Judges 15: 1 – 20
World Fighting Federation
After a while, in the time of wheat harvest, it happened that Samson visited his wife with a young goat. And he said, “Let me go in to my wife, into her room.” But her father would not permit him to go in. 2 Her father said, “I really thought that you thoroughly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister better than she? Please, take her instead.” 3 And Samson said to them, “This time I shall be blameless regarding the Philistines if I harm them!” 4 Then Samson went and caught three hundred foxes; and he took torches, turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails. 5 When he had set the torches on fire, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up both the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and olive groves. 6 Then the Philistines said, “Who has done this?” And they answered, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.” So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. 7 Samson said to them, “Since you would do a thing like this, I will surely take revenge on you, and after that I will cease.” 8 So he attacked them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; then he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock of Etam. 9 Now the Philistines went up, encamped in Judah, and deployed themselves against Lehi. 10 And the men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” So they answered, “We have come up to arrest Samson, to do to him as he has done to us.” 11 Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? What is this you have done to us?” And he said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.” 12 But they said to him, “We have come down to arrest you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines.” Then Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not kill me yourselves.” 13 So they spoke to him, saying, “No, but we will tie you securely and deliver you into their hand; but we will surely not kill you.” And they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. 14 When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting against him. Then the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him; and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that is burned with fire, and his bonds broke loose from his hands. 15 He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and killed a thousand men with it. 16 Then Samson said: “With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey I have slain a thousand men!” 17 And so it was, when he had finished speaking, that he threw the jawbone from his hand, and called that place Ramath Lehi. 18 Then he became very thirsty; so he cried out to the LORD and said, “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant; and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?” 19 So God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out, and he drank; and his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore he called its name En Hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day. 20 And he judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines.
In our last study we learned how Samson had fallen in love with a non-Jewish girl. He had given a riddle to some of the local guys. Since they could not come up with the answer they threatened the girl to get Samson to reveal the answer. Ultimately, with her constant pestering, he told her and she relayed the message. After they told him the solution, Samson knew that they had gotten the information from his wife. As a result, Samson was quite upset and left the party and went home. Today, we are going to pick up on the story.
It would appear that it was customary in a Philistine marriage for the wife to continue living in her father’s house, being regularly visited by the husband who would bring a gift when he visited. This was probably because regularly the husbands would be away on army duty, and it was therefore safer for their wives to be in her family home. Alternately it may be that the husband was expected to move into the bride’s house and become a part of her family. If that be so we find that later Samson, not having done this, brought a gift to rectify matters. Thus she would still be living at home when the wedding was over.
As far as Samson was concerned he was now legally married to the Philistine woman, and once his anger had subsided and he had had time to get over her betrayal, he went to see his wife taking her a present. But understandably the father would not allow him to go in, for she had been given to another and had consummated a marriage with him. It may even be that the husband was there with her. This no doubt came as a great shock to Samson who seems to have been genuinely fond of the girl.
2 Her father said, “I really thought that you thoroughly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister better than she? Please, take her instead.”
The father was not antagonistic to Samson, indeed was probably a little afraid of him, and pressed on him his offer of her more beautiful younger sister to replace what he had lost. He would probably also have ensured that Samson did not lose by it financially by providing equal dowry and gifts. But he had failed to realize Samson’s genuine affection for his elder daughter. Furthermore as Samson considered that he was married to the elder sister, marriage to the younger was not permissible in Jewish law. We read this in the book of Leviticus 18, “17 You shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, nor shall you take her son’s daughter or her daughter’s daughter, to uncover her nakedness. They are near of kin to her. It is wickedness. 18 Nor shall you take a woman as a rival to her sister, to uncover her nakedness while the other is alive.”
Now, I do not know about you but this fact stimulates my thinking. What about Jacob? Remember, he was tricked by his uncle Laban who gave him in marriage Leah. He wanted to marry Rachael. Based on this principle given by God, then Jacob willfully sinned by taking Rachael after agreeing to work for Laban for another seven years. Could this be a reason why his love of his life died after the second baby?
