Book of Common Prayer

God and His People^(A)

Samson and the Woman from Timnah

14 One day Samson went down to Timnah, where he noticed a certain young Philistine woman. ² He went back home and told his father and mother, “There is a Philistine woman down at Timnah who caught my attention. Get her for me; I want to marry her.”

³ But his father and mother asked him, “Why do you have to go to those heathen Philistines to get a wife? Can't you find someone in our own clan, among all our people?”

But Samson told his father, “She is the one I want you to get for me. I like her.”

⁴ His parents did not know that it was the Lord who was leading Samson to do this, for the Lord was looking for a chance to fight the Philistines. At this time the Philistines were ruling Israel.

⁵ So Samson went down to Timnah with his father and mother. As they were going through the vineyards there, he heard a young lion roaring. ⁶ Suddenly the power of the Lord made Samson strong, and he tore the lion apart with his bare hands, as if it were a young goat. But he did not tell his parents what he had done.

⁷ Then he went and talked to the young woman, and he liked her. ⁸ A few days later Samson went back to marry her. On the way he left the road to look at the lion he had killed, and he was surprised to find a swarm of bees and some honey inside the dead body. ⁹ He scraped the honey out into his hands and ate it as he walked along. Then he went to his father and mother and gave them some. They ate it, but Samson did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the dead body of a lion.

¹⁰ His father went to the woman's house, and Samson gave a banquet there. This was a custom among the young men. ¹¹ When the Philistines saw him, they sent thirty young men to stay with him. ^12-13 Samson said to them, “Let me tell you a riddle. I'll bet each one of you a piece of fine linen and a change of fine clothes that you can't tell me its meaning before the seven days of the wedding feast are over.”

“Tell us your riddle,” they said. “Let's hear it.”

¹⁴ He said,

Three days later they had still not figured out what the riddle meant.

¹⁵ On the fourth^[a] day they said to Samson's wife, “Trick your husband into telling us what the riddle means. If you don't, we'll set fire to your father's house and burn you with it.^[b] You two invited us so that you could rob us, didn't you?”

¹⁶ So Samson's wife went to him in tears and said, “You don't love me! You just hate me! You told my friends a riddle and didn't tell me what it means!”

He said, “Look, I haven't even told my father and mother. Why should I tell you?” ¹⁷ She cried about it for the whole seven days of the feast. But on the seventh day he told her what the riddle meant, for she nagged him so about it. Then she told the Philistines. ¹⁸ So on the seventh day, before Samson went into the bedroom,^[c] the men of the city said to him,

¹⁹ Suddenly the power of the Lord made him strong, and he went down to Ashkelon, where he killed thirty men, stripped them, and gave their fine clothes to the men who had solved the riddle. After that, he went back home, furious about what had happened,

¹⁵ All those sitting in the Council fixed their eyes on Stephen and saw that his face looked like the face of an angel.

Stephen's Speech

7 The High Priest asked Stephen, “Is this true?”

^2 (A)Stephen answered, “Brothers and fathers, listen to me! Before our ancestor Abraham had gone to live in Haran, the God of glory appeared to him in Mesopotamia ³ and said to him, ‘Leave your family and country and go to the land that I will show you.’ ^4 (B)And so he left his country and went to live in Haran. After Abraham's father died, God made him move to this land where you now live. ^5 (C)God did not then give Abraham any part of it as his own, not even a square foot of ground, but God promised to give it to him, and that it would belong to him and to his descendants. At the time God made this promise, Abraham had no children. ^6 (D)This is what God said to him: ‘Your descendants will live in a foreign country, where they will be slaves and will be badly treated for four hundred years. ^7 (E)But I will pass judgment on the people that they will serve, and afterward your descendants will come out of that country and will worship me in this place.’ ^8 (F)Then God gave to Abraham the ceremony of circumcision as a sign of the covenant. So Abraham circumcised Isaac a week after he was born; Isaac circumcised his son Jacob, and Jacob circumcised his twelve sons, the famous ancestors of our race.

^9 (G)“Jacob's sons became jealous of their brother Joseph and sold him to be a slave in Egypt. But God was with him ^10 (H)and brought him safely through all his troubles. When Joseph appeared before the king of Egypt, God gave him a pleasing manner and wisdom, and the king made Joseph governor over the country and the royal household. ^11 (I)Then there was a famine all over Egypt and Canaan, which caused much suffering. Our ancestors could not find any food, ¹² and when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent his sons, our ancestors, on their first visit there. ^13 (J)On the second visit Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and the king of Egypt came to know about Joseph's family. ^14 (K)So Joseph sent a message to his father Jacob, telling him and the whole family, seventy-five people in all, to come to Egypt. ^15 (L)Then Jacob went to Egypt, where he and his sons died. ^16 (M)Their bodies were taken to Shechem, where they were buried in the grave which Abraham had bought from the clan of Hamor for a sum of money.

²⁷ At that moment Jesus' disciples returned, and they were greatly surprised to find him talking with a woman. But none of them said to her, “What do you want?” or asked him, “Why are you talking with her?”

²⁸ Then the woman left her water jar, went back to the town, and said to the people there, ²⁹ “Come and see the man who told me everything I have ever done. Could he be the Messiah?” ³⁰ So they left the town and went to Jesus.

³¹ In the meantime the disciples were begging Jesus, “Teacher, have something to eat!”

³² But he answered, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

³³ So the disciples started asking among themselves, “Could somebody have brought him food?”

³⁴ “My food,” Jesus said to them, “is to obey the will of the one who sent me and to finish the work he gave me to do. ³⁵ You have a saying, ‘Four more months and then the harvest.’ But I tell you, take a good look at the fields; the crops are now ripe and ready to be harvested! ³⁶ The one who reaps the harvest is being paid and gathers the crops for eternal life; so the one who plants and the one who reaps will be glad together. ³⁷ For the saying is true, ‘Someone plants, someone else reaps.’ ³⁸ I have sent you to reap a harvest in a field where you did not work; others worked there, and you profit from their work.”

³⁹ Many of the Samaritans in that town believed in Jesus because the woman had said, “He told me everything I have ever done.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they begged him to stay with them, and Jesus stayed there two days.

⁴¹ Many more believed because of his message, ⁴² and they told the woman, “We believe now, not because of what you said, but because we ourselves have heard him, and we know that he really is the Savior of the world.”