GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
JUDGES 15:1-5
In this chapter, God shows that he is with Samson, even though Samson is a naïve firebrand, a big boy with a bruised ego in a superhero’s body. But with burning foxtails, burst bonds, the jawbone of a donkey and a miraculous spring of water, God shows that preserving his people is his heart’s desire.
Samson’s Revenge
15 Later on, during the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat as a gift and went to visit his wife. “I want to go to my wife’s room,” he said. But her father would not let him go in. 2 “I was so sure you hated her,” he said, “that I gave her to one of your wedding companions. Isn’t her younger sister prettier than she? Take her instead.”
The wheat harvest happened in the third month (called Sivan in Esther 8:9), and we see that Samson took a present to his wife. Another example of a wife or concubine who kept living in her father’s house is found in Gideon’s story (the mother of Abimelech, Judges 8:31). I’m not certain whether a goat really was “the ancient counterpart to a box of chocolates” (Anchor Bible p. 234), but it’s the thought that counts. Samson’s father-in-law wanted to placate Samson, but also had other daughters to marry off, so following in the shadow of Laban (Genesis 29:27) he offered Samson the girl’s sister.
Prettier or not, no one was going to tell Samson who to marry. However, the girls’ father was in an impossible position. He thought Samson has abandoned his wife, effectively divorcing her by annulling their marriage before the marriage week was fully completed. By now she was married to another man, and it would be impossible for them to divorce without committing adultery, although Samson could have argued that he had already committed adultery with her (second) husband. It was a mess, and the offer to marry the sister was a real if imperfect solution. The word that papa used “I was sure you hated (sineh) her” is used in the divorce allowances in Deuteronomy 24:1-3, so it seems that he had an idea of what even Israelite law said about divorce. But the thing was over and done. Papa wanted to seem blameless, but the same thing was on Samson’s mind….
3 Samson said to them, “This time I will be blameless in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm.” 4 Samson went out and caught three hundred foxes. He tied them tail to tail in pairs, and tied a torch between each pair of tails. 5 Then he lit the torches on fire and set the foxes loose in the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned the piles of grain and the standing grain as well as the vineyards and olive groves.
Foxes were common in Israel (Neh. 4:3) and even a problem for gardeners or people who planted vineyards (Song 2:15). There is not much difference between the common red fox and the golden jackal (the only jackal that lives outside of Africa), so some translations and commentaries prefer “jackal” here for the Hebrew word shual. Since golden jackals have short tails, its more likely that Samson caught actual foxes.
One aspect of fox behavior is that they tend to run in circles. A pair of foxes tied together to a burning torch would not just burn a line through a field, but set big circles of standing wheat on fire, a hundred or even two hundred years in diameter.
The “confrontation with the Philistines” (14:4) was happening. Samson wasn’t a man to sit down and talk. He wasn’t a man who could take orders or who could be reasoned with. He was no politician like Gideon, nor was he a great leader like Jephthah. But he could take down most of the local Philistine harvest all by himself.
“God will trample down our enemies” (Psalm 108:13; 60:12). Whether he uses a man like Samson, a civil war, a natural disaster, or some other means, God allows trouble to come into lives of mankind to call people to repentance. When this happens to us, we pray his call will work in our hearts and that we will indeed repent. When it happens to our enemies, we praise and give glory to God, because he is watching out for us. And unless the Lord watches over us, everything we do is for nothing (Psalm 127:1).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota