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SERIES H --- THE JUDGES --- LESSON 16

SAMSON’S REVENGE

WITH A DONKEY’S JAWBONE

From Judges 15

When the time of the wheat harvest came, Samson had a change of heart about the Philistine girl he had married. He went back to Timnah to see her, taking a young goat with him as a gift. It was his plan to live with her again, but the girl’s father would not let him come into the house. ‘I thought you hated her,’ her father told Samson. ‘I let the best man at your wedding marry her. But there’s her younger sister. She’s even better looking than the girl you married! Why not marry her?’ Samson was furious. ‘I can’t be held responsible for what I do to the Philistines now!’ he shouted. Then he caught three hundred foxes and tied their tails together, two by two, putting a torch between each pair of tails. When he had set fire to the torches, he sent the foxes out into the Philistine grain fields, burning the wheat and the shocks to the ground along with the olive orchards. ‘Who burned our fields?’ the Philistines asked. ‘Samson,’ someone answered, ‘because his father-in-law married Samson’s wife to another man.’ The Philistines were so angry that they burned Samson’s former wife and her father alive. ‘I will pay you back for such a terrible thing,’ Samson vowed. ‘Then I will stop.’ Samson killed many of the Philistines, then went to the cave in the rock at Etam to live. The Philistines were angry now and sent a band of men to raid Lehi. ‘Why are you raiding our land?’ the men of Lehi demanded. ‘We want to punish Samson,’ the Philistines answered. Afraid of what the Philistines might do to them, the people of Judah sent three thousand of their men to the cave where Samson was staying. ‘Don’t you realize that the Philistines are our rulers?’ they said. ‘What are you trying to do to us?’ ‘I was doing only what they did to us!’ Samson answered. ‘Well, we are going to tie you up and take you back to the Philistines,’ the men said. ‘Promise that you won’t kill me,’ said Samson. ‘We will only tie you up and give you to the Philistines,’ the men of Judah promised. They tied Samson with two new ropes and took him back to Lehi to the Philistines. When the Philistines saw Samson bound with the ropes, they ran to meet him, shouting their anger against him. But the Spirit of Adonai came upon Samson with great power. He broke the ropes as though they were burning flax. Then Samson picked up a donkey’s jawbone that was lying nearby and attacked the Philistines. With the jawbone as his only weapon, Samson killed a thousand Philistines, as he threw away the bone, Samson said, ‘With the jawbone of a donkey, Heaps upon heaps. With the jawbone of a donkey, I have killed a thousand men.’ From that day on, the hill has been known as Ramath-lehi, ‘The Hill of the Jawbone.’ Samson was overcome with thirst and cried out to Adonai. ‘You have given a great victory to Israel through me, Adonai. Will You now let me go down to defeat as I die of thirst and fall into the hands of these heathen?’ Adonai heard Samson’s prayer and split a hollow place in the ground so that water sprang up from it. As he drank, Samson felt his strength come back. So that place has been known as Enhakkore, the Spring of Him Who Called, until this day. For the next twenty years, Samson was the judge over Israel. But the Philistines still ruled the land.

COMMENTARY

THE PHILISTINES

Samson was amazingly strong. Angered, he used his great strength to attack and slaughter many of the Philistines. Samson would not fight for his oppressed people. However, desire for personal revenge drove him to battle furiously, using even wild foxes to destroy the crops of his enemies. The years the judges guided the tribes of Israel were years of frequent warfare. As the Israelites exchanged worship of YHVH for idol worship, they found themselves more and more oppressed by their neighbours. The strongest and most hated enemy during this period was the Philistines. The Philistines were a warlike people living in the fertile plain along the southwest coast of Canaan. They were small in number, but they made up in fighting strength and skill what they lacked in size. Years before, the Philistines were part of a band of foreign warriors called the Sea Peoples who invaded some Mediterranean countries. One group of the Sea Peoples destroyed the powerful Hittite civilization north of Canaan. Together with the Philistines, they later attacked Egypt with such force that the battle marked the start of that once-powerful country’s downfall. The Philistines then spread along the coast of Canaan, easily overpowering the Canaanites. By Samson’s time, the Philistines who settled in Canaan had adopted many elements of the Canaanite culture. But similar though they may have been, in some ways they remained different and even superior to the peoples around them. Alone among the inhabitants of the Mediterranean, the Philistines knew the secret of making iron. They permitted the Israelites to buy iron axes, ploughshares and sickles and kept them sharpened and in working condition; but only during peacetime. During wartime, the Israelite soldiers were no match against the deadly iron weapons of the skilled Philistine warriors. The Philistines’ system of government gave them another advantage over the Israelites. Five city-lords governed the five major cities and surrounding areas. They made major decisions together, never acting without the consent of the entire group. With such unified, central leadership, they could easily challenge the scattered and disorganized Israelite tribes. They began to crowd into Israelite land, plaguing the tribes of Dan and Judah with border raids and surprise attacks. Instead of working together against a common enemy, the Israelite tribes continued to quarrel among themselves. Such division kept them weak and under Philistine rule for many years. Not until the unifying reign of King David did, they act together in strength to overthrow Philistine domination.

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