A reading from the book of judges. After some days, at the time of wheat harvest,

Samson went to visit his wife with a young goat, and he said, I will go into my wife in the

chamber, but her father would not allow him to go in. And her father said, I really thought that you utterly hated her, so I gave her to your

companion. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her instead. And Samson said to them,

This time I shall be innocent in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm. So Samson went and caught three hundred foxes and took torches, and he turned them,

tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails.

And when he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines,

and set fire to the stacked grain and the standing grain, as well as the olive orchards.

And the Philistines said, Who has done this? And they said, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite,

because he has taken his wife and given her to his

companion. And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. And Samson said to them,

If this is what you do, I swear I will be avenged on you, and after that I will quit. And he struck them hip and thigh

with a great blow, and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Edom. Then the Philistines

came up and encamped in Judah and made a raid on Lehigh. And the men of Judah said,

Why have you come up against us? They said,

we have come up to bind Sampson to do to him as he did to us. Then three thousand men of Judah

went down to the cleft of the rock of Eitam and said to Sampson, do you not know that the Philistines

are rulers over us? What then is this

that you have done to us? And he said to them, as they did to me, so have I done to them.

And they said to him, we have come down to bind you, that we may give you into the hands of the

Philistines. And Samson said to

them, swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves. They said to him, no, we will only bind

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