught three hundred foxes; and he took torches, turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails. ⁵ When he had set the torches on fire, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up both the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and olive groves.

⁶ Then the Philistines said, “Who has done this?”

And they answered, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.” ^(C)So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire.

⁷ Samson said to them, “Since you would do a thing like this, I will surely take revenge on you, and after that I will cease.” ⁸ So he attacked them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; then he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock of ^(D)Etam.