Samson: Strength, Choices and Consequences

Judges 13

¹ The children of Israel again did that which was evil in Yahweh’s sight; and Yahweh delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.

² There was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren, and childless.

³ Yahweh’s angel appeared to the woman, and said to her, “See now, you are barren and childless; but you shall conceive and bear a son.

⁴ Now therefore please beware and drink no wine nor strong drink, and don’t eat any unclean thing;

⁵ for, behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son. No razor shall come on his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb. He shall begin to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.”

⁶ Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, “A man of God came to me, and his face was like the face of the angel of God, very awesome. I didn’t ask him where he was from, neither did he tell me his name;

⁷ but he said to me, ‘Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son; and now drink no wine nor strong drink. Don’t eat any unclean thing, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.’ ”

⁸ Then Manoah entreated Yahweh, and said, “Oh, Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come again to us, and teach us what we should do to the child who shall be born.”

⁹ God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field; but Manoah, her husband, wasn’t with her.

¹⁰ The woman hurried and ran, and told her husband, saying to him, “Behold, the man who came to me that day has appeared to me.”

¹¹ Manoah arose and followed his wife, and came to the man, and said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?” He said, “I am.”

¹² Manoah said, “Now let your words happen. What shall the child’s way of life and mission be?”

¹³ Yahweh’s angel said to Manoah, “Of all that I said to the woman let her beware.

¹⁴ She may not eat of anything that comes of the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing. Let her observe all that I commanded her.”

¹⁵ Manoah said to Yahweh’s angel, “Please stay with us, that we may make a young goat ready for you.”

¹⁶ Yahweh’s angel said to Manoah, “Though you detain me, I won’t eat your bread. If you will prepare a burnt offering, you must offer it to Yahweh.” For Manoah didn’t know that he was Yahweh’s angel.

¹⁷ Manoah said to Yahweh’s angel, “What is your name, that when your words happen, we may honor you?”

¹⁸ Yahweh’s angel said to him, “Why do you ask about my name, since it is incomprehensible?”

¹⁹ So Manoah took the young goat with the meal offering, and offered it on the rock to Yahweh. Then the angel did an amazing thing as Manoah and his wife watched.

²⁰ For when the flame went up toward the sky from off the altar, Yahweh’s angel ascended in the flame of the altar. Manoah and his wife watched; and they fell on their faces to the ground.

²¹ But Yahweh’s angel didn’t appear to Manoah or to his wife any more. Then Manoah knew that he was Yahweh’s angel.

²² Manoah said to his wife, “We shall surely die, because we have seen God.”

²³ But his wife said to him, “If Yahweh were pleased to kill us, he wouldn’t have received a burnt offering and a meal offering at our hand, and he wouldn’t have shown us all these things, nor would he have told us such things as these at this time.”

²⁴ The woman bore a son and named him Samson. The child grew, and Yahweh blessed him.

²⁵ Yahweh’s Spirit began to move him in Mahaneh Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.

Judges 14

¹ Samson went down to Timnah, and saw a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines.

² He came up, and told his father and his mother, saying, “I have seen a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines. Now therefore get her for me as my wife.”

³ Then his father and his mother said to him, “Isn’t there a woman among your brothers’ daughters, or among all my people, that you go to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?” Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, for she pleases me well.”

⁴ But his father and his mother didn’t know that it was of Yahweh; for he sought an occasion against the Philistines. Now at that time the Philistines ruled over Israel.

⁵ Then Samson went down to Timnah with his father and his mother, and came to the vineyards of Timnah; and behold, a young lion roared at him.

⁶ Yahweh’s Spirit came mightily on him, and he tore him as he would have torn a young goat with his bare hands, but he didn’t tell his father or his mother what he had done.

⁷ He went down and talked with the woman, and she pleased Samson well.

⁸ After a while he returned to take her, and he went over to see the carcass of the lion; and behold, there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey.

⁹ He took it into his hands, and went on, eating as he went. He came to his father and mother and gave to them, and they ate, but he didn’t tell them that he had taken the honey out of the lion’s body.

¹⁰ His father went down to the woman; and Samson made a feast there, for the young men used to do so.

¹¹ When they saw him, they brought thirty companions to be with him.

¹² Samson said to them, “Let me tell you a riddle now. If you can tell me the answer within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothing;

¹³ but if you can’t tell me the answer, then you shall give me thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothing.” They said to him, “Tell us your riddle, that we may hear it.”

¹⁴ He said to them, “Out of the eater came out food. Out of the strong came out sweetness.” They couldn’t in three days declare the riddle.

¹⁵ On the seventh day, they said to Samson’s wife, “Entice your husband, that he may declare to us the riddle, lest we burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you called us to impoverish us? Isn’t that so?”

¹⁶ Samson’s wife wept before him, and said, “You just hate me, and don’t love me. You’ve told a riddle to the children of my people, and haven’t told it to me.” He said to her, “Behold, I haven’t told my father or my mother, so why should I tell you?”

¹⁷ She wept before him the seven days, while their feast lasted; and on the seventh day, he told her, because she pressed him severely; and she told the riddle to the children of her people.

¹⁸ The men of the city said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down, “What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?” He said to them, “If you hadn’t plowed with my heifer, you wouldn’t have found out my riddle.”

¹⁹ Yahweh’s Spirit came mightily on him, and he went down to Ashkelon and struck thirty men of them. He took their plunder, then gave the changes of clothing to those who declared the riddle. His anger burned, and he went up to his father’s house.

