SAMSON'S REVENGE (Judges 15:1-20)
INTRODUCTION:
We have been studying the history of the judge named Samson. We have had some much-needed breaks in his history because his life and history as Israel’s judge is anything except exemplary. He is not a man we want to model our life after especially if we love the Lord and desire to obey His Word. Samson’s life was to be set apart to God as announced before he was conceived, he was to be a Nazirite from birth, he was set apart so that he could carry out a very important task for God, he was to begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines who had been ruling and oppressing Israel for 40 years. But Samson lived his life for himself, he did not even try to keep his Nazirite vow, and as for delivering Israel from the Philistines, Samson did not have this in mind either as he chose a Philistine woman to be his wife. Fraternizing with the Philistines rather than delivering Israel from them. But in spite of Samson’s lifestyle and the choices he made, God would use these choices to break the status quo. Israel had forgotten that the LORD, the God of Israel was to be the One who ruled over them and had become comfortable with allowing the Philistines to rule over them and as long as they did nothing to stir up the Philistines, they peacefully co-existed. God was seeking an occasion against the Philistines; He was going to use Samson’s choice to marry a Philistine woman to rile up the Philistines so a deliverance could begin. We saw this as it began to happen in chapter 14 when Samson’s betrothed wife betrayed him by telling the sons of her people the solution to Samson’s riddle. In a rage Samson went down the coast to the Philistine city of Ashkelon and killed 30 Philistine men and stripped them of their clothes and used the spoil to pay off the wager that had been made concerning the riddle. Then he stormed back to his father’s home in Zorah and chapter 14 ended by telling us that his father-in-law gave his betrothed wife to one of the Philistine men who had been one of Samson’s companions at the 7-day wedding feast. Samson had been so angry over the betrayal and losing the wager that he had not consummated the marriage to this woman. This morning we will see what happens when he finds out his wife has been given to another man. Let’s pray and then getting into chapter 15.
--PRAY--
SCRIPTURE:
Turn in your Bibles this morning to Judges 15:1-20. Please, if you are able, stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word. Follow along as I read.
Judges 15:1-20,
“But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat, and said, ‘I will go in to my wife in her room.’ But her father did not let him enter. Her father said, ‘I really thought that you hated her intensely; so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please let her be yours instead.’ Samson then said to them, ‘This time I shall be blameless in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm.’ Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned the foxes tail to tail and put one torch in the middle between two tails. When he had set fire to the torches, he released the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines, thus burning up both the shocks and the standing grain, along with the vineyards and groves. Then the Philistines said, ‘Who did this?’ And they said, ‘Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion.’ So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. Samson said to them, ‘Since you act like this, I will surely take revenge on you, but after that I will quit.’ He struck them ruthlessly with a great slaughter; and he went down and lived in the cleft of the rock of Etam. Then the Philistines went up and camped in Judah, and spread out in Lehi. The men of Judah said, ‘Why have you come up against us?’ And they said, ‘We have come up to bind Samson in order to do to him as he did to us.’ Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam and said to Samson, ‘Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?’ And he said to them, ‘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.’ And Samson said to them, ‘Swear to me that you will not kill me.’ So they said to him, ‘No, but we will bind you fast and give you into their hands; yet surely we will not kill you.’ Then they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily so that the ropes that were on his arms were as flax that is burned with fire, and his bonds dropped from his hands. He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, so he reached out and took it and killed a thousand men with it. Then Samson said, ‘With the jawbone of a donkey, Heaps upon heaps, With the jawbone of a donkey I have killed a thousand men.’ When he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand; and he named that place Ramath-lehi. Then he became very thirsty, and he called 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 hands of the uncircumcised?’ But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi so that water came out of it. When he drank, his strength returned and he revived. Therefore he named it En-hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day. So he judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines.” (Judges 15:1–20, NASB95)[1]
SAMSON REFUSED (Judges 15:1-3)
As we come into verse one of this new chapter, we are given for the first time the timing of the events that are about to take place, how long after the wedding feast this took place, we cannot be sure. We are told now that the events about to unfold were during the time of the wheat harvest. The wheat harvest would have been during the month of May. Since the bees had already inhabited the lion’s carcass and had made honey it must have been between late February to April when the wedding feast occurred.
In this first verse we learn that Samson is returning to Timnah to visit his wife. From the wording of his internal thoughts that he will go into his wife in her room, it seems that Samson plans to consummate their wedding on this visit, something that did not take place on the final night of the wedding feast. And in near eastern fashion he brings her a gift to soften her heart, where we might bring a box of chocolates or flowers, Samson brings her a young goat. Even though Samson had left the home of his bride in a huff due to the fiasco on the last night of the wedding feast, he apparently never meant to break off the marriage.
