Read the Modern Pastor’s Version

But it was not long before Samson visited his wife with a kid. He said, "I'm going to my wife, but I want you to let me go into our private chamber." However, her father refused to allow him.

"I thought you had completely rejected your daughter," he said, "so I gave her in marriage to your companion from the tribe of Judah. Isn't his younger sister more attractive than she? Take her instead."

Samson replied, "This time I'll take care to avenge myself on the Philistines for what they've done." So Samson went and caught 300 foxes, took torches made from firebrands, turned them tail to tail, and put a burning brand in the middle of each pair.

When he had set the torches ablaze, he released them into the Philistine's grain fields, burning up both the harvested crops and the standing grain, as well as their vineyards and olive groves. The Philistines were outraged, asking one another, "Who has done this?"

They discovered that Samson, the son-in-law of a Timnite man, was responsible because he had taken his daughter and given her to his companion from Judah. In response, the Philistines marched up to the house, set it on fire, and burned both the woman and her father alive.

"If you behave like this," Samson declared, "I'll exact revenge on you, but then I'll stop." With that, he slaughtered many Philistines with a great slaughter, then went down and made his home in the rocky terrain of Etam.

The Philistines marched up and set camp in Judah at Lehi. The men from Judah asked them, "Why have you come against us?" The Philistines replied, "We've come to bind Samson and treat him as he's treated us."

Three thousand men from Judah went up to the rocky terrain of Etam and said to Samson, "Don't you know that the Philistines rule over us?" He responded, "As they did to me, so I have done to them."

They told him, "We've come down to bind you and hand you over to the Philistines." Samson replied, "Swear to me that you won't attack me yourselves," but they agreed only to bind him tightly and deliver him into their hands. They bound him with two new ropes and led him up from the rocky terrain.

When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted at him, and the Spirit of the Lord rushed powerfully upon him. He found a fresh jawbone from a donkey and struck down a thousand men with it.

Samson used the jawbone to strike down 1,000 men; he said, "With the jawbone of an ass, I have slain a thousand men, heaps upon heaps." When he finished speaking, Samson threw the jawbone aside and called that place Ramath-lehi.

He was extremely thirsty and cried out to the Lord, saying, "You've given me this great victory over the Philistines. Now I'm dying from thirst, and I'll fall into the hands of these uncircumcised men." But God split open a hollow place in Samson's jaw, and water flowed out; after he drank, his spirit returned, and he came back to life.

Samson judged Israel during the Philistine domination for twenty years.