He said to them,
“Out of the eater came something to eat.
Out of the strong came something sweet.”
But for three days they could not explain the riddle.
15 On the fourth[49 (#ulink_f381190f-f86a-53aa-9c9b-c7a0db1aa6ea)] day they said to Samson’s wife, “Coax your husband to explain the riddle to us, or we will burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you invited us here to impoverish us?”
So Samson’s wife wept before him, saying, “You hate me; you do not really love me. You have asked a riddle of my people, but you have not explained it to me.” He said to her, “Look, I have not told my father or my mother. Why should I tell you?”
She wept before him the seven days that their feast lasted; and because she nagged him, on the seventh day he told her. Then she explained the riddle to her people.
The men of the town said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down,
“What is sweeter than honey?
What is stronger than a lion?”
And he said to them,
“If you had not plowed with my heifer,
you would not have found out my riddle.”
Then the spirit of the LORD rushed on him, and he went down to Ashkelon. He killed thirty men of the town, took their spoil, and gave the festal garments to those who had explained the riddle. In hot anger he went back to his father’s house.
And Samson’s wife was given to his companion, who had been his best man.
15 After a while, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, bringing along a kid. He said, “I want to go into my wife’s room.” But her father would not allow him to go in.
Her father said, “I was sure that you had rejected her; so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister prettier than she? Why not take her instead?”
Samson said to them, “This time, when I do mischief to the Philistines, I will be without blame.”
So Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took some torches; and he turned the foxes[50 (#ulink_f0e72be3-5f30-5735-b0da-1105a471a092)] tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails.
When he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and[51 (#ulink_29aba8f6-e7c3-5ed0-ab33-b75b7d54146f)] olive groves.
Then the Philistines asked, “Who has done this?” And they said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken Samson’s wife and given her to his companion.” So the Philistines came up, and burned her and her father.
Samson said to them, “If this is what you do, I swear I will not stop until I have taken revenge on you.”
He struck them down hip and thigh with great slaughter; and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam.
HEROES AND AVENGERS
The “Judges” who give their name to a most interesting historical book in the Old Testament were not, I gather, so called only because they sometimes exercised what we should [would] consider judicial functions. Indeed the book has very little to say about “judging” in that sense. Its “judges” are primarily heroes, fighting men, who deliver Israel from foreign tyrants: giant-killers. The name which we translate as “judges” is apparently connected with a verb which means to vindicate, to avenge, to right the wrongs of. They might equally well be called champions, avengers. The knight errant of medieval romance who spends his days liberating, and securing justice for, distressed damsels, would almost have been, for the Hebrews, a “judge.”
—from “The Psalms,” Christian Reflections
For reflection
Judges 15:1–20
9 Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah, and made a raid on Lehi.
The men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” They said, “We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he did to us.”
Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and they said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then have you done to us?” He replied, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.”
They said to him, “We have come down to bind you, so that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines.” Samson answered them, “Swear to me that you yourselves will not attack me.”
They said to him, “No, we will only bind you and give you into their hands; we will not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes, and brought him up from the rock.
14 When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him; and the spirit of the LORD rushed on him, and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands.
Then he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached down and took it, and with it he killed a thousand men.
And Samson said,
“With the jawbone of a donkey,
heaps upon heaps,
with the jawbone of a donkey
I have slain a thousand men.”
When he had finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone; and that place was called Ramath-lehi.[52 (#ulink_ffbc72f0-4457-5af4-8459-c9f71d6be30f)]
18 By then he was very thirsty, and he called on the LORD, saying, “You have granted this great victory by the hand of your servant. Am I now to die of thirst, and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”
So God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came from it. When he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore it was named En-hakkore,[53 (#ulink_d2326405-5dac-5c04-8b5e-6ab9fa1a4388)] which is at Lehi to this day.
And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.
16 Once Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute and went in to her.
The Gazites were told,[54 (#ulink_e421c1bb-9c70-5d5a-a28f-af0c41ba4142)] “Samson has come here.” So they circled around and lay in wait for him all night at the city gate. They kept quiet all night, thinking, “Let us wait until the light of the morning; then we will kill him.”
But Samson lay only until midnight. Then at midnight he rose up, took hold of the doors of the city gate and the two posts, pulled them up, bar and all, put them on his shoulders, and carried them to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron.
4 After this he fell in love with a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.
The lords of the Philistines came to her and said to her, “Coax him, and find out what makes his strength so great, and how we may overpower him, so that we may bind him in order to subdue him; and we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.”
So Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me what makes your strength so great, and how you could be bound, so that one could subdue you.”