Samson arrives at his father-in-law’s house but is stopped by the woman’s father from entering her room. He refuses to let Samson into see her and gives an explanation as to why he cannot see her, she is married to another man, a Philistine man, a man who had been among the 30 companions that they had brought to be with Samson at the wedding feast. One of the men who had threatened his wife to get the solution to Samson’s riddle. The father’s reason for doing this was because after she betrayed him, her father thought that he had abandoned her because he hated her intensely because of what she had done. The father tries to make things right by offering the woman’s younger sister to Samson, adding that she is even more beautiful than the older sister. This may have been tempting to Samson since he operated by what seemed right in his eyes. But because of this turn of events, because the woman he had chosen had been taken from him, he was not having anything to do with this compromise. To Samson it was of little consequence that he had left the wedding feast in a rage. Apparently, he expected to return to his wife and resume life as if nothing had happened.
In verse three we receive Samson’s response to the man who should have been his father-in-law. The words that Samson speaks as he leaves are ominous. Samson feels that because this one Philistine has wronged him, that he will be without guilt as he gets his revenge for being refused when he wanted to see his wife, only to find out that she had married someone else at Samson’s expense. Instead of only taking out his revenge on the father, Samson decides that he will take out his revenge on all the Philistines. In this way the LORD would incense the Philistines, driving them to action against the Israelites, this would shake the Israelites out of their complacency so that God could begin to deliver them from their enemies.
SAMSON’S RETALIATION (Judges 15:4-8)
It is what happens next that makes it clear why in verse one we were told it was the time of the wheat harvest. Philistia was located on the coastal plain and was grain country and Samson’s retaliation strikes right at the heart of the Philistine economy. How Samson caught and kept 300 foxes is not told. It is possible that it was jackals, not foxes as the word is the same. Foxes are solitary animals and catching three hundred would be difficult. Jackals are much more abundant and run in packs which would make them easier to catch. Once Samson had caught them all he ties them together in pairs and attaches a torch between each pair. He lights the torches and lets them loose in the grain fields of the Philistines. Being tied together with a burning torch probably caused the jackals to try and separate which would force them to zig-zag up and down the fields setting everything on fire, the grain that was already cut and stacked in the fields waiting to go to the threshing floor, the grain that had not yet been cut, and the fire also spread to the vineyards and the olive groves. Here is a man whose actions are guerrilla tactics. We will learn that all his achievements are personal, and they are all brought on by his own actions. Unlike any of the other judges in this book, Samson never seeks to rid Israel of her foreign oppressors, and he never calls out the Israelite troops. Samson is a man with a higher calling than any deliverer in this book, but he spends his whole life doing his own thing, getting his own personal revenge, retaliating for something that was done to him. For him it is never about God, it is never about delivering Israel, it is always about personal revenge.
Samson did not simply retaliate against the man who wronged him, the man that was supposed to be his father-in-law, rather his revenge struck against all the sons of the Philistines and by doing this he began to stir up the Philistines to anger. However, they do not react in the way that we would expect them to, instead when they find out who set fire to their crops, they take no action against Samson. They learn that he was provoked to do this by his father-in-law’s action against Samson. By referring to him as the “son-in-law of the Timnite,” they recognize Samson as the husband of the man’s daughter and blame his father-in-law for what has happened because he had given Samson’s wife to another man. Because of this, they retaliate by acting against the Timnite and his daughter, by torching their house and burning them inside. The very fate the woman had tried to avoid in her betrayal of Samson became her demise.
Samson’s response to the death of his wife is to retaliate again, just as their action surprised us, it also surprised Samson and he responds, “Since you acted this way, I will get my revenge on you and afterwards I will quit.” Does Samson really believe that the vicious and escalating cycles of action and reaction can be broken with one more act of violence? Samson always acts as if each destructive act will be the last, but that does not happen until he destroys himself in his last act of violence against his enemies.
The author describes Samson’s revenge over the death of his wife in a very cryptic way. Literally, verse 8 says, “He struck them leg upon thigh with a great striking.” The NASB translates this as “He struck them ruthlessly with a great slaughter.” This idiom is a phrase indicating total victory. Knowing that this slaughter would incite the anger of the Philistines, Samson goes down into the territory of Judah and hides in a cave in a fissure of the rock of Etam. The actual location of this rock of Etam is unknown and may carry more meaning symbolically than geographically. In other words, he seeks refuge from his enemies like an animal hides from its predator.