I knew this guy and his wife from our church who while having dinner at their home filled me in on their lives. The wife had 4 girls with another man. While married she met the man who I was having dinner with. The woman divorced her husband and married this guy and they had one daughter. I had asked if the woman’s husband was a Christian when she divorced him. She said he was but she fell out of love with him. In addition, she said that he did not commit adultery with anyone, yet she did with the current husband. So, they had guilty conscious’s and asked me my evaluation of their situation. How would you answer?
I think that for some living today there is an easy way out of the marriage. Just commit adultery and then based on the Lord’s comments in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 19 which states, “8 He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery,” then you can go ahead and get remarried with the Lord’s blessing.
They tell me, ‘See, we committed adultery and confessed our sin to her husband’. They we are forgiven and do the proper thing of marrying.
‘No,’ I said. In my opinion you both did right by confessing your sin. And then you both should have gone your separate ways.’ Needless to say, the dinner did not end on a favorable note. By the way, the reason I brought this up is related to this study in that ultimately our Lord is going to deal with the sin like He did with Rachael. This guy not long after came down with Hodgkin’s disease and died a few months later. Hymm?
3 And Samson said to them, “This time I shall be blameless regarding the Philistines if I harm them!”
Samson now determined on revenge. Previously he had killed ‘innocent’ men, although as Philistines occupying his country they were not blameless. Yet he had clearly felt a certain sense of guilt. But now he felt that his ensuing actions would be more than fully justified and deserved, because they had stolen his wife from him. Once again he was exercising his God given judgeship and the purpose for which he had been set apart for Yahweh, something ever at the back of his mind, while at the same time ensuring that no blame could come on his countrymen.
4 Then Samson went and caught three hundred foxes; and he took torches, turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails.
Samson then caught three hundred jackals, which move in packs and are easier to catch than foxes (the word can mean either fox or jackal), and, tying them in twos, fitted a torch or firebrand between each pair, thus fitting about one hundred and fifty torches in all.
His task was carried out purposefully. But he knew what he was going to do and set his face to do it. The torches would smolder and burst into flame when the jackals started running. And the more they flamed the more the jackals would run. It was not very pleasant for the jackals, and would certainly not have been appreciated today, but such scavenging animals were given little consideration in those days. The fastening in pairs was in order to prevent them from seeking refuge down holes.
There may here be significance in the numbers. The jackals were tied in pairs making one hundred and fifty messengers of judgment, five times more than the initial ‘theft’ from Samson. The Law stated that restitution for theft should be fivefold in the case of an ox as we learn in the book of Exodus chapter 22, “If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and slaughters it or sells it, he shall restore five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep.”
Samson was exacting his own restitution for the theft of his wife.
5 When he had set the torches on fire, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up both the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and olive groves.
Having prepared the jackals he then had them set loose strategically in different places for the greatest effect. The corn stalks waiting to be harvested in the fields were burned, the shocks already gathered were destroyed by the fire, and the olive orchards too were set on fire causing great damage. Setting fire to standing corn was a regular way of retaliating against someone who had caused offence. Samson’s justification might well have been that the fields were common to the Philistine inhabitants of the town so that the produce was very much connected with the errant family.
6 Then the Philistines said, “Who has done this?” And they answered, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.” So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire.
When ‘the Philistines’ learned that the devastating damage to their crops and olives had been the result of Samson’s activity because of a quarrel with his wife and her father, their fury knew no bounds. So they took their revenge on them, firstly because they were relatives of Samson, and secondly because they considered that they were largely to blame for bringing his actions to bear against them. They did so by burning them to death, probably in their home. It was a case of ‘a fire for a fire’.
7 Samson said to them, “Since you would do a thing like this, I will surely take revenge on you, and after that I will cease.”
The incident had all the appearance of a bitter family feud rather than a political rebellion. Samson’s strategy of connecting himself with the Philistines had given him the opportunities he sought without bringing blame on his brothers. And now he had the perfect grounds for killing more Philistines, for he could declare that it was blood revenge for what they had done to his ‘family’. He could stress that their behavior had brought it on themselves.
