Study Desk

So Manoah took a kid, with a meat-offering, and offered [it] upon a rock to the LORD; and [the angel] did wonderously, and Manoah and his wife looked on.

For it came to pass, when the flame ascended towards heaven from off the altar, that the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame of the altar. And Manoah and his wife looked on [it], and fell on their faces to the ground.

But the angel of the LORD did no more appear to Manoah and to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he [was] an angel of the LORD.

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

But his wife said to him, If the LORD were pleased to kill us, he would not have received a burnt-offering and a meat-offering at our hands, neither would he have showed us all these [things], nor would, as at this time, have told us [such things] as these.

And the woman bore a son, and called his name Samson. And the child grew, and the LORD blessed him.

And he came up, and told his father and his mother, and said, I have seen a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines: now therefore get her for me for a wife.

Then his father and his mother said to him, [Is there] not a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines? And Samson said to his father, Get her for me; for she pleaseth me well.

But his father and his mother knew not that it [was] of the LORD, that he sought an occasion against the Philistines: for at that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel.

Then went Samson down, and his father and his mother, to Timnath, and came to the vineyards of Timnath: and behold, a young lion roared against him.

And the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and [he had] nothing in his hand: but he told not his father or his mother what he had done.

And he took of it in his hands, and went on eating, and came to his father and mother, and he gave them, and they ate: but he told them not that he had taken the honey out of the carcass of the lion.

So his father went down to the woman: and Samson made there a feast; for so used the young men to do.

And the Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil, and gave change of garments to them who expounded the riddle. And his anger was kindled, and he went up to his father's house.

But Samson's wife was given to his companion, whom he had used as his friend.

But it came to pass after a while, in the time of wheat-harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid; and he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber. But her father would not suffer him to go in.

Then the Philistines said, Who hath done this? And they answered, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he had taken his wife, and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire.

[And] when he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him: and the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him, and the cords that [were] upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his the hands.

And he found a fresh jaw-bone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men with it.

And it came to pass when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jaw-bone out of his hand, and called that place Ramath-lehi.