Old Testament
Judges 15
Foxes, Jawbone, and Thirst
Overview
After seizing upon a personal grievance as justification for war, Samson burns the Philistine harvest with fire-bearing foxes, is bound and surrendered to the enemy by his own kinsmen of Judah, then — empowered by the Spirit of the Lord — slays a thousand Philistines with a donkey's jawbone, before crying out to God in thirst and receiving a miraculous spring, with the chapter closing on the sober notice that he judged Israel for twenty years during Philistine domination.
Passages
Study Resources
Judges 15
1But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat. He said, “I will go in to my wife’s room.” But her father wouldn’t allow him to go in.
2Her father said, “I most certainly thought that you utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Isn’t her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please, take her instead.”
3Samson said to them, “This time I will be blameless in the case of the Philistines when I harm them.” 4Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the middle between every two tails. 5When he had set the torches on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the olive groves.
6Then the Philistines said, “Who has done this?” They said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.” The Philistines came up, and burned her and her father with fire.
7Samson said to them, “If you behave like this, surely I will take revenge on you, and after that I will cease.” 8He struck them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; and he went down and lived in the cave in Etam’s rock. 9Then the Philistines went up, encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi.
10The 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 has done to us.”
11Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave in Etam’s rock, and said to Samson, “Don’t you know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” He said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.”
12They said to him, “We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines.” Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.”
13They spoke to him, saying, “No, but we will bind you securely and deliver you into their hands; but surely we will not kill you.” They bound him with two new ropes, and brought him up from the rock.
14When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him. Then Yahweh’s Spirit came mightily on him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that was burned with fire; and his bands dropped from off his hands. 15He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, put out his hand, took it, and struck a thousand men with it. 16Samson said, “With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps on heaps; with the jawbone of a donkey I have struck a thousand men.” 17When he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone out of his hand; and that place was called Ramath Lehi.
18He was very thirsty, and called on Yahweh and said, “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant; and now shall I die of thirst, and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”
19But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out of it. When he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived. Therefore its name was called En Hakkore, which is in Lehi, to this day. 20He judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines.