Judges 13-16

New Catholic Bible

Chapter 13

The Angel and Manoah.^{[a] 1} The Israelites once again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. The Lord delivered them over into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.

² There was a certain man from Zorah, named Manoah, who was a Danite. His wife was barren and childless. ³ The angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “Behold, you are barren and childless, but you will conceive and have a son. ⁴ Make sure you do not drink any wine or strong drink. Do not eat any unclean thing, ⁵ for you will conceive and have a son. No razor is ever to touch his head, for he will be a Nazirite,^[b] one dedicated to God from the womb. He will begin the deliverance of Israel out of the hands of the Philistines.”

⁶ The woman went and told her husband, “A man of God has visited me. He looked like an angel of God, truly wondrous. I did not ask him where he came from, nor did he tell me his name. ⁷ He said to me, ‘Behold, you will conceive and have a son. Do not drink any wine or strong drink. Do not eat anything unclean, for from the womb until the day he dies he will be a Nazirite of God.’ ”

⁸ Manoah prayed to the Lord, “O Lord, let the man of God whom you sent to us visit us again so that he might teach us how to raise the child who is to be born.”

⁹ God listened to Manoah, and the angel of God visited the woman again when she was out in the fields, but Manoah, her husband, was not with her. ¹⁰ The woman quickly ran to tell her husband, “Behold, the man who appeared to me the other day is here.”

¹¹ Manoah got up and followed his wife. When he came to the man, he said, “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?” He answered, “I am.” ¹² Manoah asked him, “When your words are fulfilled, how should we treat the child?” ¹³ The angel of the Lord said to Manoah, “Your wife must do the things I said to her. ¹⁴ She cannot eat any of the products of the vine nor drink any strong drink nor eat anything unclean. She is to do everything that I commanded her to do.”

¹⁵ Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, “Would you please stay here until we prepare a kid goat for you?” ¹⁶ The angel of the Lord answered Manoah, “Even though you hold me here, I will not eat anything. If you prepare a burnt offering, offer it up to the Lord.” (Manoah did not realize that it was an angel of the Lord.) ¹⁷ Manoah asked the angel of the Lord, “What is your name, so that we can honor you when these things happen?” ^18 [c]The angel of the Lord answered, “Why do you ask me my name? It is a mystery.”

¹⁹ Manoah took a young goat together with a grain offering and he offered them up to the Lord on a rock. He did a wondrous thing as Manoah and his wife looked on. ²⁰ As the flames rose up from the altar into the heavens, the angel of the Lord rose up from the altar in the flames as Manoah and his wife looked on. They fell prostrate on the ground.

²¹ When the angel of the Lord did not appear again to Manoah and his wife, Manoah realized that it had been an angel of the Lord. ²² Manoah said to his wife, “We will surely die, for we have seen God!” ²³ But his wife answered, “If the Lord wanted to kill us, then he would not have accepted the burnt offering and the grain offering from our hands, nor would he have revealed all of these things, nor would he have told us these things.”

²⁴ The woman gave birth to a son whose name was Samson. The child grew and the Lord blessed him. ²⁵ The Spirit of the Lord began to stir in him while he was in Mahaneh-dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.

Chapter 14

Samson’s Marriage. ¹ Samson went down to Timnah and he saw a Philistine woman in Timnah. ² When he returned, he told his father and his mother, “I have seen a woman in Timnah, a Philistine. Arrange for her to be my wife.” ³ His father and his mother answered, “Is there no maiden among your relatives or your countrymen that you would go to take a wife from among the uncircumcised Philistines?” But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, for she is the one I want.” ⁴ (His father and his mother did not know that this was the Lord’s plan. He was seeking an opportunity to oppose the Philistines, for the Philistines were ruling over Israel.)^[d]

⁵ Samson went down to Timnah with his father and his mother. As they were approaching the vineyards of Timnah, a young roaring lion came toward them. ⁶ The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and he tore it apart with his bare hands as if he were tearing apart a young goat. He told his father and his mother not to tell anyone what he had done.

⁷ They went down and talked with the woman, and Samson liked her. ⁸ Sometime later, when he went down to marry her, he stepped off the road to look at the lion’s carcass. There was a bee’s nest and some honey in the lion’s carcass. ⁹ He took some of it in his hands, and ate it along the way. When he rejoined his father and his mother, he gave them some to eat, but he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the carcass of the lion.