SAMSON REJECTED (Judges 15:9-13)
Samson may be hiding from the Philistines, but they are determined to capture him. This is the first time in the history of Samson that the violence has escalated to a military response. The Philistines march into the territory of Judah, and they set up camp and spread out in Lehi. This name Lehi is the Hebrew word for “jawbone” and may not be a specific city but rather a hint by the author of what will take place here. Understandably, the men of Judah are alarmed by this military action by the Philistines and interpret it as a declaration of war. But instead of calling on Samson to lead them in battle as the previous deliverers had done, the men of Judah try to negotiate with the Philistines to restore peace. They ask why the Philistines have come to fight them? A question that seems innocent enough and one that gets right to the point, how can we remedy this? Little did they realize that the LORD instigated this Philistine aggression to break the status quo between Israel and Philistia.
The Philistines’ answer is short and to the point, they have come to bind Samson so they can do to him, what he has done to them. So here we see in this one response the Philistine ethic, “Do unto others as they have done unto you.” Not quite what Jesus said in Matthew 7:12, “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12, NASB95)[2] Now I understand that these were the Philistines, and they cannot be held to the same moral standard as the Israelites. Upon hearing this the men of Judah go into action and gather an army of 3000 men. Then they do something totally unexpected, this army of men is not gathered to fight the Philistines, instead it is gathered to capture and bind their judge, the one God appointed to begin to deliver them from the hands of the Philistines. They do not go to Samson and ask him to lead them into battle, instead they go to him and ask, “What do you think you are doing?” Don’t you know the Philistines rule over us? What have you done to break the peaceful co-existence that we have had with our rulers? Samson’s response shows that he is more like the Philistines then like God’s chosen judge for His people Israel. Samson responds, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.” (Judges 15:11, NASB95)[3] Samson holds to the same moral standards as his enemy. What had Samson done to the Philistines? He had burned their crops, murdered their men, he has toyed with them as a cat plays with a mouse. Ever since Samson first arrived in Timnah, they have experienced one disaster after another. The time has come for the Philistines to inflict disaster upon Samson. But neither feel that they are in the wrong. When enemies with this same kind of morality meet, there is no hope of resolution, only a final solution.
Samson’s flight to Judah has escalated his personal feud with the Philistines into an international crisis, which is precisely what God wanted. But the response of the men of Judah is disappointing. Instead of rallying and fighting for their countryman, the one God appointed as their judge, the men of Judah give in so they don’t have to fight, they would rather deliver their countryman, their judge, into the hands of the enemy and live under their enemy’s domination than fulfill the LORD’s mandate that He had given them to occupy the land and drive out the enemy. The men of Judah are willing to hand over Samson to the Philistines because he represents a threat to national security and to their tranquility. They clearly state their purpose of coming to Samson, they have come to bind him and turn him over to the enemy. The men of Judah have allied with the Philistines against the LORD’s chosen leader.
Samson is worried that the men of Judah are willing to turn him over to the Philistines dead or alive, which ever would be easier. For Samson death at the hands of his own people would be more shameful and humiliating than death at the hands of the enemy. It is better to be tortured and killed by the enemy than by your own people. The men of Judah promise that they will not kill him, they will just bind him and turn him over to the Philistines. To this Samson agrees and we are informed that he is bound with new ropes, this information heightens the tension and sets the stage for the following heroic display.
SAMSON’S REPRISAL (Judges 15:14-20)
As the men of Judah lead Samson to the camp of the Philistines in Lehi, we read that the Philistines came out to meet him with a great shout. When they saw him bound and coming to their camp they greeted him with a great shout, a shout of victory, their enemy was subdued and bound and coming to them. At that moment, the Spirit of the LORD came upon Samson mightily, or literally the Hebrew says that the Spirit rushed upon him. The new ropes snapped off his arms as if they were flax that had been burned and the literal Hebrew says the ropes melted off his hands. The shout of the Philistines was the signal for God to take over and intervene for His chosen leader. Notice that nothing is said of Samson’s strength in bursting his bonds, the loosing of Samson was entirely the work of the LORD. Reminiscent of Shamgar’s victory over the Philistines with an ox goad, Samson looks around for a weapon and grabs the fresh jawbone of a donkey and with it kills a thousand Philistines. The author has two reasons for informing us that the jawbone was fresh. First, this meant that the bones were not yet dried out and brittle, therefore it was not as likely to break. Second, and more importantly, being fresh it was still considered part of a corpse, in which case we witness another violation of the Nazirite vow. He finishes swinging the jawbone and he has a thousand Philistines piled around him. The rest of the army must have fled, or this was all they had sent out to capture him.
