Here We Go Again (Judges 15)

In the previous chapter the author described at least two details for his readers. The first was how Samson was prevented from marrying a Philistine woman and the second was that he started to redeem the Israelites from the domination of the Philistines even although he had not intended to do so. We observed how the Lord was able to do this even although Samson was not in a good spiritual state. There is a sense in which the author repeats both features in this chapter. In doing so, he is drawing our attention to the danger of repeating sins and to the ability of God to overrule those foolish actions.

The defeated deliver the rescuer

The obvious point we need to bear in mind is that Samson is God’s appointed deliverer. Therefore, he should have been an example to the Israelites, especially when there were important events taking place around that time. The author tells us the time when he lost his wife – it was wheat harvest, which took place each year in May or June around the Feast of Pentecost, which was one of the annual feasts that the Israelites should have attended. On the assumption that this harvest was recognised by an annual feast at the Tabernacle, it is surprising that Samson chose to spend the time with the Philistines rather than at the special events connected to God’s worship. We could say that for Samson, there was the question of priorities, and he does not seem to have put God’s revealed requirements first in his life. Instead he did what he wanted to do, even although in this case both God and the Philistines worked to prevent it, although they were not working together.

Connected to his journey to Timnah is his failure to read previous divine providences correctly. Samson had been prevented from marrying the Philistine woman by the Lord’s intervention and she was now married to someone else. We would expect Samson to be thankful for that prevention. Instead he is as determined as ever to have this woman for his wife even although she betrayed him, and he knew it, when revealing the secret of his riddle. Sin blinds us, especially when we are doing what is right in our own eyes, and Samson had not seen that God was at work preventing the marriage from taking place. He may not have known that she had been married by her father, but if he did, then the only way to change that would be to kill the husband.

When he reached his wife’s family, he discovered that her father was manipulative. The father had given his oldest daughter to another man, but he was prepared to let Samson have the younger daughter. He may have had economic or social reasons for wanting the eldest to marry a Philistine. Or maybe he thought that Samson was the kind of man who could be easily deflected. I would suggest that the author is saying two things. First, he is telling his readers that the family of the woman was ungodly. Second, he is getting the reader to think about when this kind of thing happened before. If we know the Bible story, our minds will go to Jacob when he was deceived by Laban over his two daughters and they will go to Lot when he was deceived by his own daughters. Samson the judge of Israel is in a situation in which he has been out-foxed by sinful people. Or so the sinful father-in-law might have imagined. The best that can be said is that worldly wisdom is being expressed.

Samson cannot see that God in providence has stopped his attempt to marry this woman. Instead of being grateful, he is furious and decides to avenge himself on the Philistines. It is interesting that the author does not say that this action with the foxes was a result of the Holy Spirit coming on Samson. I would suggest that this omission should be noted because on other occasions the author does tell us when the Spirit comes. Is the author telling us that this act of destruction was not enabled by the Spirit and that it was merely an act of furious anger? The fact that God used the rage of Samson to damage the enemies of his people is not proof that he approved of the anger. We cannot judge the authenticity of something only by the outcome. God in his wisdom may overrule our persistence in sin, but his intervention should not be read as confirmation of our actions.

Samson had received supernatural strength from God. This was part of his spiritual gift, and he could use it in a good way or in a bad way. We should not be surprised by this. After all, we know that the possession of spiritual gifts can be abused. We are familiar with how a preacher can use his gifts of biblical understanding in wrong ways in which the Holy Spirit is not involved in order to increase his own profile or to impress people. This kind of misuse can happen with any spiritual gift that God has bestowed on people. On this occasion, Samson is engaged in personal revenge, and havoc and mayhem is the outcome.

The Philistines were enraged by what Samson had done and they decided to punish his wife and her family. I doubt if this punishment was intended to deter Samson from doing more. If it was, they failed to do so, and experienced his angry revenge. Instead, however, their treatment of her and her family was the initial stage of a new campaign by the Philistines, with the next stage being an assault on an Israelite community, with the intention of getting them to hand him over. There are two details that we can observed here. First, although Samson was not in a right spiritual state with God, the Lord still ensured that Samson fulfilled the divine purpose for him as he killed more Philistines – we should admire the wisdom of God when he gets the Philistines to engage confidently in a process that will bring about their defeat. Second, Samson’s wife had shown disloyalty to him when she revealed the answer to his riddle and now she experienced disloyalty when her people executed her and her family.

