The Book of Judges
Lesson 22 - Chapters 15 and 16
We continue today our story of Samson that appears in the middle chapters of the Book of
Judges. We finished chapter 14 last week and today we’ll begin chapter 15 and get a little way
in chapter 16.
When we left off Samson spotted a Philistine girl that he wanted to marry and so
disrespectfully demanded that his parents negotiate a marriage contract for her. Properly so,
Samson’s parents objected to this because this girl was not a Hebrew, and no Hebrew man
(let alone a Nazarite Hebrew); should have ever considered marrying a pagan Philistine but
his father gave in and did as he wanted.
A 7-day long Philistine-style wedding ceremony ensued that was fashioned around a banquet;
30 Philistine men were invited as “companions” of the groom undoubtedly because no
respectable Israelite was going to accompany Samson into Philistine territory in order for him
to marry a Philistine girl. At this ceremony it was Samson’s duty to entertain the guests and so
one popular means of entertainment was to offer up a riddle; but Samson also spiced the
game up a bit by attaching a wager and a handsome prize to those who guessed the answer
correctly. But the game also came with a hook: if the guests lost the wager they would owe
Sampson a heap of valuable clothing.
The riddle concerned the lion that Samson had secretly killed on the journey to Timnah, when
his parents first met Samson’s future bride; and then on the next trip for the actual occasion of
the wedding Samson stopped out of curiosity to view his handiwork and found to his delight
that some bees had set up a hive and produced honey inside the carcass of the dead lion.
Since he was alone on both occasions with the lion, the riddle he offered (with the lion being
the answer) was unsolvable, meaning it was quite unfair and insulting to his guests. The wager
that involved expensive clothing made the matter all the more delicate and the guests sensing
they had been duped went to Samson’s bride and demanded that she use her womanly wiles
to get the answer to the riddle from Samson and then divulge it to them (after all these were
her fellow countrymen and besides that they threatened her and her father’s lives). After
several days of crying and whining and complaining to Samson, Samson finally caved in to
stop the flow of tears and told her what she sought and immediately she went to the wedding
guests with the solution.
Samson of course felt betrayed and only hours before the 7-day wedding ceremony was to
conclude he stormed off in a huff, walked some 20 miles to the Philistine city of Ashkelon, and
there murdered 30 men for their clothing in order for him to pay off his wager for the riddle.
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These 30 Philistine men were killed at random and had no part in the wedding; so from that
standpoint they were innocent victims of a serial killer.
Thus Samson was probably never actually married. So we find that the humiliated father of the
jilted girl eventually gave her to Samson’s best man (a Philistine) since Samson had never
returned to finish claiming his bride.
Let’s continue the story by reading Judges 15.
READ JUDGES CHAPTER 15 all
Some undefined amount of time passed and the wheat harvest season arrived, which means it
was around late May or early June, the time of the holy celebration of Shavuot (Pentecost).
Samson’s anger finally had subsided sufficiently that he decided he would go back to Timnah
to see his wife. The word used for wife is in Hebrew ishsheh, which can mean woman or wife
depending on the context, so it’s hard to know what he had in his mind about his relationship
with this girl. Was he married to her or not? For sure he must have felt he had some
“ownership” claim or he would not have expected to visit this girl in her personal chambers.
The girl’s father explained the situation to Samson: they had no idea what to make of Samson
abruptly leaving the wedding ceremony but since he hadn’t come back and so much time had
elapsed they could only assume that Samson didn’t want her anymore; so the father gave the
girl to another man.
The answer to what was actually happening here might be in the young goat that Samson was
bringing with him. Why would he be bringing a gift and why would it have been considered
important enough to include the gifting of a goat in the account? It is usually taught that the
young goat was a present of reconciliation and while possible it is hard to imagine that such a
common and rather inexpensive item would have been suitable to apologize for the
tremendous insult and boorish behavior that Samson had displayed several months earlier at
his own wedding.
Instead there is another and much more likely possibility. There is an ancient Middle Eastern
custom (still practiced today by some Middle Eastern cultures) called sadika; it was (and still
is) followed by men who have no permanent habitation, and thus their wife is allowed to remain
with her parents on a more or less indefinite basis. It is also recognized as a marriage of lesser
status than a more typical one whereby a husband and wife set up their own household
together. This sadika is probably an evolution of the concubine relationship whereby a man
takes a woman to live in his household but she is not given a marriage certificate or married
under a Chuppah (given a wedding ceremony), yet she does have many rights of a wife.
In modern times the husband in this kind of marriage is called a joz musarrib, meaning
“visiting husband”. And in this system it is the husband’s duty to bring the wife a gift each time
he comes to visit her; it doesn’t have to be a real valuable gift but it can’t be so small as to be
insulting; a goat kid would fit that bill just about right in that era. Thus in our case with Samson
he says in verse 1, “I want to go to my ishsheh in her room”. No man would be allowed to
enter a single woman’s private chambers, nor could a married woman have a male visitor
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other than her father or husband in her own room. Such a thing just wasn’t done and could
easily bring the death penalty for violators; both for the visitor and the visitee. So Samson
obviously thought that he had some kind of marital relationship with this girl (probably of the
sadika kind), but the father thought otherwise.
Seeing that Samson was surprised and upset, and certainly not wanting to further anger this
renowned man of violent and impulsive behaviors, the father offered the girl’s younger sister to
him. She’s even prettier, he says; why not take her as a nice trade? While that may seem
uncivilized to us, it was usual in those days for such a transaction and the father was making a
sincere attempt to make things as right as he could under the circumstances. Of course
Samson wasn’t having any of it and another rage overcame him.
Samson determines he’s going to take revenge for this perceived offense against him, and it
was going to be against the Philistines in general. It’s self evident that Samson seemed to
lump all Philistines together; if one Philistine insults him then all Philistines are open to blame
and are fair game. What a strange man Samson was; he seemed to hang out regularly in
Philistine territory and had a hunger for Philistine women yet he had some type of deep-seated
burning hatred towards the Philistines as a group, and I think it might even be fair to say that
he was rather bigoted towards them. After all, that you could take any race of people and
decide that the actions of one equal the actions of them all, then it’s hard to not see this as a
kind of bigotry. Yes, of course, the Philistines ruled over Israel at this time and so the
Philistines were hardly the good guys. But any soldier who has fought on foreign soil will tell
you that it is a dilemma to mentally separate the innocent civilians from the military troops who
are trying to kill you; yet most soldiers instinctively know that there is a difference and they
must conduct themselves in that knowledge.
I also realize that one might legitimately argue that since God was mucking around in the
middle of all of this with Samson, that perhaps Samson was responding to a righteous kind of
impulse within him to destroy the Philistines. But his other actions indicate that Samson really
didn’t seem to care too much about what God thought or what God’s laws and ordinances
entailed. Samson operated primarily in a self centered manner, by doing what was right in his
own eyes, and with very little self-control or wisdom anywhere in the mix.
He decides on a rather inventive kind of collective revenge upon the Philistines; he captures
300 shu’al, binds their tails together in pairs and ties a lit torch to them. The animals race off in
panic and confusion and in the process the flaming torches that they are dragging behind them
set the dry and ripened wheat fields on fire. A shu’al is not actually a fox (at least as we think
of these cute little reddish dog-like animals); rather they are more akin to Jackals. Foxes are
solitary animals and it would be near to impossible for one man to trap 300 of them; Jackals on
the other hand travel in packs so there is the possibility of capturing several at once. While I
don’t have a great need to have pets, I like animals; and while I don’t subscribe to the PETA
sort of “animals are people, too” kind of philosophy, animals should be treated with kindness.
God prescribes that man is to be humane even with the creatures used for sacrificing or grown
for their meat. What Samson did was downright cruel to these shu’al. It’s not hard to imagine
many of them being severely burned, others being killed, and every last one of them
traumatized to the extreme. He used them as a tool of personal vengeance, caring little for
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their fate and suffering; this is becoming an all too familiar character trait of this Hebrew
strongman.
Now understand: just like any ancient society these fields of grain were the livelihood of the
common folks. And while these folks were indeed Philistines, who God ultimately wants
removed from the Promised Land, they weren’t monsters they were simple farmers. Much of
the wheat crops that they depended on were now destroyed. In addition it was common to
plant wheat among olive trees so many of the olive groves were also burned down.
Interestingly, unlike some of his earlier adventures we don’t find any reference to Samson
being given divine strength and influence to set these fields on fire. We also don’t find any
reference to the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) coming upon Samson in this case; so without
more to go on it would be reasonable to assume that this was nothing more than Samson
obeying his own evil inclinations. Were the results something that Yehoveh would use for His
purposes (the result being that the Philistines would be violently upset with the local Israelites
in general)? Absolutely. The Lord’s primary purpose for Samson was to undo the ungodly
peace (and resultant syncretism) between His people and His enemies. Did the Lord approve
of wanton cruelty and indiscriminate destruction? Not a chance. Not then and not now.
In verse 6 the Philistine farmers begin to ask one another if they knew who might have done
this; some must have witnessed it because without hesitation Samson was fingered as the
culprit. But unfortunately these same farmers were informed that this happened because
Samson’s almost father in law had denied Samson’s bride to him and given her to another,
and it was this that drove Samson to burn down their crops. The Philistine farmers went as a
mob to the man’s house and burned it down with him and his daughter inside. When Samson
found out about this atrocity he decided that he would reciprocate by killing some more
Philistines (kind of familiar cycle, isn’t it?).
It is so interesting how humans under stress can react. Because these Philistines farmers had
no interest in taking on Samson (whom their army couldn’t even deal with), they blamed their
misery on someone who they determined upset Samson (and someone they could more
conveniently extract some revenge upon, no matter how misplaced). We have a great deal of
“blame America” going on in our time because some people who are absolutely petrified of
Islam want to shift the blame to our government and our military for acts of terror perpetrated
by radical Islam upon us. When 9/11 happened the knee jerk reaction of millions across
America was first to blame our government for not preventing the attack, and second to ask
what America might have done to offend Islam such that it would cause them to hate us and
harm us so.
Regarding Israel we have an almost worldwide consensus that the homicide bombings of
public buses, the constant rocket attacks into purely civilian neighborhoods coming from Gaza,
and the maniacal desire of a dozen Muslim nations to annihilate Israel is because Israel has
done something to offend them. It is Israel’s fault that their neighbors constantly attack them
and want them dead. And the only reason (other than an underlying anti-Semitism) that this
irrational attitude persists throughout the world is because the world fears Islam. If Austria or
Argentina or Belgium were coming after Israel it would be a different story because none of
these nations frightens anyone. I’ve said on multiple occasions that history is circular; it
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repeats itself over and over in identical patterns because people don’t change and the way the
Universe operates and God responds never changes. Thus for the world to shift blame to the
victim because to deal with the perpetrator is fraught with difficulty and danger is an age-old
solution.
Well after Samson went on another random killing spree upon whatever Philistines crossed his
path, he left Philistia and went to a cave at a place called ‘Eitam Rock. Actually what
happened here is that as he said in verse 7, he would stop killing once he had extracted some
undefined amount of more blood from the Philistines that seemed to satisfy his personal sense
of justice; he would be through with his murdering and so retire to this cave to withdraw from
the conflict and be left alone. Good luck. Not only were the Philistines hardly ready to forgive
and forget but also the God-ordained purpose of Samson’s birth was to create all of this
turmoil and disrupt the peace process.
As I said, history is circular. I’m sure the majority of you have put it together that what we see
happening between Samson and the Philistines is once again happening between Israel and
the modern day Philistines, the Palestinians. Can anyone doubt that the intractable problems
of the Middle East and the “Israel Problem” are the Lord’s will? I’m about to say something
awfully politically incorrect so close your ears if you’re sensitive. The Lord does not want
peace in the Middle East (at least not yet). And this is because the kind of peace that men are
wanting and striving for is manmade, involves compromising God-principles, and it means
Israel has to essentially give up on the covenants God made with them. If the Palestinians
weren’t harassing Israel, someone else would. Before there was such a thing as Palestinians,
Jordan was Israeli’s archenemy. Before them Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. If the leaders of Israel
(and a growing segment of Israelis) weren’t so willing to give up much of the Holy Land, half of
Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and so intent on showing respect or at least tolerance for the
false god Allah, Yehoveh wouldn’t be allowing the never-ending murders row line-up of hostile
nations to oppress Israel and keep trouble stirred up so that such misguided efforts as The
Roadmap to Peace cannot possibly happen.
