15 But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat. He said, “I will go in to my wife’s room.”

But her father wouldn’t allow him to go in. ² Her father said, “I most certainly thought that you utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Isn’t her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please, take her instead.”

³ Samson said to them, “This time I will be blameless in the case of the Philistines when I harm them.” ⁴ Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the middle between every two tails. ⁵ When he had set the torches on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the olive groves.

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

They said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.” The Philistines came up, and burned her and her father with fire.

⁷ Samson said to them, “If you behave like this, surely I will take revenge on you, and after that I will cease.” ⁸ He struck them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; and he went down and lived in the cave in Etam’s rock.