1. And it cometh to pass, after [some] days, in the days of wheat-harvest, that Samson looketh after his wife, with a kid of the goats, and saith, `I go in unto my wife, to the inner chamber;' and her father hath not permitted him to go in,
2. and her father saith, I certainly said, that thou didst certainly hate her, and I give her to thy companion; is not her sister--the young one--better than she? Let her be, I pray thee, to thee, instead of her.'
3. And Samson saith of them, `I am more innocent this time than the Philistines, though I am doing with them evil.'
4. And Samson goeth and catcheth three hundred foxes, and taketh torches, and turneth tail unto tail, and putteth a torch between the two tails, in the midst,
5. and kindleth fire in the torches, and sendeth [them] out into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burneth [it] from heap even unto standing corn, even unto vineyard--olive-yard.
6. And the Philistines say, `Who hath done this?' And they say, `Samson, son-in-law of the Timnite, because he hath taken away his wife, and giveth her to his companion;' and the Philistines go up, and burn her and her father with fire.
7. And Samson saith to them, `Though ye do thus, nevertheless I am avenged on you, and afterwards I cease!'
8. And he smiteth them hip and thigh--a great smiting, and goeth down and dwelleth in the cleft of the rock Etam.
9. And the Philistines go up, and encamp in Judah, and are spread out in Lehi,
10. and the men of Judah say, `Why have ye come up against us?' and they say, `To bind Samson we have come up, to do to him as he hath done to us.'
11. And three thousand men of Judah go down unto the cleft of the rock Etam, and say to Samson, `Hast thou now known that the Philistines are rulers over us? and what [is] this thou hast done to us?' And he saith to them, `As they did to me, so I did to them.'
12. And they say to him, `To bind thee we have come down--to give thee into the hand of the Philistines.' And Samson saith to them, `Swear to me, lest ye fall upon me yourselves.'