We have today (for example) the Israeli police forcibly evicting Jewish settlers from settlements
in Judea and Samaria that only a few years earlier were encouraged and financed by the
Sharon government. Why? Because the current Israeli government (with unceasing
international pressure upon it) thinks that by giving this land to the enemy, the enemy will be
appeased and grow to accept Israel. Besides since the Israeli government can’t seem to
defeat the enemy, then they’ll shift the blame for the failed peace process to people they can
more easily deal with: their own Israeli citizens, Jews, who still believe in God’s promises and
covenants.
The same seemingly unsolvable dilemma that is the Middle East today was very much the
same way in Samson’s day. In fact it is this instability, and constant violence from the enemy,
and Israel’s disobedient response to it all (instead of repenting of their ways and returning to
the Lord) that is the hallmark of the days of the Judges; and it’s that same way again in our
time and for the same reasons.
Naturally, the Philistines figure they must do something about Samson; despite being
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constantly defeated by this one man, they’re ready to try again. So in verse 9 some Philistine
soldiers went up to Judah and attacked a town called Lechi. ‘Eitam Rock, where Samson was
living, was also in Judah and nearby. The local Hebrew inhabitants of Judah were puzzled over
why the Philistines were attacking them; they had good relations with the Philistines. When the
residents of Lechi found out the Philistines were after Samson (and in reality were extracting
some pay-back upon the Israelites just as Samson indiscriminately burned the fields of the
Philistines) the men of Judah were more than happy to help the enemy capture him if it meant
that the Philistines would leave them alone. Of course the Israelites of Judah knew Samson
and respected his amazing strength and so they sent a contingent of 3,000 men to try and
subdue him.
When they found Samson they were right up front and told him they were going to turn him
over to the Philistines. Samson knew these people well and so requested only that they not kill
him themselves. The irony of this is that instead of sending an army of 3000 men against their
Philistine oppressors, these Judahites went after one of their own in order to appease their
oppressor. They asked in regards to Samson’s personal war against the Philistines, “what are
you doing to US”! Fighting the enemy disrupted their otherwise comfortable lives, as they were
more interested in preserving a satanic peace with the Philistines than fighting a Holy War to
rid the place of them.
Samson obtained their promise only to bind him and turn him over to the Philistines; they tied
him up with new ropes (meaning the strands were still moist and thus at their strongest) and
when they got to their village of Lechi with Samson the Philistines were ecstatic. Wow. Samson
was captured and they got the Israelites to do it for them!
But for the first time in a long time suddenly the Spirit of God that invests Samson with an even
greater strength than usual, comes upon him. He burst the ropes like they were nothing,
looked around and found the jawbone of a donkey lying nearby and began swinging it at the
heads of the hundreds of Philistine soldiers who had only moments before stood in relief that
they wouldn’t have to face him. The jawbone was “fresh” in the sense that the sun hadn’t
dried it out yet and become brittle.
Samson’s words as he kills Philistine soldier after Philistine soldier is a poem and a play on
two words: donkey (ass) and heap. As is more common in Hebrew than you might think, the
same word can often mean two entirely different things (thus at times in the bible we’ll get
some nonsensical English translations because the translator wasn’t aware of the alternate
meaning). Both donkey and heap use the word chamor as their root. This play on words is
best translated as: “With a donkey’s jawbone, I heaped heaps. With a donkey’s jawbone I
killed a thousand men”.
So what we have is that after killing a large number of Philistines whose bodies piled up to a
heap, he chased down more of them and did the same to them creating another heap of
corpses. In fact, the way Hebrew works, it could have been several more than two heaps. Thus
we find out how the place where this massacre took place came to be called Ramath-Lechi,
which means, “jawbone heights” or “jawbone hill”.
