Judges 15 Study Notes

15:1-3 Though Samson left Timnah in anger, it was not his intent to call off the wedding. He returned a few weeks later, during the wheat harvest in May, with a conventional hospitality gift—a young goat—intending to go to his wife’s room to consummate the marriage. The father had interpreted Samson’s anger as a definitive breach in the relationship, and he had given his daughter to one of the other young men. Nonetheless, he tried to placate Samson by offering him his younger and more attractive daughter. Samson was not so easily pacified. Instead, he vowed to harm the Philistines, thus executing the Lord’s purpose in 14:4.

15:4-8 Like Gideon, Samson took on the Lord’s enemies with an army of three hundred, along with some torches. His army was made up of foxes (or perhaps jackals, which were more common in this area) rather than fellow Israelites because Samson always fought alone. He fixed the burning torches to the animals’ tails and sent them among the fields that were ready for harvesting, damaging all of the Philistines’ major crops at a crucial point in the agricultural cycle. The Philistines retaliated by burning Samson’s wife and her father, fulfilling the threat they had made earlier (14:15). Samson escalated the cycle of violence by slaughtering another batch of Philistines. The meaning of the idiom, literally, “he struck them hip and thigh” is uncertain, but it clearly reflects a violent manner of death—as in tearing them limb from limb.

15:9-11 The Philistines then camped in Judah. With the other judges, this would have been the cue for the judge to lead out the armies of the Lord against them. However, the Judahites showed no sign of wanting to be delivered. Nor was Samson motivated by a desire to deliver his people; his actions were aimed at gaining revenge for himself.

15:12-17 The Judahites were determined to hand Samson over to the Philistines, as evidence of their good faith submission. Samson, confident in his own strength, was quite content to be handed over. When the Philistines came to meet him shouting, their approach was reminiscent of that of the roaring lion in the previous chapter. So too was their fate: Samson seized the fresh jawbone of a donkey and promptly dispatched a thousand of the opposition. The word fresh emphasizes Samson’s neglect of his Nazirite vows—this time by plundering the corpse of an animal for his weapon. Samson’s response was to give himself all the glory for the slaughter (cp. Gn 4:23). Whereas Deborah’s song praised God for giving his people the victory (Jdg 5), Samson’s song praised himself for making heaps (or “a donkey”; the Hebrew words are identical) out of his enemies. He also renamed the location Ramath-lehi (“High Place of the Jawbone”) in honor of his feat.

15:18-19 Samson calling out to the Lord for a drink is once again a vivid picture of Israel, ascribing his victories to himself and only crying out to the Lord in time of trouble. When he found himself in need, the orthodox vocabulary reasserted itself. He was now “the Lord’s servant.” When in need, Samson sought the Lord’s deliverance, but as soon as the crisis was over, he returned to his old ways. The parallel between Samson and Israel is highlighted by the echoes of Israel’s wilderness experience of Ex 17, where the Lord had made water come out of the rock for his people. Typically, instead of naming the spring that revived him after the Lord, Samson named it after himself, calling it En-hakkore, “The Spring of the Caller.”

15:20 In this way, Samson judged Israel twenty years. Normally this notice comes at the end of the story of a judge. In this case, there is another chapter in the story in which Samson is operating on his own strength, abandoned by God, a tragedy waiting to happen.