Historical
Birth of Samson
13 Bnei-Yisrael again did what was evil in Adonai’s eyes, and Adonai gave them into the hand of the Philistines for 40 years. 2 Now there was a certain man from Zorah, from a Danite clan, whose name was Manoah. His wife was barren and bore no children. 3 Then the angel of Adonai appeared to the woman and said to her, “Behold now, you are barren and have not borne children, but you will conceive and bear a son. [a] 4 Now therefore be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, or eat any unclean thing. 5 For behold, you will conceive and bear a son. Let no razor come upon his head, for the boy will be a Nazirite to God from the womb.[b] He will begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines.”
6 Then the woman came and told her husband saying, “A man of God came to me and his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God, very awesome! But I did not ask him where he was from, nor did he tell me his name. 7 He said to me, ‘Behold, you will conceive and bear a son. So, drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for the child will be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.”
8 Then Manoah entreated Adonai and said, “My Lord, please let the man of God whom You have sent come to us again and teach us what we will do for the boy to be born.”
9 God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she was sitting in the field, but her husband Manoah was not with her. 10 So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, and said to him, “Look, the man that came to me the other day has appeared to me!”
11 So Manoah got up and followed his wife. When he came to the man, he asked him, “Are you the one who spoke to the woman?”
“I am,” he said.
12 Then Manoah said, “Now may your words come about! What will be the child’s rule and his mission?”
13 The angel of Adonai said to Manoah, “Let the woman abstain from all that I mentioned to her. 14 She should not eat anything that comes from the grapevine, or drink wine or strong drink, or eat any unclean thing. She must observe all that I commanded her.”
15 Then Manoah said to the angel of Adonai, “Please, let us detain you so that we may prepare a young goat for you.”
16 But the angel of Adonai said to Manoah, “If you could detain me, I would not eat your food. But if you present a burnt offering, then offer it to Adonai.” For Manoah did not realize that he was the angel of Adonai.
17 Then Manoah asked the angel of Adonai, “What is your name, so that when your words come to pass we may honor you?” 18 But the angel of Adonai said to him, “Why do you ask for my name? It is wonderful.”
19 Manoah took the young goat with the meal offering and offered them on the rock to Adonai, and He did something wonderful as Manoah and his wife were watching. 20 For it came about when the flame went up from off the altar toward heaven that the angel of Adonai ascended in the flame of the altar. Manoah and his wife were looking on, then they fell on their faces to the ground. 21 But the angel of Adonai appeared no more to Manoah or to his wife.
Then Manoah realized that he was the angel of Adonai. 22 Manoah said to his wife, “We will surely die, because we have seen God.” 23 But his wife said to him, “If Adonai had desired to kill us, He would not have accepted a burnt offering and a meal offering from our hand, nor would He have shown us all these things or let us hear such things as these at this time.”
24 Then the woman bore a son, and called his name Samson. So the boy grew up and Adonai blessed him. 25 The Ruach Adonai began to stir him in Mahaneh-dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.
Riddle of the Lion
14 Then Samson went down to Timnah and eyed in Timnah a woman, one of the daughters of the Philistines. 2 So he came back and told his father and mother saying, “I have seen a woman in Timnah, one of the daughters of the Philistines. So now get her for me as a wife.”
3 Then his father and his mother said to him, “Is there no woman among the daughters of your kinsmen, or among all our people, that you are going to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?”
But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, for she is the right one in my eyes.”
4 But his father and mother did not know that it was of Adonai, for He was seeking a pretext against the Philistines. For at that time the Philistines were ruling over Israel. 5 While his father and mother went down to Timnah, Samson went to the vineyards of Timnah, and behold, a young lion came roaring at him. 6 Then the Ruach Adonai came mightily upon him, and he tore him apart as one would have split a young goat—yet he had nothing in his hand. But he did not tell his father or his mother what he had done.
7 So he went down and talked with the woman, and she looked right in Samson’s eyes. 8 After a while he returned to get her, but turned aside to look at the carcass of the lion; and behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion. 9 So he scraped it into his hands and went on, eating as he went. Now when he came to his father and mother, he gave some to them and they ate it, though he did not tell them that he had scraped the honey from the carcass of the lion.
