“The jawbone of a donkey”
With the jawbone of a donkey I have piled them into heaps. With the jawbone of a donkey I have slain a thousand men. (Judges 15:16 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A boast about a bizarre choice of weapon.
The cultural key
The taunt is a pun the English cannot carry: chamor means 'donkey,' and a nearly identical word means 'heap,' so Samson crows, roughly, 'with a donkey's jawbone, heaps upon heaps.' The weapon itself is telling, a fresh jawbone still heavy with teeth, snatched up on the spot, an unclean animal's bone turned into a bludgeon. The site is renamed Ramath-lehi, 'jawbone height,' and the spring that revives him afterward En-hakkore, memorializing the exploit in the landscape. It is vintage Samson: raw strength, improvised violence, and a mocking wordplay over the corpses.
Recovered meaning
Samson's victory chant is a wordplay, donkey and heap, celebrating a slaughter carried out with a bone snatched off the ground. The scene captures the man entire: brute force, crude improvisation, and a taunt.