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| 1 And it came to pass after a time, in the days of the wheat-harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid of the goats. And he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber; but her father would not suffer him to go in. |
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| 2 And her father said, I verily thought that thou didst utterly hate her; therefore I gave her to thy companion. Is not her younger sister fairer than she? Let her, I pray thee, be thine instead of her. |
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| 3 And Samson said to them, This time I am blameless toward the Philistines, though I do them harm.
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| 4 And Samson went and caught three hundred jackals, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the midst between the two tails. |
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| 5 And he set the torches on fire, and let them run into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, and the olive gardens. |
Burnt up – Not wantonly, but to impoverish Israel's captors and recover the land for the nation. R1381:4, R4088:4
Samson used every means at his command to break the forces of the oppressors and to deliver his people. R4088:4
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| 6 And the Philistines said, Who has done this? And they answered, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burned her and her father with fire. |
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| 7 And Samson said to them, If ye act thus, for a certainty I will avenge myself on you, and then I will cease. |
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| 8 And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter. And he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the cliff Etam. |
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| 9 And the Philistines went up, and encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. |
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| 10 And the men of Judah said, Why are ye come up against us? And they said, To bind Samson are we come up, to do to him as he has done to us. |
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| 11 Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the cliff Etam, and said to Samson, Knowest thou not that the Philistines rule over us? And what is this that thou hast done to us? And he said to them, As they did to me, so have I done to them. |
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| 12 And they said to him, We are come down to bind thee, that we may give thee into the hand of the Philistines. And Samson said to them, Swear to me that ye will not fall on me yourselves. |
That we may deliver thee – Showing the abjectness of the Israelites' servility. R4088:4
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| 13 And they spoke to him, saying, No; but we will bind thee fast, and deliver thee into their hand; but we certainly shall not put thee to death. And they bound him with two new cords, and brought him up from the cliff. |
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| 14 When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him. And the Spirit of Jehovah came upon him, and the cords that were on his arms became as threads of flax that are burned with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands. |
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| 15 And he found a fresh jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand and took it, and slew with it a thousand men. |
Slew a thousand – Consider the activities of the early Church and the victories they gained. R4088:6
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| 16 And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, a heap, two heaps, With the jawbone of an ass have I slain a thousand men. |
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| 17 And it came to pass when he had ended speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramath-Lehi. |
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| 18 And he was very thirsty, and called on Jehovah, and said, Thou hast given by the hand of thy servant this great deliverance, and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised? |
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| 19 And God clave the hallow rock which was in Lehi, and water came out of it. And he drank, and his spirit came again, and he revived. Therefore its name was called En-hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day. |
His spirit came – Ruach, vital or life-power returned. E314
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| 20 And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years. |
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