NSB(i)
12 Samson said to them: »Let me tell you a riddle. If you can tell me the meaning before the seven days of the wedding feast are over, I will give each of you a piece of fine linen and a change of fine clothes.« »Tell us your riddle,« they said: »Let us hear it.«
13 »If you cannot tell me the answer you must give me thirty pieces of fine linen and thirty sets of fine clothes.« »Tell us the riddle,« they said.
14 He said: »Out of the eater came something to eat; Out of the strong came something sweet.« Three days later they still could not figure out the riddle.
15 On the fourth day they said to Samson’s wife: »Trick your husband into telling us what the riddle means. If you do not, we will burn your father’s house with you in it. Did you invite us here to rob us?«
16 Samson’s wife approached him in tears and said: »You do not love me! You just hate me! You told my friends a riddle and did not tell me it’s meaning!« He said: »I have not told my father and mother. Why should I tell you?«
17 She cried about it for the whole seven days of the feast. She nagged him so that on the seventh day he told her what the riddle meant. Then she told the Philistines.
18 On the seventh day, before Samson went into the bedroom, the men of the city said to him: »What could be sweeter than honey? What could be stronger than a lion?« Samson replied: »If you had not been plowing with my cow, you would not know the answer now.«
19 Suddenly the power of Jehovah made him strong. He went to Ashkelon, where he killed thirty men. He stripped them and gave their fine clothes to the men who had solved the riddle. He returned home, furious about what had happened.