²⁰ But Samson’s wife was given to his companion, who had been his friend.

Judges 15

¹ But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat. He said, “I will go in to my wife’s room.” But her father wouldn’t allow him to go in.

² Her father said, “I most certainly thought that you utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Isn’t her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please, take her instead.”

³ Samson said to them, “This time I will be blameless in the case of the Philistines when I harm them.”

⁴ Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the middle between every two tails.

⁵ When he had set the torches on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the olive groves.

⁶ Then the Philistines said, “Who has done this?” They said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.” The Philistines came up, and burned her and her father with fire.

⁷ Samson said to them, “If you behave like this, surely I will take revenge on you, and after that I will cease.”

⁸ He struck them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; and he went down and lived in the cave in Etam’s rock.

⁹ Then the Philistines went up, encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi.

¹⁰ 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 has done to us.”

¹¹ Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave in Etam’s rock, and said to Samson, “Don’t you know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” He said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.”

¹² They said to him, “We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines.” Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.”

¹³ They spoke to him, saying, “No, but we will bind you securely and deliver you into their hands; but surely we will not kill you.” They bound him with two new ropes, and brought him up from the rock.

¹⁴ When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him. Then Yahweh’s Spirit came mightily on him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that was burned with fire; and his bands dropped from off his hands.

¹⁵ He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, put out his hand, took it, and struck a thousand men with it.

¹⁶ Samson said, “With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps on heaps; with the jawbone of a donkey I have struck a thousand men.”

¹⁷ When he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone out of his hand; and that place was called Ramath Lehi.

¹⁸ He was very thirsty, and called on Yahweh and said, “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant; and now shall I die of thirst, and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”

¹⁹ But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out of it. When he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived. Therefore its name was called En Hakkore, which is in Lehi, to this day.

²⁰ He judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines.

Judges 16

¹ Samson went to Gaza, and saw there a prostitute, and went in to her.

² The Gazites were told, “Samson is here!” They surrounded him and laid wait for him all night in the gate of the city, and were quiet all the night, saying, “Wait until morning light; then we will kill him.”

³ Samson lay until midnight, then arose at midnight and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city, with the two posts, and plucked them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders and carried them up to the top of the mountain that is before Hebron.

⁴ It came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.

⁵ The lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, “Entice him, and see in which his great strength lies, and by what means we may prevail against him, that we may bind him to afflict him; and we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.”

⁶ Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me where your great strength lies, and what you might be bound to afflict you.”

⁷ Samson said to her, “If they bind me with seven green cords that were never dried, then shall I become weak, and be as another man.”

⁸ Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven green cords which had not been dried, and she bound him with them.

⁹ Now she had an ambush waiting in the inner room. She said to him, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” He broke the cords as a flax thread is broken when it touches the fire. So his strength was not known.

¹⁰ Delilah said to Samson, “Behold, you have mocked me, and told me lies. Now please tell me how you might be bound.”

¹¹ He said to her, “If they only bind me with new ropes with which no work has been done, then I will become weak, and be as another man.”

¹² So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them, then said to him, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” The ambush was waiting in the inner room. He broke them off his arms like a thread.

¹³ Delilah said to Samson, “Until now, you have mocked me and told me lies. Tell me with what you might be bound.” He said to her, “If you weave the seven locks of my head with the fabric on the loom.”

¹⁴ She fastened it with the pin, and said to him, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” He awakened out of his sleep, and plucked away the pin of the beam and the fabric.

¹⁵ She said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and have not told me where your great strength lies.”

¹⁶ When she pressed him daily with her words and urged him, his soul was troubled to death.

¹⁷ He told her all his heart and said to her, “No razor has ever come on my head; for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I am shaved, then my strength will go from me and I will become weak, and be like any other man.”

¹⁸ When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, “Come up this once, for he has told me all his heart.” Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hand.

¹⁹ She made him sleep on her knees; and she called for a man and shaved off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him.

²⁰ She said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” He awoke out of his sleep, and said, “I will go out as at other times, and shake myself free.” But he didn’t know that Yahweh had departed from him.

²¹ The Philistines laid hold on him and put out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza and bound him with fetters of bronze; and he ground at the mill in the prison.

²² However, the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaved.

²³ The lords of the Philistines gathered together to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god, and to rejoice; for they said, “Our god has delivered Samson our enemy into our hand.”

²⁴ When the people saw him, they praised their god; for they said, “Our god has delivered our enemy and the destroyer of our country, who has slain many of us, into our hand.”

²⁵ When their hearts were merry, they said, “Call for Samson, that he may entertain us.” They called for Samson out of the prison; and he performed before them. They set him between the pillars;

²⁶ and Samson said to the boy who held him by the hand, “Allow me to feel the pillars on which the house rests, that I may lean on them.”

²⁷ Now the house was full of men and women; and all the lords of the Philistines were there; and there were on the roof about three thousand men and women, who saw while Samson performed.

²⁸ Samson called to Yahweh, and said, “Lord Yahweh, remember me, please, and strengthen me, please, only this once, God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.”

²⁹ Samson took hold of the two middle pillars on which the house rested and leaned on them, the one with his right hand and the other with his left.

³⁰ Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” He bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell on the lords, and on all the people who were in it. So the dead that he killed at his death were more than those who he killed in his life.

³¹ Then his brothers and all the house of his father came down and took him, and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the burial site of Manoah his father. He judged Israel twenty years.