8 So he attacked them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; then he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock of Etam.
On TV you have probably seen these cage fights where everything practically goes. ‘Hip and thigh’ may suggest the wrestling method that he used to deal with them, throwing them and crashing their heads on the ground. The Spirit of Yahweh was on him and he was invincible. Not many escaped to tell the tale.
He was ever careful to ensure that his people did not suffer for his activities, so he went further into the hill country, away from his own people, until things had blown over. However, that plan did not work, so the Philistines went up against Samson’s people.
9 Now the Philistines went up, encamped in Judah, and deployed themselves against Lehi.
The Philistines came to Judah and camped in some considerable force, spreading out in the region of Lehi in Judah. I find it very interesting that the word ‘Lehi’ means ‘jawbone’ in which we will discover shortly.
10 And the men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” So they answered, “We have come up to arrest Samson, to do to him as he has done to us.”
The leading men of Judah sent messages to the Philistine camp to ask the purpose of this invasion by such a force. As far as they were aware they had paid all necessary tribute. The reply came back that they wanted Samson delivered up to them in order that he might be tried and punished for what he had done to the Philistines. They felt that what he had done went far beyond justifiable revenge, and he should have remembered that they were the masters.
11 Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? What is this you have done to us?” And he said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.”
The Philistines felt that they could deal with all the Israelites than Samson. So, they threatened them. The outcome was on the men of Judah to hand Samson over, but they were aware what a great task they had. So they sent three military units down from the hill country to arrest him, and even with that many they were wary.
What a contrast is found between the men of Judah here and those we saw in the book of Joshua and in chapter one of Judges. How were the mighty fallen. They were no longer mighty warriors but submissive tributaries pleading with a hero to give himself up. In its disunity and lack of faith in Yahweh the tribal confederacy had failed. It awaited a strong and godly leader. And while Samson’s activities were partially successful he was not a leader of men. He tended to be a loner.
Their words were probably tongue in cheek for they had probably had many a good laugh over what Samson had done, but officially they had to express disapproval. So a formal statement was issued to him by messenger. Why had he rebelled against their masters? His reply was simple. He had only done to them what they had done to him. It was just that he liked solid revenge. Both were aware that what he had done had mainly been as an effort to weaken the Philistines.
12 But they said to him, “We have come down to arrest you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines.” Then Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not kill me yourselves.”
The men of Judah approached the issue with Samson tentatively. They were apprehensive in the extreme. But they had a job to do that they dared not shirk. Fortunately Samson responded graciously.
He was not afraid of them but he did not want to have to fight his own countrymen. They were his responsibility. They would indeed have had a huge job for only one or two would have been able to enter the cleft in the rock at one time, and they would have had no chance against Samson. But he did not want that. So he asked for their solemn oath that they themselves would not seek to do him harm.
13 So they spoke to him, saying, “No, but we will tie you securely and deliver you into their hand; but we will surely not kill you.” And they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock
What they were offering seemed certain death for Samson, but at least it would not be at their hands. They were caught helplessly between two options - The one to fight the Philistines, the other to fight Samson. They did not like the idea of either. But they hoped that Samson might be reasonable for the sake of his countrymen.
On their assurance Samson submitted to be bound. Was this the result of powerful trust in Yahweh, or was it overconfidence in his own abilities? It was possibly something of both. How men chosen by God have to be on constant watch over their motives!
14 When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting against him. Then the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him; and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that is burned with fire, and his bonds broke loose from his hands.
On seeing this ferocious man, who had killed so many of them, bound and helpless, the Philistines let out a shout of triumph and gloating. Now they could exact their revenge. He was theirs for the taking.
15 He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and killed a thousand men with it.
Once again Yahweh acted through him, and he burst the ropes that held him which seemed to melt away in front of them. Then he seized a new jawbone of an ass, its newness ensuring that it was solid and effective, not brittle, and used it as an effective weapon. With it he effectively destroyed a whole large military unit, presumably the one that had come to receive him from the hands of the men of Judah.
