Study Desk

His father and mother answered, "Surely there is a woman from Israel you can marry. Do you have to marry a woman from the Philistines, who are not circumcised?" But Samson said, "Get that woman for me! She is the one I want!"

The Spirit of the Lord entered Samson with great power, and he tore the lion apart with his bare hands. For him it was as easy as tearing apart a young goat. But Samson did not tell his father or mother what he had done.

Samson got some of the honey with his hands and walked along eating it. When he came to his parents, he gave some to them. They ate it, too, but Samson did not tell them he had taken the honey from the body of the dead lion.

But if you can't, you must give me thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of clothes." So they said, "Tell us your riddle so we can hear it."

So Samson's wife went to him, crying, and said, "You hate me! You don't really love me! You told my people a riddle, but you won't tell me the answer." Samson said, "I haven't even told my father or mother. Why should I tell you?"

At the time of the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, taking a young goat with him. He said, "I'm going to my wife's room," but her father would not let him go in.

But Samson said to them, "This time no one will blame me for hurting you Philistines!"

But Samson only stayed with the prostitute until midnight. Then he got up and took hold of the doors and the two posts of the city gate and tore them loose, along with the bar. He put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that faces the city of Hebron.

Some men were hiding in another room. Delilah said to him, "Samson, the Philistines are here!" But Samson broke the bowstrings like pieces of burned string. So the Philistines did not find out the secret of Samson's strength.

So Delilah took new ropes and tied Samson. Some men were hiding in another room. She called out to him, "Samson, the Philistines are here!" But he broke the ropes as easily as if they were threads.

Then she said, "Samson, the Philistines are here!" He woke up and thought, "I'll leave as I did before and shake myself free." But he did not know that the Lord had left him.

But his hair began to grow again.

When the people saw him, they praised their god, saying, "This man destroyed our country. He killed many of us! But our god handed over our enemy to us."

but she was unfaithful to him. She left him and went back to her father's house in Bethlehem in Judah and stayed there for four months.

On the fourth day they got up early in the morning. The Levite was getting ready to leave, but the woman's father said to his son-in-law, "Refresh yourself by eating something. Then go."

But the Levite did not want to stay another night. So he took his two saddled donkeys and his slave woman and traveled toward the city of Jebus (also called Jerusalem).

But his master said, "No. We won't go inside a foreign city. Those people are not Israelites. We will go on to the city of Gibeah."

They stopped there to spend the night. They came to the public square of the city and sat down, but no one invited them home to spend the night.

Finally, in the evening an old man came in from his work in the fields. His home was in the mountains of Ephraim, but now he was living in Gibeah. (The people of Gibeah were from the tribe of Benjamin.)

The Levite answered, "We are traveling from Bethlehem in Judah to my home in the mountains of Ephraim. I have been to Bethlehem in Judah, but now I am going to the Holy Tent of the Lord . No one has invited me to stay in his house.