10 Then his father went down to the woman, and Samson made a banquet there, for so the young men used to do. 11 Now it came to pass, when they saw him, they brought 30 companions to be with him. 12 Then Samson said to them, “Let me now propose a riddle to you. If you can indeed solve it for me during the seven days of the banquet, and figure it out, then I will give you 30 linen garments and 30 changes of clothes; 13 but if you cannot solve it for me, then you must give me 30 linen garments and 30 changes of clothes.”
“Propose your riddle,” they said to him. “Let’s hear it!”
14 So he said to them,
“Out of the eater came forth food,
out of the strong came forth sweet.”
But for three days they could not solve the riddle. 15 Now on the seventh day, they said to Samson’s wife, “Coax your husband so that he will explain the riddle to us—or else we will burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you invited us to impoverish us?”
16 So Samson’s wife wept before him and said, “You only hate me! You don’t love me! You proposed a riddle to the sons of my people—yet you haven’t explained it to me!”
“Look,” he said, “I haven’t explained it to my father or my mother, so should I explain it to you?” 17 But she wept before him the seven days while their banquet lasted. So it was on the seventh day he told her, because she nagged him. Then she told the riddle to the sons of her people. 18 So the men of the city said to him on the seventh day, before the sun went down,
“What is sweeter than honey?
And what is stronger than a lion?”
But he responded to them,
“If you hadn’t plowed with my heifer,
you wouldn’t have solved my riddle.”
19 Then the Ruach Adonai came mightily upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon and killed 30 of their men, took their spoil, and gave the changes of clothes to those who solved the riddle. Since his rage was burning, he went up to his father’s house. 20 But Samson’s wife was given to his companion who had been his best man.
Victory with a Jawbone
15 But after a while, during the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat. “I am going to my wife in her room,” he said.
But her father would not let him enter. 2 “I thought for sure you had utterly hated her,” her father said, “so I gave her to your best man. Her younger sister—isn’t she better than her? Please, let her be yours instead.”
3 Then Samson said to them, “This time I am blameless from the Philistines when I do harm to them.” 4 So Samson went and caught 300 foxes, and took torches, turned the foxes tail to tail and put one torch between every two tails. 5 Then he set fire to the torches and released them into the standing grain of the Philistines, Thus he burned up both the stacks and the standing grain, along with vineyards and olive trees.
6 Then the Philistines asked, “Who did this?” They were told, “Samson, son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his best man.” So the Philistines came up and burnt her and her father with fire.
7 Then Samson said to them, “Since you have acted like this, surely I will take revenge on you—after that I will quit.” 8 So he struck them leg upon thigh with a great slaughter. Then he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam.
9 Then the Philistines went up and camped in Judah and spread out in Lehi. 10 The men of Judah asked, “Why have you marched against us?”
They replied, “We have come to arrest Samson—to do to him as he did to us.”
11 Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Don’t you realize that the Philistines are ruling over us? So what is this that you have done to us?”
He said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.”
12 “We have come down to bind you,” they said to him, “so that we may hand you over to the Philistines.”
So Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you yourselves won’t kill me.”
13 “No, we won’t kill you,” they said to him, “but we will bind you fast and hand you over to them.” So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. 14 When he arrived at Lehi, the Philistines shouted upon meeting him. But the Ruach Adonai came mightily upon him so that the ropes that were on his arms became like flax burned with fire and his bonds melted off his wrists. 15 Then he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out and took it, and killed a thousand men with it. 16 Then Samson said,
“With the jawbone of a donkey,
a heap . . . two heaps,
with the jawbone of a donkey
I struck down a thousand men.”
17 As soon as he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand. Then he named that place Ramat-lehi. [c] 18 Then he became very thirsty, so he called to Adonai and said, “You have granted this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant. So now, will I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?”
19 But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out of it. When he drank, he regained his strength and revived. Therefore he called it En-hakkore[d], which is in Lehi to this day. 20 Then he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines for 20 years.
Tree of Life (TLV) Translation of the Bible. Copyright © 2015 by The Messianic Jewish Family Bible Society.