Judges 15
About JudgesWritten by AI
Judges covers the unsettled years between Joshua's death and the rise of Israel's kings. The judges were mostly military leaders God raised up to rescue His people from enemies, more deliverers than courtroom judges. The author is not named. Jewish tradition points to Samuel; many scholars think it was put together over time. Its repeated line about Israel having no king suggests it was written once kings had come.
The book runs in a cycle that turns downward. Israel serves other gods, an enemy oppresses them, they cry out, God raises a deliverer, there is rest, and then it starts again, a little worse each time. The judges themselves grow more flawed, from Othniel and Deborah to Gideon, Jephthah and Samson.
The last chapters are some of the darkest in Scripture, and the book ends with its own verdict: “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Watch for God's patience, which keeps rescuing a people who keep forgetting Him.
Before you read Judges 15Written by AI
When Samson learns his wife has been given to another man, he takes revenge by burning the Philistines' fields with foxes and torches. Violence escalates on both sides. Bound and handed over by his own people, he kills a thousand men with a donkey's jawbone, then cries to God in thirst, and God opens a spring.
Samson’s Revenge
Later on, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat and went to visit his wife. “I want to go to my wife in her room,” he said. But her father would not let him enter.
“I was sure that you thoroughly hated her,” said her father, “so I gave her to one of the men who accompanied you. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her instead.”
Samson said to them, “This time I will be blameless in doing harm to the Philistines.”
Then Samson went out and caught three hundred foxes. And he took torches, turned the foxes tail-to-tail, and fastened a torch between each pair of tails. Then he lit the torches and released the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines, burning up the piles of grain and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and olive groves.
“Who did this?” the Philistines demanded.
“It was Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite,” they were told. “For his wife was given to his companion.”
So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father to death.
And Samson told them, “Because you have done this, I will not rest until I have taken vengeance upon you.” And he struck them ruthlessly with a great slaughter, and then went down and stayed in the cave at the rock of Etam.
Then the Philistines went up, camped in Judah, and deployed themselves near the town of Lehi.
“Why have you attacked us?” said the men of Judah.
The Philistines replied, “We have come to arrest Samson and pay him back for what he has done to us.”
In response, three thousand men of Judah went to the cave at the rock of Etam, and they asked Samson, “Do you not realize that the Philistines rule over us? What have you done to us?”
“I have done to them what they did to me,” he replied.
But they said to him, “We have come down to arrest you and hand you over to the Philistines.”
Samson replied, “Swear to me that you will not kill me yourselves.”
“No,” they answered, “we will not kill you, but we will tie you up securely and hand you over to them.” So they bound him with two new ropes and led him up from the rock.
When Samson arrived in Lehi, the Philistines came out shouting against him. And the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him. The ropes on his arms became like burnt flax, and the bonds broke loose from his hands. He found the fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and struck down a thousand men. Then Samson said:
“With the jawbone of a donkey
I have piled them into heaps.
With the jawbone of a donkey
I have slain a thousand men.”
And when Samson had finished speaking, he cast the jawbone from his hand; and he named that place Ramath-lehi.
And being very thirsty, Samson cried out to the LORD, “You have accomplished this great deliverance through Your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”
So God opened up the hollow place in Lehi, and water came out of it. When Samson drank, his strength returned, and he was revived. That is why he named it En-hakkore, and it remains in Lehi to this day.
And Samson judged Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.