Lange Commentary - Judges 15:1 - 15:8

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Lange Commentary - Judges 15:1 - 15:8


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

Samson returns to visit his wife. Finding that she has been given to another, he avenges himself on the Philistines by firing their standing corn.

Jdg_15:1-8.

1But [And] it came to pass within a while after [after a while], in the time of wheat-harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid; and he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber [the female apartment]. But her father would not suffer him to go in. 2And her father said, I verily thought that thou hadst utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to thy companion: is not her younger sister fairer than she? take her [be she thine], I pray thee, instead of her. 3And Samson said concerning [to] them, Now shall I be more [omit: more] blameless than [before] the Philistines, though I do them a displeasure [do them evil]. 4And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes [jackals], and took fire-brands [torches], and turned tail to tail, and put a fire-brand [torch] in the midst between two tails. 5And when he had set the brands [torches] on fire, he let them go [sent them off—i. e., the animals] into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives [with the olive-gardens]. 6Then the Philistines said, Who hath done this? And they answered, Samson, the son-in law of the Timnite, because he had taken [took] his wife, and given [gave] her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire. 7And Samson said unto them, Though ye have done this [If ye act thus], yet will I [(I swear) that I will] be avenged of you, and after that I will cease. 8And he smote them hip [shank] and thigh with a great slaughter. And he went down and dwelt in the top [cleft] of the rock Etam.

EXEGETICAL AND DOCTRINAL

Jdg_15:1-2. And it came to pass after some time. Samson’s disposition was too noble to cherish anger long: only small souls bear grudges. But great natures measure others by themselves. Because they have forgotten the wrong that was done them, they think that others are no longer mindful of the wrong they have done. Samson feels as if nothing had happened. Kindly-disposed as ever, he comes to visit his wife. His conciliatory feeling declares itself in the present of a kid which he brings. His wife, it says, has nothing to fear. Conscious of harmless intentions, he wishes to enter her room ( çֶãֶø is for the most part the inner apartment, where the women sleep). But this leads to the disclosure of how he has been treated. Her father does not allow him to enter, on the ground that she is no longer his wife, but another’s. The injustice of the transaction thus disclosed was patent. For Samson’s absence cannot have been long. He returned in the season of the wheat-harvest (mentioned on account of Jdg_15:5), which fell perhaps in May. It is probable that in Palestine, as elsewhere, most weddings took place in the spring. Samson, at his departure, had not said that he would not return. His father-in-law excuses himself only by intimating that he thought he would not come back. The words of Jdg_15:2 enable us almost to see the anxiety and fear with which the father seeks to exculpate himself before Samson,—whom he now knows better than formerly,—and under the influence of which he offers him his other daughter as indemnification. He cannot restore his wife for fear of the Philistines; and he fears him because of the injustice he has done him.

Jdg_15:3. And Samson said to them: This time I shall be blameless, etc. The great his nature shows itself here also. To the fea her he does no harm. Small heroism there would have been in that. He uses no violence—brings the man into no awkward relations with his countrymen. He remembers that his daughter has been his wife, love of whom has brought him there. Besides—and this again manifests the warrior of God in him—he speedily sinks all personal interests in the general interests of his people. At every conflict the consciousness of his divine vocation breaks forth. He turns his personal wrong into an occasion of a national exploit against the enemy of his people as a whole. The sign of consecration is upon his head in order to lead him on from small things to great, from things personal to those that are general, from objects of sense to things of the spirit, and to remind him of his call to be a hero for Israel against the Philistines.

He said to them. To whom? To his own people—to his own family. Israel was utterly dispirited. The people did not feel deeply enough the disgrace in which they lived. Special grounds were wanting, in their view, to justify Samson’s hostility against the Philistines. The Philistines were not harming them; why then attack them Probably Samson’s former exploit had been disapproved. He himself, they may have told him, had been to blame in the riddle-matter. None more law-abiding and careful than a slavish people that will make no sacrifices. Now, says Samson to them, have you still nothing to say? I have a cause; I have been undeniably wronged. It was the Philistines who forced my wife and her father to take the step they took. They did it because I am an Israelite. For what I now do against them I am not to be blamed. He thus takes advantage of the letter of personal rights in behalf of the spirit of general freedom. Since his people are insensible of their bondage, he makes his private affair the basis of a declaration of war.

