Samson

The woman bore a son and called him Shimshon. The child grew, and ADONAI blessed him.

Shimshon went down to Timnah, and in Timnah he saw a woman who was one of the P'lishtim.

His father and mother replied, "Isn't there any woman from the daughters of your kinsmen or among all my people? Must you go to the uncircumcised P'lishtim to find a wife?" Shimshon said to his father, "Get her for me. I like her."

Shimshon went down with his father and mother to Timnah. When they came to the vineyards of Timnah, a young lion roared at him.

Then he went down and talked with the woman and found he still liked her.

His father went down to the woman, and there Shimshon gave a banquet - this is what the young men used to do.

Shimshon said to them, "Let me present you with a riddle. If you can solve it within the seven days of the banquet and tell me the solution, I will give you thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of good clothes.

On the seventh day, they said to Shimshon's wife, "Coax your husband into telling us the solution to the riddle. Otherwise we'll burn down your father's house and you with it. You two called us here to turn us into paupers, didn't you?"

Shimshon's wife went to him in tears and said, "You don't love me, you hate me! You told a riddle to my fellow countrymen, and you haven't told me the answer." He said to her, "Look, I haven't even told it to my father and mother! Should I tell you?"

and his wife was given to the companion who had been best man at the wedding.

But after a while, during the wheat-harvest season, Shimshon went to see his wife. He brought a young goat for her and said to her father, "I want to go to my wife in her room." But he wouldn't let him.

Shimshon said to them, "This time I'm through with the P'lishtim! I'm going to do something terrible to them!"

So Shimshon went and caught three hundred foxes. Then he took torches, tied pairs of foxes to each other by their tails, and put a torch in the knot of every pair of tails.

The P'lishtim asked, "Who did this?" They answered, "Shimshon the son-in-law of the man from Timnah, because he took Shimshon's wife and gave her to his best man." Then the P'lishtim came up and burned both her and her father to death.

Shimshon said to them, "I will certainly have my revenge on you for doing such a thing; but after I do, I'll stop."

The men of Y'hudah said, "Why are you attacking us?" They replied, "To arrest Shimshon, that's why - to treat him the way he treated us."

Then 3,000 men from Y'hudah went down to the cave at the Eitam Rock and said to Shimshon, "Don't you know that the P'lishtim are our rulers? What are you doing to us?" He answered, "I've only treated them the way they treated me."

They said to him, "We've come down to arrest you and hand you over to the P'lishtim." Shimshon replied, "Swear to me that you won't fall on me yourselves."

Shimshon said, "With the jawbone of a donkey I left heaps piled on heaps! With the jawbone of a donkey I killed a thousand men!"

Shimshon went to 'Azah, where he saw a prostitute and went in to spend the night with her.

The people in 'Azah were told that Shimshon had come, so they surrounded the place where he was and also set an ambush for him all night at the city gate. Their plan was to do nothing at night, but to wait until morning and then kill him.

However, Shimshon stayed in bed until midnight; then he got up, took hold of the doors of the city gate and the two posts as well, pulled them up, bar and all, hoisted them on his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of the hill overlooking Hevron.

D'lilah said to Shimshon, "Please tell me what it is that makes you so strong, and how someone could tie you up and subdue you."

Shimshon replied, "If they tie me up with seven fresh bowstrings that have never been dried, I will become as weak as any other man."

Now she had people lying in wait in the inside room. So she said to him, "Shimshon! The P'lishtim have come for you!" But he snapped the bowstrings as easily as a piece of straw breaks when it touches fire, and the source of his strength remained unknown.