It looks as if something happened to Samson at that time because he chose to go and live in a cave. Certainly, when he emerges from the cave he seems to be a different man, as we shall see. He did not go to the cave to hide because he would have known that he had sufficient strength to defeat his enemies. Sometimes, God allows something big to happen in order to get our attention and then we will take time to meet him in a private place.

The Conquered Find a Champion

The Philistines determined to do something about Samson. So they sent a military force to deal with him and raided an Israelite settlement. It does not look as if the Israelites had any grasp of reality at that moment. The writer tells us that there were 3,000 Israelites and only 1,000 Philistines, yet instead of fighting the Philistines the 3,000 bravely set off to capture Samson! I suppose we could say that here we have an example of the world getting the church to do its work against God’s cause. One thing that can be said about the Israelites is that they did not deserve a God-given champion. It was good for them that Samson had been in the cave, thinking about matters.

The response of Samson to the cowardly Israelites was sarcasm. He let them bind him and take him down to where the Philistines were at Lehi. Is sarcasm ever appropriate? It is not a sin to be sarcastic if the objects of it are full of their own absurd notions. The Israelites were going according to their own agenda and imagined that they had the power to fulfil it. There was no attempt to seek the help of God. They did not think about his infinite power even although they were afraid of the limited power of the Philistines.

His weapon

We can see that Samson is a changed man because the Spirit of the Lord gives him fresh power and enabled him to defeat the Philistine invaders with only the jawbone of an ass. Of course, the question arises as to whether or not he should have used the jawbone or whether he should have found a more appropriate weapon. It is the case that he, as a Nazarite, was not allowed to touch a dead body, and if one did, then he had to go and get official restoration from the priest at the Tabernacle.

How do we explain this use of part of an animal’s skeleton? First, a servant of God makes mistakes even when things in general are going well. Samson may have merely made a choice which God overruled since he was going in the right direction spiritually. We know that God sometimes uses for the growth of his kingdom individuals with whom we disagree strongly concerning important biblical doctrines.

Second, some laws are higher than others and here the children of Israel were being invaded by a powerful enemy, and it was more important that they should be defended than a ceremonial requirement be kept. After all, Jesus said that it was right for David, when on the run from Saul and hungry, to eat the ceremonial bread intended for the priests.

Third, perhaps God wanted his people to see that he could make the most useless of items into powerful tools for the spread of his kingdom. The jawbone of the ass was certainly a useless weapon in the eyes of the Philistines until they felt its effects from a man full of the Spirit. We can hand someone a piece of paper with a few words of the gospel written on it. The individual may have received a similar item the previous day and responded with derision. Yet if God’s power is present the second time, the despised tract becomes the means through which that power is known.

Fourth, I think the author may be telling us that Samson, in throwing away the inappropriate weapon, was going to be a judge who would not use such things again. The fact that it had been effective did not mean that it should be retained even as a reminder that it had been used once by Samson.

His prayer

In any case, Samson won a great victory. After such a battle, we might have expected him to complain of a sore arm. Instead he complains of a dry throat – no doubt, it was a very hot day in May. What is important though is not the dryness of his tongue, but of his desire to speak to God. We discover that Samson has rediscovered the importance of prayer. What does his prayer tell us?

One detail is the importance of a meaningful relationship. Here Samson mentions in his prayer who God is and who he is, a reminder that prayer should be intelligent. He recognised God as the covenant Lord (Yahweh) and described himself as the Lord’s servant. Prayer should be made conscious in one way or another of this twofold relationship. For example, God is our Father and we are his children; Jesus is our Redeemer and we are the liberated.

A second detail us to acknowledge the great things God has done. Samson realised that his recent victory was due to the grace of God – the victory was granted to him. He wanted all the credit to be given to the Lord and not to any natural strength that others might have imagined he possessed.

Then a third detail that Samson mentioned was the possible consequences of his situation as he saw it. His fear was not that the Philistines would kill him, but that they would do something with him after he had died of thirst. Maybe he thought they would put his dead body on display in their temples. So even after his death he would not want circumstances to cause people to think little of God. In prayer, it is possible to argue against what providence could be indicating. Obviously there was no water around, and he was thirsty. He pointed out those details to God.

The answer came immediately and God miraculously arranged for water to come to where Samson was. No doubt this was confirmation to the cowardly Israelites that the Lord was with him in a special way as well as comforting to himself. Ahead of him and them was twenty years of leading the people of God about which we are not told anything until we get to the close of his time as leader.

The obvious lesson is that God sometimes lets one of his future leaders, even after a devout childhood and adolescence, go astray until they learn the futility of not being devoted to God. Yet even during Samson’s days of self-confidence, God worked through him and in spite of him to show divine determination to liberate his people from bondage.