Lexham English Bible

Judges 15:1-10 Lexham English Bible (LEB)

1. After a while, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat. He said, “I want to go to my wife’s private room.” But her father would not allow him to enter.

2. Her father said, “I really thought that you hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please, take her instead.”

3. And Samson said to them, “This time, as far as the Philistines are concerned, when I do something evil I am without blame.”

4. And Samson went and captured three hundred foxes, and he took torches. He turned them tail to tail, and he put one torch between two tails.

5. He set fire to the torches and let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and he burned both the stacks of sheaves and the standing grain, up to the vineyards of olive groves.

6. And the Philistines said, “Who has done this?” And they said, “Samson the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion.” And the Philistines went up and burned her and her father with fire.

7. Samson said to them, “If you want to behave like this, I swear I will not rest unless I have taken revenge on you.”

8. And he gave them a thorough beating, and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

9. Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah, and they overran Lehi.

10. And the men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” And they said, “To bind Samson; to do to him just as he did to us.”