Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, "Don't you 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.
So they came to get him and he wiped them all out. So he went back to a rock near Etam and there he just went up and laid back on this rock. Well, the Philistines got together an army and they came down against Judah.And the men of Judah said to the Philistines, "Hey, what's the big idea coming down here with your armed forces? We don't want to fight. We're your servants. You conquered us. We don't want any trouble. What's your problem?"And they said, "Look, we're not really interested in fighting you guys if you'll just turn Samson over to us. That's all we want. We wanna get that guy."So they came up to this rock were Samson was just sort of kicking back and they said to Samson, "Hey, you're causing us a lot of trouble, man. You know that we serve the Philistines and now you've gotten them all upset with us and they're down here with their army and they're threatening us. What are you doing to us?"And they said, "We want to turn you over to them. We want to bind you and turn you over to them."Samson said, "If you will promise me that you won't turn on me yourselves, then I'll let you bind me to turn me over to them."They said, "Hey, we don't want to kill you. We don't have anything against you. They're the ones who have the grief against you." So they bound him in the ropes and they turned him over to the Philistines. And as the Philistines came upon him, God's spirit also came upon him, and those ropes by which he was bound, he snapped them off. He saw lying there a jawbone of a donkey. He picked it up and with a jawbone of a donkey he began to smite the Philistines tossing their bodies into piles until he had slain a thousand of them. The rest evidently fled back home.And he looked around and he said, "Heaps upon heaps," talking about the heaps of bodies "I've killed a thousand Philistines with a jawbone of a donkey."So then Samson became extremely thirsty after this exercise and of course it was the month of June or so, the time of the wheat harvest so it is very hot and very dry over there about that time of the year. And Samson actually thought he was gonna die of thirst and said, "God, you know, you've given me this tremendous victory over the Philistines and now you're gonna kill me with thirst." And so the Lord caused a thing to cleave in the jawbone of the donkey and there was water in it and he drank it and his soul was revived.And so we come-he called the name of the place, first of all, Ramathlehi, which is the "hill of the jawbone" and then when he got a drink out of it, he changed the name to Enhakkore, which is the "well of him that cried."