ou answer it during the
feast, I will give you thirty suits of clothing; and if you cannot
answer it then you must give me the thirty suits of clothing." "Let us
hear your riddle," they said. And this was Samson's riddle:

"Out of the eater came forth meat,
And out of the strong came forth sweetness."

They could not find the answer, though they tried to find it all that
day and the two days that followed. And at last they came to Samson's
wife and said to her:

"Coax your husband to tell you the answer. If you do not find it out, we
will set your house on fire, and burn you and all your people."

And Samson's wife urged him to tell her the answer. She cried and
pleaded with him and said:

"If you really loved me, you would not keep this a secret from me."

At last Samson yielded, and told his wife how he had killed the lion and
afterward found the honey in its body. She told her people, and just
before the end of the feast they came to Samson with the answer. They
said:

"What is sweeter than honey? And what is stronger than a lion?" And
Samson said to them:

"If you had not plowed with my heifer,
You had not found out my riddle."

By his "heifer,"--which is a young cow,--of course Samson meant his
wife. Then Samson was required to give them thirty suits of clothing. He
went out among the Philistines, killed the first thirty men whom he
found, took off their clothes, and gave them to the guests at the feast.
But all this made Samson very angry. He left his wife and went home to
his father's house. Then the parents of his wife gave her to another
man.

But after a time Samson's anger passed away, and he went again to
Timnath to see his wife. But her father said to him:

"You went away angry, and I supposed that you cared nothing for her. I
gave her to another man, and now she is his wife. But here is her
younger sister; you can have her for your wife, instead."

But Samson would not take his wife's sister. He went out very angry;
determined to do harm to the Philistines, because they had cheated him.
He caught all the wild foxes that he could find, until he had three
hundred of them. Then he tied them together in pairs, by their tails;
and between each pair of foxes he tied to their tails a piece of dry
wood which he set on fire. These foxes with firebrands on their tails he
turned loose among the fields of the Philistines when the grain was
ripe. They ran wildly over the fields, set the grain on