Judges 15:15-17

New English Translation

¹⁵He happened to see^[a] a solid^[b] jawbone of a donkey. He grabbed it^[c] and struck down^[d] 1,000 men. ¹⁶Samson then said,

“With the jawbone of a donkey
I have left them in heaps;^[e]
with the jawbone of a donkey
I have struck down a thousand men!”

¹⁷When he finished speaking, he threw the jawbone down^[f] and named that place Ramath Lehi.^[g]

Judges 15:15 tn Heb “he found.”
Judges 15:15 tn Heb “fresh,” i.e., not decayed and brittle.
Judges 15:15 tn Heb “he reached out his hand and took it.”
Judges 15:15 tn The Hebrew text adds “with it.” This has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.
Judges 15:16 tn The precise meaning of the second half of the line (חֲמוֹר חֲמֹרָתָיִם, khamor khamoratayim) is uncertain. The present translation assumes that the phrase means, “a heap, two heaps” and refers to the heaps of corpses littering the battlefield. Other options include: (a) “I have made donkeys of them” (cf. NIV; see C. F. Burney, Judges, 373, for a discussion of this view, which understands a denominative verb from the noun “donkey”); (b) “I have thoroughly skinned them” (see HALOT 330 s.v. IV cj. חמר, which appeals to an Arabic cognate for support); (c) “I have stormed mightily against them,” which assumes the verb חָמַר (khamar, “to ferment; to foam; to boil up”).
Judges 15:17 tn Heb “from his hand.”
Judges 15:17 sn The name Ramath Lehi means “Height of the Jawbone.”

New English Translation (NET)