Scriptures

New Living Translation (NLT)

Judges 15
¹² But the men of Judah told him, “We have come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.” “All right,” Samson said. “But promise that you won’t kill me yourselves.”
¹³ “We will only tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines,” they replied. “We won’t kill you.” So they tied him up with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.
¹⁴ As Samson arrived at Lehi, the Philistines came shouting in triumph. But the Spirit of the LORD came powerfully upon Samson, and he snapped the ropes on his arms as if they were burnt strands of flax, and they fell from his wrists.
¹⁵ Then he found the jawbone of a recently killed donkey. He picked it up and killed 1,000 Philistines with it.
¹⁶ Then Samson said, “With the jawbone of a donkey, I’ve piled them in heaps! With the jawbone of a donkey, I’ve killed a thousand men!”
¹⁷ When he finished his boasting, he threw away the jawbone; and the place was named Jawbone Hill.
¹⁸ Samson was now very thirsty, and he cried out to the LORD, “You have accomplished this great victory by the strength of your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of these pagans?”
¹⁹ So God caused water to gush out of a hollow in the ground at Lehi, and Samson was revived as he drank. Then he named that place “The Spring of the One Who Cried Out,” and it is still in Lehi to this day.
²⁰ Samson judged Israel for twenty years during the period when the Philistines dominated the land.
Judges 16
¹ One day Samson went to the Philistine town of Gaza and spent the night with a prostitute.
² Word soon spread that Samson was there, so the men of Gaza gathered together and waited all night at the town gates. They kept quiet during the night, saying to themselves, “When the light of morning comes, we will kill him.”