¹⁰ His father went down to see the woman. Samson prepared a feast there, as is the custom among young men. ¹¹ When they met him, they brought in thirty companions to be with him. ¹² Samson said to them, “I will give you a riddle. If you can figure it out and solve it for me during these seven days of celebration, I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothing. ¹³ If you cannot solve it, then you will have to give me thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothing.” They answered him, “Tell us your riddle. Let’s hear it.” ¹⁴ He told them, “From out of the eater came forth something to eat, from out of the strong one came something sweet.” For three days they could not figure out the riddle.

¹⁵ On the fourth day, they said to Samson’s wife, “Coax Samson to explain the riddle for us, or else we will burn you and your father’s house. Did you invite us here to rob us?” ¹⁶ Samson’s wife came to him crying and she said, “You hate me. You don’t really love me. You posed a riddle to my people, and you did not explain it to me.” He told her, “I have not even explained it to my father or my mother; why should I explain it to you?”

¹⁷ She cried before him for the entire seven days of the celebration. On the seventh day he finally told her, for she had worn him out, and she explained the riddle to her people. ¹⁸ On the seventh day, before sunset, the men from the city said to him, “What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?” He said to them, “You would not have figured out my riddle if you had not plowed with my heifer.”^{[e] 19} Then the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him. He went down to Ashkelon and he killed thirty men there. He took their belongings and gave a change of clothing to those who had explained the riddle. Burning with rage, he went back to his father’s home. ²⁰ Samson’s wife was given to his friend who had been his best man.

Chapter 15

Samson’s Revenge on the Philistines. ¹ Later on, during the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife, bringing her a kid goat. He said, “I am going in to my wife’s room,” but her father would not let him go in. ² The father said, “I was so sure that you hated her that I gave her to your friend. Her younger sister is prettier than she is. Please, take her instead.” ³ But Samson said to them, “It is no longer my fault if I harm the Philistines.”

⁴ Samson went out and caught three hundred foxes. He tied them together, tail to tail. He then fastened a torch between each pair of tails. ⁵ He set the torches on fire and let them go into the Philistine’s standing grain. It burned up both the standing grain and the stacks of grain, as well as the vineyards and the olive orchards.

⁶ When the Philistines asked, “Who did this,” they were told, “It was Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite. He did it because they took his wife and gave her to his friend.” The Philistines therefore went and burned her and her father to death. ⁷ Samson said to them, “Because you have done this, I will never stop getting my vengeance on you.” ⁸ He struck them ruthlessly, slaughtering many of them. He then went down and dwelt in a fissure of the rock of Etam.

⁹ The Philistines went up and camped in Judah, spreading out near Lehi. ¹⁰ The Judahites asked, “Why have you come to fight against us?” They answered, “To take Samson prisoner so that we can do to him what he did to us.” ¹¹ Three thousand men from Judah went down to the fissure of the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Did you not know that the Philistines are ruling over us? What have you done to us?” He answered, “I just did to them what they did to me.” ¹² They said to him, “We have come to take you prisoner and to deliver you over to the Philistines.” He said to them, “Swear to me that you will not kill me yourselves.” ¹³ They said, “No, but we will tie you up and hand you over to them. We will not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes and led him away from the rock.

¹⁴ As he approached Lehi, the Philistines came toward him shouting. The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him. The ropes that were around his arms became like charred flax, and the binding fell off of his hands.

¹⁵ He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and he reached out and took it in his hand. He then killed one thousand men with it. ¹⁶ Samson said,

¹⁷ When he finished speaking, he dropped the jawbone from out of his hand. The name of that place is Ramath-lehi.

¹⁸ Now he was very thirsty, so he called out to the Lord, “You have given this great victory through the hand of your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”^{[f] 19} God split open a hollow place in Lehi, and water came out. When he drank it, his strength returned and his spirit was revived. The spring is called En-hakkore, and it is still in Lehi today. ²⁰ Samson was a judge over Israel for forty years during the days of the Philistines.

