Judges 15:9-20

English Standard Version

⁹ Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah and ^(A)made a raid on ^(B)Lehi. ¹⁰ And the men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” They said, “We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he did to us.” ¹¹ Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, “Do you not know that ^(C)the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” And he said to them, “As they did to me, so have I done to them.” ¹² And they said to him, “We have come down to bind you, that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines.” And Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.” ¹³ They said to him, “No; we will only bind you and give you into their hands. We will surely not kill you.” So they bound him with two ^(D)new ropes and brought him up from the rock.

¹⁴ When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. ^(E)Then the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. ¹⁵ And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, ^(F)and with it he struck 1,000 men. ¹⁶ And Samson said,

¹⁷ As soon as he had finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone out of his hand. And that place ^(G)was called Ramath-lehi.^[a]

¹⁸ And he was very thirsty, and he called upon the Lord and said, ^(H)“You have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant, and shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” ¹⁹ And God split open the hollow place that is ^(I)at Lehi, and water came out from it. And when he drank, ^(J)his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore the name of it was called En-hakkore;^[b] it is at Lehi to this day. ²⁰ And he judged Israel ^(K)in the days of the Philistines twenty years.