1. Later, during the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit the young woman he thought was still his wife. He brought along a young goat as a gift and said to her father, “I want to go into my wife's bedroom.”“You can't do that,” he replied.
2. “When you left the way you did, I thought you were divorcing her. So I arranged for her to marry one of the young men who were at your party. But my younger daughter is even prettier, and you can have her as your wife.”
3. “This time,” Samson answered, “I have a good reason for really hurting some Philistines.”
4. Samson went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied them together in pairs with oil-soaked rags around their tails.
5. Then Samson took the foxes into the Philistine wheat fields that were ready to be harvested. He set the rags on fire and let the foxes go. The wheat fields went up in flames, and so did the stacks of wheat that had already been cut. Even the Philistine vineyards and olive orchards burnt.
6. Some of the Philistines started asking around, “Who could have done such a thing?”“It was Samson,” someone told them. “He married the daughter of that man in Timnah, but then the man gave Samson's wife to one of the men at the wedding.”The Philistine leaders went to Timnah and burnt to death Samson's wife and her father.
7. When Samson found out what they had done, he went to them and said, “You killed them! And I won't rest until I get even with you.”
8. Then Samson started hacking them to pieces with his sword.Samson left Philistia and went to live in the cave at Etam Rock.
9. But it wasn't long before the Philistines invaded Judah and set up a huge army camp at Jawbone.
10. The people of Judah asked, “Why have you invaded our land?”The Philistines answered, “We've come to get Samson. We're going to do the same things to him that he did to our people.”
11. Three thousand men from Judah went to the cave at Etam Rock and said to Samson, “Don't you know that the Philistines rule us, and they will punish us for what you did?”“I was only getting even with them,” Samson replied. “They did the same things to me first.”