Old/New Testament

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.

²⁷ Love of Enemies.^[a]“But to those of you who are listening to me, I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸ bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. ²⁹ If anyone strikes you on one cheek, offer him the other cheek as well, and should someone take your cloak, let him have your tunic as well. ³⁰ Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not demand the return of what is yours from the one who has taken it.

³¹ “Deal with others as you would like them to deal with you. ³² If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. ³³ And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do as much. ³⁴ And if you lend only to those from whom you expect to be repaid, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full.

³⁵ “Rather, you must love your enemies and do good to them, and lend without expecting any repayment. In this way, you will receive a great reward. You will be sons of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. ³⁶ Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

³⁷ Relations with Others.^[b]“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. ³⁸ Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap. The measure that you use for others will be used to measure you.”

³⁹ Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind. He also told them a parable: “Can one blind man guide another who is also blind? Will not both of them fall into a pit? ⁴⁰ No student is greater than his teacher, but a fully trained student will be like his teacher.

⁴¹ “Why do you take note of the splinter in your brother’s eye but do not notice the wooden plank in your own eye? ⁴² How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the splinter that is in your eye,’ while all the time you do not notice the wooden plank that is in your own eye? You hypocrite! First remove the wooden plank from your own eye, and then you will be able to see clearly enough to remove the splinter that is in your brother’s eye.

⁴³ A Tree Is Known by Its Fruit.^[c]“No healthy tree can bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotting tree bear healthy fruit. ⁴⁴ Every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not pick figs from thornbushes or grapes from brambles. ⁴⁵ A good man produces good from the store of goodness in his heart, whereas an evil man produces evil from the store of evil within him. For the mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart.

⁴⁶ Parable of the Two Foundations.“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but fail to do what I tell you? ⁴⁷ I will show you what everyone is like who comes to me and hears my words and acts in accordance with them. ⁴⁸ He is like a man who in building a house dug deeply and laid its foundations on rock. When the flood rose, it burst against that house but could not shake it because it had been solidly constructed. ⁴⁹ In contrast, the one who hears and does not act in accordance with my words is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. As soon as the river burst against it, the house collapsed and was completely destroyed.”