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But the Ammonite king disregarded the message sent by Jephthah.

Jephthah said to them, "My people and I were entangled in controversy with the Ammonites. I asked for your help, but you did not deliver me from their power.

The Lord 's angelic messenger appeared to the woman and said to her, "You are infertile and childless, but you will conceive and have a son.

God answered Manoah's prayer. God's angelic messenger visited the woman again while she was sitting in the field. But her husband Manoah was not with her.

The Lord 's messenger said to Manoah, "If I stay, I will not eat your food. But if you want to make a burnt sacrifice to the Lord , you should offer it." (He said this because Manoah did not know that he was the Lord 's messenger.)

But his wife said to him, "If the Lord wanted to kill us, he would not have accepted the burnt offering and the grain offering from us. He would not have shown us all these things, or have spoken to us like this just now."

But his father and mother said to him, "Certainly you can find a wife among your relatives or among all our people! You should not have to go and get a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines." But Samson said to his father, "Get her for me, because she is the right one for me."

The Lord 's spirit empowered him and he tore the lion in two with his bare hands as easily as one would tear a young goat. But he did not tell his father or mother what he had done.

He scooped it up with his hands and ate it as he walked along. When he returned to his father and mother, he offered them some and they ate it. But he did not tell them he had scooped the honey out of the lion's carcass.

But if you cannot solve it, you will give me thirty linen robes and thirty sets of clothes." They said to him, "Let us hear your riddle."

So Samson's bride cried on his shoulder and said, "You must hate me; you do not love me! You told the young men a riddle, but you have not told me the solution." He said to her, "Look, I have not even told my father or mother. Do you really expect me to tell you?"

Sometime later, during the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat as a gift and went to visit his bride. He said to her father, "I want to have sex with my bride in her bedroom!" But her father would not let him enter.

When he arrived in Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they approached him. But the Lord 's spirit empowered him. The ropes around his arms were like flax dissolving in fire, and they melted away from his hands.

He was very thirsty, so he cried out to the Lord and said, "You have given your servant this great victory. But now must I die of thirst and fall into hands of the Philistines?"

So Delilah took new ropes and tied him with them and said to him, "The Philistines are here, Samson!" (The Philistines were hiding in the bedroom.) But he tore the ropes from his arms as if they were a piece of thread.

She said, "The Philistines are here, Samson!" He woke up and thought, "I will do as I did before and shake myself free." But he did not realize that the Lord had left him.

He said to his mother, "You know the eleven hundred pieces of silver which were stolen from you, about which I heard you pronounce a curse? Look here, I have the silver. I stole it, but now I am giving it back to you." His mother said, "May the Lord reward you, my son!"

They said, "Come on, let's attack them, for we saw their land and it is very good. You seem lethargic, but don't hesitate to invade and conquer the land.

They turned and went on their way, but they walked behind the children, the cattle, and their possessions.

They named it Dan after their ancestor, who was one of Israel's sons. But the city's name used to be Laish.