Judges 15
Water from a Dry Jawbone
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The Foxes and the Burning Fields
15:1After some days, during the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife, bringing a young goat. He said, “I will go in to my wife in the bedroom.” But her father would not let him enter to her.
15:2Her father said, “I was certain that you hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Look, is not her younger sister better than she? Let her be yours instead.”
15:3Samson said to him, “This time I am guiltless concerning the foreigners, for I am doing harm to you.”
15:4Samson went and caught three hundred foxes. He took torches, tied tail to tail, and put one torch in the middle between each pair of tails.
15:5He set fire to the torches and released them into the foreigners’ sheaves. He burned the grain ears and the harvested crop, from the heaps to the standing grain, and to the vineyard and olive trees.
15:6The foreigners said, “Who did these things?” They said, “Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law, because the man took his wife and gave her to his companion.” The foreigners went up and burned her father’s house, her, and her father with fire.
15:7Samson said to them, “If you act like this, I will not be pleased; I will take my vengeance from each and every one of you.”
15:8He struck them upon the thigh with a great blow. Then he went down and dwelt beside the torrent in Etam’s cave.
Judah Hands Samson Over
15:9The foreigners went up, camped against Judah, and spread out at Lehi.
15:10All the men of Judah said to them, “Why have you come up against us?” The foreigners said, “To bind Samson and do to him as he did to us.”
15:11Three thousand men of Judah went down to the opening of the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the foreigners rule over us? Why have you done these things to us?” Samson said to them, “As they did to us, so I did to them.”
15:12They said to him, “We have come down to bind you and hand you into the foreigners’ hands.” Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you yourselves will not kill me, and hand me over to them, lest you yourselves fall upon me.”
15:13They swore to him, “No; we will only bind you and hand you into their hands. We certainly will not kill you.” They bound him with two new cords and brought him up from the rock.
The Jawbone of a Donkey
15:14He came as far as Jawbone, and the foreigners shouted and ran to meet him. The Spirit of the Lord came straight upon him, and the cords on his arms became like tow when it smells fire; the bonds came loose from his arms.
15:15He found a donkey’s jawbone thrown on the road, reached out his hand, took it, and struck a thousand men with it.
15:16Samson said, “With a donkey’s jawbone I utterly wiped them out, for with a donkey’s jawbone I struck a thousand men.”
15:17When he finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand and called that place Lifting of the Jawbone.
Water from the Jawbone
15:18He became very thirsty and cried out to the Lord, saying, “You have given this great salvation by Your servant’s hand. Now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?”
15:19God opened the wound of the jawbone, and water came out of it. He drank; his spirit returned within him, and he was refreshed. Therefore its name was called Invoked Spring of the Jawbone, to this day.
15:20He judged Israel in the foreigners’ days for twenty years.
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Saints Translation · Liturgical reading edition · V2 · working draft awaiting specialist review.