Discovery BoxJudges 15:1 
Context15:1 Sometime later, during the wheat harvest, 1 Samson took a young goat as a gift and went to visit his bride. 2 He said to her father, 3 “I want to have sex with my bride in her bedroom!” 4 But her father would not let him enter.
Judges 15:6
Context15:6 The Philistines asked, 5 “Who did this?” They were told, 6 “Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law, because the Timnite 7 took Samson’s 8 bride and gave her to his best man.” So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father. 9
1 sn The wheat harvest took place during the month of May. See O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 37, 88.
2 tn Heb “Samson visited his wife with a young goat.”
3 tn The words “to her father” are supplied in the translation (see the end of the verse).
4 tn Heb “I will go to my wife in the bedroom.” The Hebrew idiom בּוֹא אֶל (bo’ ’el, “to go to”) often has sexual connotations. The cohortative form used by Samson can be translated as indicating resolve (“I want to go”) or request (“let me go”).
5 tn Or “said.”
6 tn Heb “and they said.” The subject of the plural verb is indefinite.
7 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Timnite) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
8 tn Heb “his”; the referent (Samson) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
9 tn The Hebrew text expands the statement with the additional phrase “burned with fire.” The words “with fire” are redundant in English and have been omitted from the translation for stylistic reasons. Some textual witnesses read “burned…her father’s house,” perhaps under the influence of 14:15. On the other hand, the shorter text may have lost this phrase due to haplography.