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The battle concluded leaves Samson exhausted and thirsty; there had been no time to refresh
himself and apparently there was no nearby water source. In a rare moment of proper
spirituality Samson acknowledges that it was the Lord who won this battle, and who preserved
Samson’s life in what only seemed to be a one-man fight against staggering odds. He says to
God that he is grateful that God has seen fit to accomplish such a great rescue through his
servant. Well, I’m afraid that while Samson was quite aware of his calling as a Nazarite for life
(thus calling himself God’s servant) and as God’s tool to begin to liberate Israel from the
Philistines, he was probably by far the most unfaithful of all the Judges and paid but lip service
to his God-ordained status as a nazir.
Samson is now weakened both by dehydration and sheer physical exhaustion from a fight that
probably went on for most of a day; he would not be able to withstand another attack if other
Philistines decided to join in. As God had done in the days of old, long before Samson, the
Lord sprung forth water from a rock to satiate Samson and he was revived.
Let’s move on to chapter 16.
READ JUDGES CHAPTER 16 all
The final words of the previous chapter are that Samson judged Israel for 20 years. First of all
he didn’t judge all Israel, but only the area in the former territory of Dan and the northern part
of Judah that were under the thumb of the Philistines. The Philistines only presented a problem
for a relatively small part of the Land of Canaan and but a few of the 12 Israelite tribes at this
time.
This “20-year” reference is also not meant for us to think that 20 years had passed since the
donkey jawbone incident and the mention to begin chapter 16 that Samson went down to Gaza
and engaged the services of a prostitute. We don’t really know how much time had passed,
but probably a few years had gone by. Apparently the Philistines had stopped pursuing
Samson after he had single handedly killed 1000 of them with nothing more than a donkey’s
jawbone. What we ought to take notice of is that Samson created havoc with the Philistines for
a substantial amount of time, two decades.
In yet another violation of his Nazarite vow, Samson got involved with a Philistine prostitute
down in Gaza. Yes, this is the same Gaza we know of today. Samson seemed to really have a
thing for Philistine girls, didn’t he? There is no record of any interest in Hebrew women. Would
he actually venture all the way from his home in Tzorah to Gaza simply to use a prostitute?
Perhaps. While prostitution went on in Hebrew society it was not well accepted as it was in
Philistine culture.
It’s amazing that the Philistine army didn’t immediately come after Samson but I suspect they
were just hoping he’d be a good boy this time around, enjoy himself and go home without
decreasing the Philistine population again. But the townspeople of Gaza weren’t so pragmatic;
when they heard Samson was there they set a trap for him. They were going to wait for him to
come out in the morning and then kill him. Thus the stage is set for yet another conflict
between Samson (on Israel’s behalf) and the Philistines.
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The foolish Gazans surrounded the place where Samson was staying, but Samson must have
sensed something was up so he arose at midnight. But rather than stealthily stealing out of
town (Samson didn’t do ANYTHING involving stealth) he went to the city gates, broke the lock
and with superhuman strength lifted the city gates off of their pivoting pins and walked off with
them. I can’t even imagine the gaping mouths that stood looking at the hole in the city’s
defensive wall and their missing gates as the morning sun peaked over the eastern hills. There
is no reason to try to make the city gates escapade any less than what it is. City gates were not
small, nor could a single human even contemplate lifting one of them. The gates were made of
heavy wood planks and usually put together using large iron spikes, and by that time iron
sheeting often covered the outer side so that it could not be easily burned down.
But Samson didn’t just take the gates down; he carried them off on his shoulders! He took
them to a hilltop and presumably tossed them over. Now depending on your translation it says
that he either took the gates to a hill in Hebron or he took them to a hill TOWARDS Hebron.
Hebron was 40 miles away; it is also at a 2500-foot elevation, meaning it was uphill all the way.
Therefore it makes little sense that he would have taken them that far. Almost certainly he took
them on a road that was TOWARDS Hebron, and arrived at some intermediate place on a hill
from where he could see Hebron from a pretty fair distance.
Well in verse 4 begins one of the most infamous stories in the Bible, the story of Samson and
his love affair (albeit a one-sided love affair) with the stunning temptress Delilah. The story will
take some time to deal with, so I think we’ll stop here for today and take it up next time we
meet.
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