Study Desk

So Manoah asked, "When what you say happens, what kind of life should the boy live? What should he do?"

Manoah said to the angel of the Lord , "We would like you to stay awhile so we can cook a young goat for you."

So Manoah sacrificed a young goat on a rock and offered some grain as a gift to the Lord . Then an amazing thing happened as Manoah and his wife watched.

Manoah said, "We have seen God, so we will surely die."

So the woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew, and the Lord blessed him.

When he returned home, he said to his father and mother, "I saw a Philistine woman in Timnah. I want you to get her for me so I can marry her."

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?"

Samson's wife cried for the rest of the seven days of the feast. So he finally gave her the answer on the seventh day, because she kept bothering him. Then she told her people the answer to the riddle.

He said to Samson, "I thought you really hated your wife, so I gave her to your best man. Her younger sister is more beautiful. Take her instead."

So Samson went out and caught three hundred foxes. He took two foxes at a time, tied their tails together, and then tied a torch to the tails of each pair of foxes.

After he lit the torches, he let the foxes loose in the grainfields of the Philistines so that he burned up their standing grain, the piles of grain, their vineyards, and their olive trees.

The Philistines asked, "Who did this?" Someone told them, "Samson, the son-in-law of the man from Timnah, did because his father-in-law gave his wife to his best man." So the Philistines burned Samson's wife and her father to death.

The men from Judah said, "We agree. We will just tie you up and give you to the Philistines. We will not kill you." So they tied Samson with two new ropes and led him up from the cave in the rock.

When he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone. So that place was named Ramath Lehi.

Samson was very thirsty, so he cried out to the Lord , "You gave me, your servant, this great victory. Do I have to die of thirst now? Do I have to be captured by people who are not circumcised?"

Then God opened up a hole in the ground at Lehi, and water came out. When Samson drank, he felt better; he felt strong again. So he named that spring Caller's Spring, which is still in Lehi.

The Philistine rulers went to Delilah and said, "Find out what makes Samson so strong. Trick him into telling you how we can overpower him and capture him and tie him up. If you do this, each one of us will give you twenty-eight pounds of silver."

So Delilah said to Samson, "Tell me why you are so strong. How can someone tie you up and capture you?"

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.