So we see here that Samson’s effective actions against the Philistines increase in magnitude - First thirty men, then ‘a great slaughter’, possibly nearly a hundred, and now ‘a large military unit’, a thousand.
But the seizing of the jawbone was a careless act, for as a Nazirite he was under a vow not to come into contact with dead things. Perhaps this was a sign that he was becoming careless with regard to his vow. He was beginning to feel that he was above restriction.
Samson exulted in his victory with a war song. He was an educated man and enjoyed composing verses.
16 Then Samson said: “With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey I have slain a thousand men!”
Heap upon heap’ is literally ‘one heap, two heaps’. It is not possible in English to bring out the play on words, for ‘ass’ (chamor) and ‘heap’ (chamor) have the same consonants. It was a song that would be sung often in Judah when spirits were low.
17 And so it was, when he had finished speaking, that he threw the jawbone from his hand, and called that place Ramath Lehi.
Ramath-lehi means ‘Jawbone Hill’, but also ‘Tossed-away-jawbone’, a play on two Hebrew words. The Israelites had a vivid sense of humor. The seizing of the jawbone as a weapon may well have been instinctive, but he was a dedicated Nazirite and should have been very conscious of the need to avoid contact with such things. He had ignored the fact that to touch a dead thing was against his vow. Possibly at this stage he recalled the fact and so flung it from him. Or perhaps his careless toss of it indicated his lack of concern.
18 Then he became very thirsty; so he cried out to the LORD and said, “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant; and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?”
These words summaries Samson’s life. A dedicated man, a servant of Yahweh, and yet easily swaying from one extreme to the other. There is something of it within us all.
A hot country and a fierce battle were enough to dehydrate any man, and Samson was no exception. He needed water. But there was a petulance here that suggested that he felt that God owed him something for what he had done, which goes along with his careless attitude to the jawbone. We sense here the beginning of his slide downwards. The thirst should have reminded him that without God he was nothing. All his strength depended on God’s continual supply. Instead it made him feel ill-treated. How do we respond when God puts us to the test? That is the test of what we are.
19 So God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out, and he drank; and his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore he called its name En Hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day.
En-hakkore means ‘the spring of him who called’. From a hollow place in Lehi God by some means caused a spring to flow out, and Samson was thus able to drink and revive himself.
It was ‘God’ not Yahweh who responded. In today’s world no one gets too upset if you just use the term, ‘God’. As you know, if you use the Name of The Lord Jesus Christ in an honorable way, then watch the daggers come out.
Is it possible here that the use of God not Yahweh means something. I think so. Was this because he had broken his vow by using the jawbone of a dead ass? In Israel’s eyes and the writer’s eyes that would be no light thing. Or was it due to his petulant attitude? Or was the writer signaling that a new chapter was beginning in Samson’s life? His love of women would prove his downfall and the writer traces it back to this moment. From now on he would go continually downwards. Possibly all were true. He had perhaps begun to see himself as able to do anything he wanted. And that is always dangerous for a man.
20 And he judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines.
Had Samson’s life ended here he might well have been judged differently. Whether he drank wine or not to break his vow is a matter of pure conjecture. There is no evidence for it. There is also no evidence that he actually touched the dead carcass of the lion, and the killing of the enemy would be seen as a justifiable and not as defiling. So as far as we can know his vow appeared intact until this last incident of touching the jaw bone. And even then there was always a way back if he was willing to take it.
Like the opinions regarding George Armstrong Custer, commentators take up many different opinions on Samson. Some see him as a wild, uncontrolled, loveable man who achieved little. Others recognize in him a man who was fulfilling his destiny, revealing a total devotion to Yahweh and achieving what would stand Israel in good stead, until in his latter days he faltered. In truth, our view does not matter. What does matter is The Holy Spirit’s opinion and He give Samson a good report as recorded in the book of Hebrews chapter 11, “30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days. 31 By faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe, when she had received the spies with peace.32 And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: 33 who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 35 Women received their dead raised to life again.”
