Lehi

Lehi was a place in the territory of Judah where Samson struck down a thousand Philistines with the fresh jawbone of a donkey (Judges 15:14-16). The Hebrew name means "jawbone," and the Greek version of Judges, which transliterates the name in one verse, elsewhere renders it with the Greek word for jawbone, Siagon, as Josephus also does. Two further names attach to the same spot: Ramath-lehi, "the height of the jawbone," the name the place received after the fight (Judges 15:17), and En-hakkore, "the spring of the one who called," the spring that God opened there when Samson cried out in thirst (Judges 15:18-19). The site has not been identified.

Biblical Account

Lehi enters the record when the Philistines came up, camped in Judah and raided Lehi in pursuit of Samson (Judges 15:9). When the men of Judah asked why, the Philistines answered that they had come to bind Samson and repay him for what he had done to them (Judges 15:10). Three thousand men of Judah then went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, where Samson was staying, bound him with two new ropes on his own terms and brought him up from the rock (Judges 15:11-13). As they reached Lehi the Philistines came shouting to meet him; the Spirit of the Lord rushed on him, the ropes became like flax burned with fire, and he took up the jawbone and killed a thousand men (Judges 15:14-15). His short victory saying plays on the Hebrew words for "donkey" and "heap" (Judges 15:16). Afterwards he threw the jawbone away, and the place was called Ramath-lehi (Judges 15:17). Parched, he called on the Lord, and God split open "the hollow place that is at Lehi," water came out, and the spring was called En-hakkore, which the writer says "is at Lehi to this day" (Judges 15:18-19).

The Hebrew word for the hollow place, maktesh, means a mortar, a basin shaped like a pounding bowl, and the older rendering "a hollow place in the jaw" arose because the same word, lehi, means both the place and a jawbone.

Lehi may appear once more, in the roll of David's mighty men. The Philistines gathered at a plot of ground full of lentils, the men of Israel fled, and Shammah son of Agee the Hararite stood in the middle of the plot and defended it (2 Samuel 23:11-12). The Hebrew consonants there can be read either as "at Lehi" or as "as a troop," and English versions divide: the ESV prints "at Lehi" with a footnote "or gathered together as a camp," while the KJV reads "into a troop." Josephus read the word as the place name. The parallel account sets the same stand at Pas-dammim and speaks of barley rather than lentils (1 Chronicles 11:13-14).

Geography and Identification

The narrative places Lehi within Judah (Judges 15:9), reached by going up from the rock of Etam where Samson hid (Judges 15:13-14), in the Shephelah country of Samson's home town of Zorah and of Timnah, where he took his wife (Judges 13:2; 14:1-2). Beyond that the location is unknown, and the identification is debated among biblical archaeologists. One long-standing proposal is Khirbet es-Siyyagh, a ruin near Beth-Shemesh in the Sorek valley, on the suggestion that the Arabic name preserves the Greek Siagon. Older reference works also mention Beit Likiyeh near Beth-horon, which lies well north of the Samson country and has found little support. A 2018 article in the Journal of Archaeology and Text argued instead that Lehi was a district name rather than a town, and tentatively placed En-hakkore and Ramath-lehi at the spring of Ain Hanniyeh in the Nahal Rephaim, southwest of Jerusalem. None of these proposals has been tested by excavation, so every identification remains speculative and no coordinates are given here.

Historical Context

The episode belongs to the later Period of the Judges, about the late twelfth to eleventh century BC, when the Philistines held the coastal plain and pressed into the Shephelah and Judah. The willingness of three thousand Judahites to hand over their own strongman to the Philistines, and their statement that "the Philistines are rulers over us" (Judges 15:11), fix Lehi as a place under Philistine reach at that time. If the reading "at Lehi" in 2 Samuel 23:11 is right, the same ground saw Philistine forces again a generation or two later in the wars of David, which would fit a location on the Judah and Philistia frontier.