Shuphatym (Judges) — 15

Shamsun’s Vengeance on the Philistines

1 Later on, during the wheat harvest, Shamsun took a young goat as a present to his wife. He said, “I’m going into my wife’s room to sleep with her,” but her father did not let him in.

2 “I truly thought you must hate her,” her father explained, “so I gave her in marriage to your best man. But look, her younger sister is even more beautiful than she is. Marry her instead.”

3 Shamsun said, “This time I cannot be blamed for everything I am going to do to you Philistines.” 

4 Then he went out and caught 300 foxes, he tied their tails together in pairs, and he fastened a fire torch to each pair of tails. 

5 Then Shamsun lit the torches and let the foxes run through the grain fields of the Philistines, he burned all their grain to the ground, including the sheaves and the uncut grain, he also destroyed their vineyards and olive groves.

6 “When the Philistines asked who had done this, they learned Shamsun had done this, “because his father-in-law from Timnah gave Shamsun’s wife to be married to his best man.” So the Philistines went and got the woman and her father and burned them to death.

7 And Shamsun vowed, because you did this, “I will not rest until I take my revenge on you!” 

8 So Shamsun attacked the Philistines with great fury and killed many of them, then he went to live in a cave in the rock of Atam.

9 The Philistines retaliated by setting up camp in Yahudah and spreading out near the town of Lahi. 

10 The men of Yahudah asked the Philistines, “Why are you attacking us?” The Philistines replied, “We have come to capture Shamsun. We have come to pay him back for what he did to us.”

11 So three thousand men of Yahudah went down to get Shamsun at the cave in the rock of Atam, they said to Shamsun, “Do you not realize the Philistines rule over us? What are you doing to us? And Shamsun replied, “I only did to them what they did to me.”

12 But the men of Yahudah told Shamsun, “We have come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.” All right,” Shamsun said. “But promise that you will not kill me yourselves.”

13 “And they said to him, we are to only tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines, “We are not going to kill you.” So they tied Shamsun up with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.

14 As Shamsun arrived at Lahi, the Philistines came shouting in triumph, But the RUACH of  𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄_YAHUAH came powerfully upon Shamsun, 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 one thousand Philistines with it. 

16 Then Shamsun said, “With the jawbone of a donkey, I have piled them in heaps! With the jawbone of a donkey, I have killed a thousand men!”

17 When he finished his boasting, he threw away the jawbone; and the place was named Jawbone Hill.

18 Shamsun was now very thirsty, and he cried out to 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄_YAHUAH, “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 𐤀𐤋𐤅𐤄_ALUAH caused water to gush out of a hole in the ground at Lahi, and Shamsun was revived as he drank. Then he named that place “The Spring of the One Who Cried Out,” and it is still in Lahi to this day.

20 Shamsun judged Yashar'AL for twenty years during the period when the Philistines dominated the land.