Day 162 of 365

¹The children of Israel again did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.

²There was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren, and did not bear. .

³The angel of the Lord appeared to the woman, and said to her, "See now, you are barren, and do not bear; but you shall conceive, and bear a son.

⁴Now therefore please be careful and drink no wine nor strong drink, and do not eat any unclean thing.

⁵For behold, you shall conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head; for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb. And he shall begin to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines."

⁶Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, "A man of God came to me, and his face was like the face of the angel of God, very awesome; and I didn't ask him where he was from, neither did he tell me his name,

⁷but he said to me, 'Behold, you shall conceive, and bear a son. And now drink no wine nor strong drink, and do not eat any unclean thing; for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb until the day of his death.'"

⁸Then Manoah entreated the Lord, and said, "Oh, Lord, please let the man of God whom you did send come again to us, and teach us what we shall do to the child who shall be born."

⁹God listened to the voice of Manoah; and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field: but Manoah, her husband, wasn't with her.

¹⁰The woman ran quickly, and told her husband, and said to him, "Behold, the man who came to me the other day has appeared to me."

¹¹Manoah arose, and went after his wife, and came to the man, and said to him, "Are you the man who spoke to the woman?" He said, "I am."

¹²Manoah said, "Now let your words happen. How shall the child be raised and what is he to do?"

¹³The angel of the Lord said to Manoah, "Of all that I said to the woman let her be careful.

¹⁴She may not eat of anything that comes of the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing. All that I have commanded her she is to observe."

¹⁵Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, "Please, stay a bit longer that we may prepare a young goat for you."

¹⁶The angel of the Lord said to Manoah, "Though you detain me, I won't eat of your bread. And if you prepare a burnt offering, you must offer it to the Lord." For Manoah did not know that he was the angel of the Lord.

¹⁷Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, "What is your name, that when your words come true we may honor you?"

¹⁸And the angel of the Lord said to him, "Why do you ask for my name? It is incomprehensible."

¹⁹So Manoah took the young goat and a grain offering, and offered it on the rock to the Lord, who works wonders. Then the angel did a wonderful thing as Manoah and his wife looked on.

²⁰For it happened, when the flame went up toward the sky from off the altar, that the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar. And Manoah and his wife looked on, and they fell on their faces to the ground.

²¹But the angel of the Lord did not appear again to Manoah or to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the Lord.

²²Manoah said to his wife, :We shall surely die, because we have seen God."

²³But his wife said to him, "If the Lord meant to kill us, he wouldn't have received a burnt offering and a grain offering from us, neither would he have shown us all these things, nor would he have spoken to us now like this."

²⁴The woman bore a son, and named him Samson. And the child grew, and the Lord blessed him.

²⁵And the Spirit of the Lord began to direct him in Mahaneh Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.

¹Samson went down to Timnah, and saw a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines.

²He came up, and told his father and his mother, and said, "I have seen a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines. Now therefore get her for me as wife."

³Then his father and his mother said to him, "Is there not a woman among the daughters of your brothers, or among all my people, that you go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?" And Samson said to his father, "Get her for me, for she is the right one for me."

⁴But his father and his mother did not know that it was of the Lord, for he sought for an opportunity against the Philistines. Now at that time the Philistines had rule over Israel.

⁵Then Samson went down with his father and his mother to Timnah, and came to the vineyards of Timnah. And behold, a young lion roared against him.

⁶And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and he tore him as he would have torn a young goat. And he had nothing in his hand, but he did not tell his father or his mother what he had done.

⁷He went down and talked with the woman, and she pleased Samson.

⁸After a while he returned to take her; and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion, and behold, there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey.

⁹He took it into his hands, and went on, eating as he went. And he came to his father and mother, and gave to them, and they ate. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey out of the body of the lion.

¹⁰His father went down to the woman, and Samson made a feast there, since young men used to do so.

¹¹It happened, when they saw him, that they brought thirty companions to be with him.

¹²Samson said to them, "Let me now put forth a riddle to you. If you can explain it to me within the seven days of the feast, and figure it out, then I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothing.

¹³But if you can't explain it to me, then you shall give me thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothing." And they said to him, "Propose your riddle, we want to hear it."

¹⁴He said to them, "Out of the eater came forth food. Out of the strong came forth sweetness." They couldn't in three days declare the riddle.

¹⁵And it happened on the seventh day, that they said to Samson's wife, "Entice your husband, that he may tell us the riddle, lest we burn you and your father's house with fire. Have you called us to impoverish us? Is it not so?"

¹⁶Samson's wife wept before him, and said, "You just hate me, and do not love me. You have put forth a riddle to the children of my people, and haven't told it me." And he said to her, "Behold, I haven't told it to my father or my mother, and shall I tell you?"

