Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJohn Trapp Complete Commentary - Judges 16:30 - 16:30
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Jdg_16:30 And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with [all his] might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that [were] therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than [they] which he slew in his life.
Ver. 30. Let me die with the Philistines.] Heb., Let my soul die {as Num_23:10} with the Philistines, - yet not as the Philistines, but the death of the righteous, who hath hope in his death, - to {Pro_14:32} destroy these Philistines, God’s enemies, out of a zeal of God’s glory. He devoted himself to death, not out of despair, or for vainglory, as some heathens did - Codrus the king of Athens, Decius the Roman Consul, &c. - but by an extraordinary instinct of God’s Spirit, and for a public good: as that Christian soldier did, who at the siege of Buda, to prevent the taking of the town, threw himself down from the wall, together with the dog, as he called him, - the Turk who had first got to the top of it, and set up the Turkish colours there; whereby the town was saved. Samson knew that he should die with the Philistines, Simili quidem poena, sed dissimili culpa, et diverso fine ac fato. Multum interest et qualia quis, et quisque patiatur, saith Augustine. These all died alike, but not for a like cause, or with like comfort.
And the house fell upon the lords, &c.] Lords and the common people perished together. So they did at Fidenae in the days of Tiberius, where the amphitheatre fell at a sight of sword playing, and destroyed thirty thousand people, {a} So at the fall of Blackfriars, many Papists were slain at a Mass: Drury the priest had his sermon and his brains knocked out of his head together. Let those that sport themselves with oaths as the Philistines did with Samson, beware; it will pull the house about their ears. {Zec_5:4}
So the dead.] A type of Christ herein. {Heb_2:14} Death also is to a saint the accomplishment of mortification. {Rom_6:7}
{a} Sueton.