Study Desk

And Samson's wife was given to his companion who was his best man.

After a while, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat. He said, "I want to go to my wife's private room." But her father would not allow him to enter.

And the Philistines said, "Who has done this?" And they said, "Samson the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion." And the Philistines went up and burned her and her father with fire.

As he came up to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him; and the Spirit of Yahweh rushed on him, and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that has burned with fire, and his bindings melted from his hands.

And it happened, when he finished speaking he threw the jawbone from his hand; and he called that place Ramath Lehi.

So God split the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it; and he drank, and his spirit returned, and he was revived. Thus he called its name The Spring of Ha-Qore, which is at Lehi to this day.

But Samson lay until the middle of the night; he got up in the middle of the night and took hold of the doors of the city gate and the two door posts, tore them loose with the bar, put them on his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron.

And the rulers of the Philistines came up to her and said, "Entice him and find out what makes his strength so great, and how we can overpower him, so that we may bind him up in order to subdue him; each of us will give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.

The ambush was sitting in wait for her in an inner room. And she said to him, "The Philistines are upon you Samson!" And he snapped the bowstrings just as flax fiber snaps when it comes close to fire. And the secret of his strength remained unknown.

So Delilah took new ropes and tied him up with them, and she said to him, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson!" (The ambush was sitting in an inner room.) But he snapped them from his arms like thread.

She fastened it with the pin and said to him, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson!" And Samson woke up from his sleep and tore loose the loom pin of the web and the warp-threads.

And because she nagged him day after day with her words, and pestered him, his soul grew impatient to the point of death.

And she put him to sleep on her lap; then she called the men and shaved off seven locks of his head. Then she began to subdue him, and his strength went away from him.

And she said to him, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson!" And he woke up from his sleep and said, "I will go out just like every other time and shake myself free," but he did not know that Yahweh had left him.

And the Philistines seized him, gouged his eyes, and brought him to Gaza. They tied him up with bronze shackles, and he became a grinder in the prison.

But the hair of his head began to grow back after it had been shaved off.

Then Samson said to the servant who was holding him by his hand, "Position me so that I can touch the pillars on which the house rests, so I can lean on them."

And Samson reached out and held two of the middle pillars on which the house was resting, and he leaned on them, one on his right and one on his left.

And Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines." And he pushed with all his strength, and the house fell on the rulers and all of the people who were with him. And the dead whom he killed in his death were more than those he killed in his life.

His brothers and his whole family came down and picked him up; and they brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father; he judged Israel twenty years.