¹⁷She wept before him the seven days, while their feast lasted: and it happened on the seventh day, that he told her, because she pressed him sore; and she told the riddle to the children of her people.

¹⁸The men of the city said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down, "What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?" He said to them, "If you hadn't plowed with my heifer, you wouldn't have found out my riddle."

¹⁹The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and struck thirty men of them, and took their belongings, and gave their garments to those who explained the riddle. His anger was kindled, and he went up to his father's house.

²⁰But Samson's wife was given to his companion, who had been his friend.

¹But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a young goat; and he said, "I will go in to my wife into the room." But her father wouldn't allow him to go in.

²Her father said, "I most certainly thought that you had utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Isn't her younger sister more beautiful than she is? Please take her, instead."

³Samson said to them, "This time I will be blameless in regard of the Philistines, when I harm them."

⁴Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the midst between every two tails.

⁵When he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the olive groves.

⁶Then the Philistines said, "Who has done this?" They said, "Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife, and given her to his companion." The Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire.

⁷Samson said to them, "If you behave like this, surely I will be avenged of you, and after that I will cease."

⁸He struck them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and lived in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

⁹Then the Philistines went up, and encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi.

¹⁰The men of Judah said, "Why have you come up against us?" They said, "We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he has done to us."

¹¹Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, "Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?" He said to them, "As they did to me, so have I done to them."

¹²They said to him, "We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines." Samson said to them, "Swear to me that you will not fall on me yourselves."

¹³They spoke to him, saying, "No; but we will bind you fast, and deliver you into their hand; but surely we will not kill you." They bound him with two new ropes, and brought him up from the rock.

¹⁴When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him: and the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands dropped from off his hands.

¹⁵And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and reached down and took it, and struck a thousand men with it.

¹⁶Samson said, "With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps on heaps; with the jawbone of a donkey I have struck a thousand men."

¹⁷It happened, when he had finished speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand; and that place was called Ramath Lehi.

¹⁸He was very thirsty, and called on the Lord, and said, "You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant; and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?"

¹⁹And God split the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out of it. When he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: therefore its name was called En Hakore, which is in Lehi, to this day.

²⁰He judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.

¹Help, Lord; for the godly man ceases. For the faithful fail from among the children of men.

²Everyone lies to his neighbor. They speak with flattering lips, and with a double heart.

³May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that boasts,

⁴who have said, "With our tongue we will prevail. Our lips are our own. Who is lord over us?"

⁵"Because of the oppression of the weak and because of the groaning of the needy, I will now arise," says the Lord; "I will set him in safety from those who malign him."

⁶The words of the Lord are flawless words, as silver refined in a clay furnace, purified seven times.

⁷You will keep them, Lord. You will preserve them from this generation forever.

⁸The wicked walk on every side, when what is vile is exalted among the sons of men.

¹My son, keep my words. Lay up my commandments within you.

²Keep my commandments and live! Guard my teaching as the apple of your eye.

³Bind them on your fingers. Write them on the tablet of your heart.

⁴Tell wisdom, "You are my sister." Call understanding your relative,

⁵that they may keep you from the strange woman, from the foreigner who flatters with her words.

⁶For at the window of my house, I looked out through my lattice.

⁷I saw among the simple ones. I discerned among the youths a young man void of understanding,

⁸passing through the street near her corner, he went the way to her house,

⁹in the twilight, in the evening of the day, in the middle of the night and in the darkness.

¹⁰Behold, there a woman met him with the attire of a prostitute, and with crafty intent.

¹¹She is loud and defiant. Her feet do not stay in her house.

¹²Now she is in the streets, now in the squares, and lurking at every corner.

¹³So she caught him, and kissed him. With an impudent face she said to him:

¹⁴"Sacrifices of peace offerings are with me. This day I have paid my vows.

¹⁵Therefore I came out to meet you, to diligently seek your face, and I have found you.

¹⁶I have spread my couch with carpets of tapestry, with striped cloths of the yarn of Egypt.

¹⁷I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.

¹⁸Come, let's take our fill of loving until the morning. Let's solace ourselves with loving.

¹⁹For my husband isn't at home. He has gone on a long journey.

²⁰He has taken a bag of money with him. He will come home at the full moon."

²¹With persuasive words, she led him astray. With the flattering of her lips, she seduced him.

²²He followed her immediately, as an ox goes to the slaughter, as a fool stepping into a noose.

²³Until an arrow strikes through his liver, as a bird hurries to the snare, and doesn't know that it will cost his life.

²⁴Now therefore, sons, listen to me. Pay attention to the words of my mouth.

²⁵Do not let your heart turn to her ways. Do not go astray in her paths,

²⁶for she has thrown down many wounded. Yes, all her slain are a mighty army.

²⁷Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.