Judges 15--Samson Defeats the Philistines

Judges 15
English Standard Version

Samson Defeats the Philistines
15 After some days, at the time of wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife with a young goat. And he said, “I will go in to my wife in the chamber.” But her father would not allow him to go in. 2 And her father said, “I really thought that you utterly hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her instead.” 3 And Samson said to them, “This time I shall be innocent in regard to the Philistines, when I do them harm.” 4 So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches. And he turned them tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails. 5 And when he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines and set fire to the stacked grain and the standing grain, as well as the olive orchards. 6 Then the Philistines said, “Who has done this?” And they said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.” And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. 7 And Samson said to them, “If this is what you do, I swear I will be avenged on you, and after that I will quit.” 8 And he struck them hip and thigh with a great blow, and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

9 Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah and made a raid on Lehi. 10 And 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.” 11 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 have I done to them.” 12 And they said to him, “We have come down to bind you, that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines.” And Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.” 13 They said to him, “No; we will only bind you and give you into their hands. We will surely 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. Then the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. 15 And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, and with it he struck 1,000 men. 16 And Samson said,

“With the jawbone of a donkey,
    heaps upon heaps,
with the jawbone of a donkey
    have I struck down a thousand men.”

17 As soon as he had finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone out of his hand. And that place was called Ramath-lehi.

18 And he was very thirsty, and he called upon the LORD and said, “You have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant, and shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19 And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it. And when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore the name of it was called En-hakkore; it is at Lehi to this day. 20 And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.

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We left off last time with the text telling us that Samson's wife was given to the best man, but it was not clear until this chapter that Samson had no knowledge of that, for at the time of the harvest he planned to go to her and reconcile their differences and for the two of them to finally consummate their marriage.  He even brought a young goat with him as a peace offering.  However, when he came to the town of Timnah, he found that his father-in-law had given his wife to another men (the best man), for the father-in-law assumed that Samson was so angry at her and the people of the town for what happened that he had abandoned her and was never coming back for her.  There is now no more chance for reconciliation because you cannot compound one evil with another by asking her to break her divorce the man she is currently married to.

Samson decides to have his vengeance against the Philistines for permitting (and probably encouraging) this to happen by catching 300 foxes, tying their tails together with a torch being tied between each set of tail, and releasing 150 pairs of foxes into the fields and orchards as well as the places where the grain had been harvested and was being stored.  The Philistines lost their entire crop of grain and olives which is no small price to pay for they not only didn't have food for themselves, but would be forced to get food from someone else (either by buying it or raiding another area to steal what others had already harvested).

The Philistines come to the people of Timnah and ask who is responsible for this and the townspeople know that Samson did this, and they know why he did it.  The people clearly tell the other Philistines that Samson's anger was burning against them because Samson's father-in-law gave Samson's wife in marriage to the one that was his best man.  The Philistines judge that they can end this by putting Samson's wife and father-in-law to death by burning them with fire--perhaps they think this will appease Samson, and it almost does.  However, Samson says he is going to do one more thing to avenge their deaths and that is that he strikes all of them in the hip and thigh (probably in a way similar to how the one that Jacob wrestled with did to Jacob so that he walked with a limp for the rest of his life).

To the Philistines, this was not the end, for they continue to play a game of tit-for-tat and want to continue to seek vengeance and maybe even to escalate.  The Philistines encamp against the people of Judah and when the people of Judah inquire why the Philistines have encamped to make war with them, they say that they are there to seize Samson and bind him and to do to him what he has done to them.  They are not going to let this go.

The people of Judah side with the Philistines and go to Samson (for they knew where he was staying) with 3,000 men and they play the victim asking Samson if he doesn't realize that the Philistines are their masters and that they are going to take their vengeance on the people of Judah (because the people of Judah refuse to fight the Philistines)?  Samson tells the men of Judah that he has only repaid the Philistines for the wrong that had first been done to him, but the men of Judah say that they have come to bind Samson and give him over to the Philistines so that they might save themselves.  They bound him with new ropes (which are strong) and delivered him over to the Philistines, but they did not take his life.

Of course the Philistines are excited at the sight of Samson being bound and under arrest and about to be turned over to them, but they started to celebrate too early, for the ropes that Samson was bound with were no match for the strength that the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon him.  Samson found a fresh jawbone of a donkey and used it as a club and killed 1,000 of the Philistines that came to capture him or make war with Judah.  The event was so momentous that Samson (probably still filled with the Spirit) speaks in poetry to remember the occasion and the verse was known by the writer of the book of Judges so that he records it here.  Samson threw away the jawbone as soon as he was done speaking, but the name of that place was forever changed by the events of that day for it became known as "The Hill of the Jawbone," for that is what Ramath-lehi translates to.

Samson is now very thirsty and cries out to the LORD.  He wonders if the LORD has allowed him to provide this great salvation only to let him now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised Philstines (this reminds me of Elijah after his encounter with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel)?  God miraculously opened the hollow place (the cleft of the rock) and water came forth, just as the LORD had made water come from the rock for his people twice in their wanderings in the wilderness.  Once Samson had been able to drink as much as he wanted, his spirit was returned so that he was revived and refreshed.  The name of that place was then named, "The Spring of the One Who Called" remembering how the LORD miraculously brought forth a spring of water to save Samson when Samson called out to the LORD for salvation.  The spring still remained at Lehi at the time this was written so that everyone who read this at the time could investigate and the people of the area knew that these were the facts about how the spring of water in that area came to be there--it was not there and all of a sudden was there because the LORD provided it in Samson's time of need, yet it continued to be a blessing to others in the area for years after that.

Today's passage ends like so many others telling us, "And Samson judged Israel in the time of the Philistines for 20 years."  However, this is not the end of the story.  There may be "peace" for now, but the Philistines have not forgotten what Samson did to them that day and they still desire vengeance for the 1,000 men that died that day trying to seize Samson and they will not be satisfied until they have bound him and made him one of their slaves.  It will be the fact that Samson is controlled by his emotions and his appetite for Philistine women which the Law commanded him to have nothing to do with that will be his downfall.  It is this next and final chapter in the life of Samson that so many of us know about that we'll look at next time--Samson and Delilah.