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 300 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. Then 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 they 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 Lehi, and the 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 did to us.'

Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the Rock of Edom and said to Samson,

"'Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us?

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