fire, and
burned it; and with the grain the olive trees in the fields.

When the Philistines saw their harvests destroyed, they said, "Who has
done this?"

And the people said, "Samson did this, because his wife was given by her
father to another man."

The Philistines looked on Samson's father-in-law as the cause of their
loss; and they came and set his home on fire, and burned the man and his
daughter whom Samson had married. Then Samson came down again, and alone
fought a company of Philistines, and killed them all, as a punishment
for burning his wife.

After this Samson went to live in a hollow place in a split rock, called
the rock of Etam. The Philistines came up in a great army, and overran
the fields in the tribe-land of Judah.

"Why do you come against us?" asked the men of Judah, "what do you want
from us?"

"We have come," they said, "to bind Samson, and to deal with him as he
has dealt with us."

The men of Judah said to Samson:

"Do you not know that the Philistines are ruling over us? Why do you
make them angry by killing their people? You see that we suffer through
your pranks. Now we must bind you and give you to the Philistines, or
they will ruin us all."

And Samson said, "I will let you bind me, if you will promise not to
kill me yourselves; but only to give me safely into the hands of the
Philistines."

They made the promise; and Samson gave himself up to them, and allowed
them to tie him up fast with new ropes. The Philistines shouted for joy
as they saw their enemy brought to them, led in bonds by his own people.
But as soon as Samson came among them, he burst the bonds as though they
had been light strings; and picked up from the ground the jawbone of an
ass, and struck right and left with it as with a sword. He killed almost
a thousand of the Philistines with this strange weapon. Afterward he
sang a song about it, thus:

"With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps,
With the jawbone of an ass, have I slain a thousand men."

After this Samson went down to the chief city of the Philistines, which
was named Gaza. It was a large city; and like all large cities, was
surrounded with a high wall. When the men of Gaza found Samson in their
city, they shut the gates, thinking that they could now hold him as a
prisoner. But in the night Samson rose up, went to the gates, pulled
their posts out of the ground, and put the gates with their posts upon
his shoulder. He carried off th