Being self-centered and egotistical Samson immortalizes his extraordinary victory over the enemy in two different ways. First, he composes a little song about what he did. The song consists of two lines of poetic parallelism but also use a play on words. The Hebrew word for “donkey” and for “heap” are spelled the same. Even though the song is extremely effective poetically, it is very perverse in substance. Unlike Deborah’s song in chapter 5, not a word is said about God in Samson’s song. Samson claims all the credit for himself, which causes the reader to wonder if he is even aware of God’s involvement in his life.
Second, Samson memorializes his achievement by renaming the place where his victory took place, he names it Ramoth-lehi, using another word for hill, which can also be translated “high-place.” Understand that Samson is not naming the geographical site of the victory, even though military action frequently occurred on hilltops. That is not the case here, Jawbone Hill seems instead to refer to the mound Samson had built with the corpses of the Philistines. Samson does not want his victory here to be forgotten, he does not want to be forgotten.
Then we are told that Samson became thirsty. These final three verses function as the climax of chapters 14-15. His thirst is unexpected, but we can understand him being thirsty after slaughtering a thousand men, this feat must have taken a toll on him even though he was empowered by the Spirit of the LORD. These verses are significant also because this is the first time that Samson calls out to God. His prayer begins sincere enough as he acknowledges God’s hand in the great victory, but then clearly states that this victory or deliverance was carried out by himself, and he refers to himself as the LORD’s servant which rings hollow as you look back over Samson’s life, he has not acted like an obedient servant of God, more like a self-serving, egotistical brute. And we see this to be true in the rest of the prayer, he does not display any concern for the fate of his people or the work that is yet to be done, he shows no concern for the glory of God, his intention in this prayer is entirely personal, he prays to save himself from death and from falling into the hands of the uncircumcised people. Why is he so suddenly concerned about defilement? He did not care when his parents had protested his desire to marry one of these uncircumcised people. Even in this prayer Samson’s motives are completely selfish.
Did Samson deserve God’s help? No, he has not acted in even one instance for the glory of God, and in spite of this God has used him to fulfill his purpose. Amazingly, the LORD answers Samson’s prayer by miraculously splitting a hollow place in the region of Lehi and water came out of it and Samson drank and was refreshed. Again, Samson takes this opportunity to leave his mark on this place as well, he names the spring of water En-hakkore which means the spring of the caller, again focusing on himself and that his prayer moved and manipulated the hand of God, rather than seeing the spring as a gracious act of God on his behalf, an act of grace that was totally undeserved.
Verse 20 seems to bring the life of Samson to a close, but in reality, it just brings the Timnah affair to a close. You can be sure that Samson is no longer welcome there. The author tells us that Samson judged Israel for 20 years, but we do not read that the land had rest, instead we read that he judged in the days of the Philistines. In other words, the Philistines were still ruling over Israel. If this is the case how did Samson, this egotistical and self-centered man govern Israel for two decades? The only answer to this is seen in the fulfillment of Judges 13:5, “For behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son, and no razor shall come upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines.” (Judges 13:5, NASB95)[4] Samson was God’s chosen vessel to begin the work of delivering the Israelites from the Philistines.
CONCLUSION:
What can we take away from this chapter? The author has continued to paint for us a picture of the man Samson. A man who is energetic and creative in his acts of revenge, but there is absolutely nothing attractive in his personality. He is egotistical and selfish and is ruthless when he feels that he has been wronged or has not gotten his way. He believes that he controls his own destiny and can turn off the violence when it suits him. Nevertheless, God continues to work. This man may be crude and imperfect, but God will deliver His people. As we have already witnessed in this book many times, contrary to our expectations God does not always operate on the basis of traditional orthodoxy, which teaches that obedience brings blessing, and disobedience, a curse. On the contrary, like the nation of Israel herself, Samson deserves no consideration from God. Yet the LORD, the God of Israel, watches and delivers time and time again. Within the pages of this book that is difficult at times to read, we see God’s deep, deep love for His people, His yearning for them to turn to Him and be true to Him, and His use of grace over and over again in an attempt to woo them back to Himself. His agenda for His people cannot fail, despite the people’s seeming determination to commit national suicide. These are God’s chosen people, through them God’s Messiah, the Perfect Savior and Judge, will come, until that time He will preserve them by His mercy and grace. Praise God that He uses imperfect people like Samson which means He can use imperfect people like us.
[1]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[2]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[3]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[4]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.