Chapter 16

Samson at Gaza. ¹ One day Samson went to Gaza. He saw a prostitute there, and he had sex with her. ² The people in Gaza were told, “Samson is here.” They surrounded the place where he was staying, and they lay in wait for him all night at the city gate. They kept quiet all night, saying, “In the morning we will kill him.” ³ Samson lay there until midnight, and then at midnight he got up and took hold of the city gates with its two posts. He lifted up the gates, put them on his shoulders, and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron.

Samson and Delilah. ⁴ Sometime later he fell in love with a woman who lived in the Valley of Sorek. Her name was Delilah. ⁵ The lords of the Philistines visited her and said, “Entice him and see if you can find out the source of his great strength and how we can overpower him and tie him up and subdue him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.”

⁶ Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me the source of your great strength and how you could be tied up and subdued.” ⁷ Samson answered her, “If anyone were to tie me up with seven fresh bowstrings that have never been dried, then I would become as weak as everyone else.” ⁸ The lords of the Philistines brought her seven fresh bowstrings that had not been dried, and she tied him up with them. ⁹ There were some men hiding in the room when she cried out to him, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you.” He broke the thongs like a piece of string that snaps when it is close to a flame. Thus, the secret of his strength was not known.

¹⁰ Delilah then said to Samson, “You have mocked me and lied to me. Please, tell me now how you could be tied up.” ¹¹ He answered, “If anyone were to bind me with new ropes that had never been used, then I would become as weak as everyone else.” ¹² So Delilah took new ropes and she bound him and cried out, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you,” as the men were hiding in the room. He broke them off of his arms as if they were made of thread.

¹³ Delilah then said to Samson, “Until now you have mocked me and lied to me. Tell me, now, how you could be tied up.” He answered, “If you were to weave the seven locks on my head into the loom, ¹⁴ and fastened it with a pin, then I should become weak, and be like any other man.” Again she cried out, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you.” He woke up from his sleep and pulled away from the pin, the loom, and the web.

¹⁵ She said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when you hold back your love from me. You have mocked me these three times; you have not told me where your strength lies.” ¹⁶ She wore him out by talking to him day after day, and nagging him, until he was tired to death, ¹⁷ so he told her everything. He said to her, “No razor has ever touched my head because I have been a Nazirite of God from my mother’s womb. If I were to be shaved, then my strength would disappear and I would become as weak as any other man.”

¹⁸ When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she summoned the lords of the Philistines saying, “Come back one more time, for he has told me everything.” The lords of the Philistines came to her, the money in their hands. ¹⁹ She had him fall asleep upon her knees, and she summoned a man to shave off the seven locks on his head. Thus, she began to subdue him, and his strength left him. ²⁰ She cried out, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you.” He woke up from his sleep and said, “I will go out like the previous times and shake myself free.” He did not know that the Lord had left him.^[g]

²¹ The Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They took him down to Gaza and bound him in bronze shackles, setting him to grind grain in prison.

²² Samson’s Revenge and Death. The hair on his head began to grow back after it had been shaved off. ²³ The lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon.^[h] They celebrated and said, “Our god has delivered us from the hands of Samson, our enemy.” ²⁴ When the people saw him, they praised their god saying, “Our god has delivered our enemy into our hands, the one who laid waste to our country and killed so many of us.” ²⁵ While they were in high spirits, they cried out, “Call out Samson so that he can entertain us.” They summoned Samson out of the prison, and he entertained them. They set him between the pillars. ²⁶ Samson said to the boy who was holding his hand, “Let me feel the pillars on which the temple is set so I can lean against them.” ²⁷ The temple was packed with men and women, and all of the lords of the Philistines were there as well. There were also about three thousand men and women upon the roof, watching while Samson was amusing them.

²⁸ Samson called out to the Lord and said, “O Lord, please remember me. I beg you, please strengthen me^[i] this one more time so that I might take vengeance upon the Philistines for my two eyes.”

²⁹ Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the temple was set. He braced himself against them, one with his right hand and one with his left hand. ³⁰ Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines.” He pushed with all his might, and the house came crashing down upon the lords and upon all of the people. Thus, he killed more people with his death than he had killed during his life. ³¹ His brothers and all of his father’s household went down to get him. They brought him back and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father. He was a judge over Israel for twenty years.