Chapter 15
Judges
1 note in this chapter
Verse 1After some days, at the time of wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife with a young goat. And he said, “I will go in to my wife in the chamber.” But her father would not allow him to go in. Verse 2And her father said, “I really thought that you utterly hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her instead.” Verse 3And Samson said to them, “This time I shall be innocent in regard to the Philistines, when I do them harm.” Verse 4So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches. And he turned them tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails. Verse 5And when he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines and set fire to the stacked grain and the standing grain, as well as the olive orchards. Verse 6Then the Philistines said, “Who has done this?” And they said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.” And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. Verse 7And Samson said to them, “If this is what you do, I swear I will be avenged on you, and after that I will quit.” Verse 8And he struck them hip and thigh with a great blow, and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam.
Verse 9Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah and made a raid on Lehi. Verse 10And the men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” They said, “We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he did to us.” Verse 11Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” And he said to them, “As they did to me, so have I done to them.” Verse 12And they said to him, “We have come down to bind you, that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines.” And Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.” Verse 13They said to him, “No; we will only bind you and give you into their hands. We will surely not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.
Verse 14When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. Then the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. Verse 15And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, and with it he struck 1,000 men.✦
Verse 16And Samson said,“With the jawbone of a donkey,heaps upon heaps,with the jawbone of a donkeyhave I struck down a thousand men.”
15–16Absurdities (e): Judges 15:15-16
Critical Commentary
In Judges 15:15-16 Samson strikes down a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey. It is set beside the previous item as another tale of one man defeating an army with an improvised weapon.
And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, and with it he struck 1,000 men. And Samson said, “With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey have I struck down a thousand men.”
Judges 15:15-16
Source: see Credits and references (no. 3, p. 5).
Verse 17As soon as he had finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone out of his hand. And that place was called Ramath-lehi.
Verse 18And he was very thirsty, and he called upon the LORD and said, “You have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant, and shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” Verse 19And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it. And when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore the name of it was called En-hakkore; it is at Lehi to this day. Verse 20And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language.