Jdg_15:4. And he caught three hundred shualim (jackals, foxes). Samson found himself alone in his hostility against the Philistines. No one of his father’s house followed him. He had not even three hundred men, like those that stood by Gideon. He turns, therefore, to the beasts of the forest for confederates. As bears come to the help of Elisha, so he, instead of three hundred soldiers, procures three hundred jackals, and constitutes them his army against the national foe. It was an ancient and common war measure, still employed by the hostile tribes of the East, to set fire to the standing grain. The Lydian king Alyattes used this terrible means for twelve successive years against the Milesians (Herod. i. 17–19). It was the most telling damage that Samson could inflict on the Philistines. They had not stirred when he slew the thirty men. The living received no injury from that. But when the harvest disappears in flames, the calamity is felt far and wide. For this reason, Samson could not execute his work alone. The fire would have been more quickly perceived and more readily quenched; for he could begin only in one spot. He chose this measure, not only to show his strength and his warlike humor, but also to let the enemy see how much he was to be feared, albeit he stood alone. True it is, undoubtedly, that no other man would have found it an easy matter thus to catch and use three hundred jackals. But what a fearful, running, and illimitable conflagration arose, when the three hundred animals, almost crazed by the burning torches that wrapped their tails in fire, sped through the standing grain to seek deliverance and freedom for themselves and—so to speak—for Samson. The fire not only spread of itself, but was carried by the pain-maddened animals ever deeper into the possessions of the Philistines. Three hundred burning torches ran, with the swiftness of the wind, in the dry season, through the waving fields, past the shocks, and up the mountain vine-yards, with which at all times the fox is too well acquainted for the interests of the owner. In this blow Samson, ever ingenious, translated a widely diffused popular figure into terrible reality. The word ùׁåּòָì is the general term for that class of animals of which the canis aureus, alopex, and canis vulpes are the species. It is thought that we must here think of the canis aureus, the jackal, inasmuch as this animal is found in those regions in large troops. All we can be certain of, is, that a member of the red fox family is intended, whose tail itself looks like a red burning torch or glowing coal. For Grimm’s remark (made in the year 1812, d. Museum, p. 393), that in the narrative of Reynard “the tail and its red color are indispensable,” is indeed true. “The witnesses of foxes are their tails,” is an old Arabic proverb (Diez, Denkwürd. v. Asien, ii. 88). The Greeks, for this reason, called the fox ëáìðïõñßò , bright, burning tail. Expositors have frequently directed attention to the statements of Ovid (Fast. iv. 681) concerning an ancient Roman custom, practiced in Carseoli, at the festival of the Cerealia, of letting go foxes, with burning torches tied to them, by means of which they were consumed. The idea of the ceremony was undoubtedly to present the fox, who, according to the story, once set the grain-fields on fire, as a propitiatory offering to ward off mildew, of which he is a type. The mildew is called robigo in Latin, Greek ἐñõóßâç ; both to be derived from the reddish color of the affection (Preller, Röm. Myth. p. 437). This is confirmed by the fact that ëáìðïõñßò was also the name for the glow-worm. The Bœotians were not the only ones who, as Suidas mentions (cf. Bochart, lib. iii. 22), believed that fire could be kindled with the glowworm; in Germany also tradition related that glow-worms carried coals into buildings (Wolf, Deutsche Mythologie, i. 233), just as by a similar figure the phrase, “to set the red cock on the roof” (den rothen Hahn auf’s Dach setzen), was used to denote incendiarism.

It was a fearful reality into which the idea of the incendiary fox was converted by Samson. The Philistines were terrified.

Jdg_15:6. And the Philistines said, Who hath done this? They are informed of the author and the occasion of his wrath. They determine to avenge themselves, but choose a mode as cowardly as it was unjust. As in the former instance they left Samson’s deed unpunished, so now they will have nothing to do with him. It would be impossible to show more delicately how tyrannous power becomes conciliatory and circumspect towards dependents, as soon as a man of spirit appears among them. Instead of risking anything against him, they commit an outrage on the weak in order to pacify him. They fall upon the family of the wife of Samson, and burn father and daughter in their house. It was a sad fate. It was to avert the very same danger that the woman had betrayed Samson. It was on account of the Philistines that she was separated from him. And now these execute the cruel deed in order to pacify Samson’s hostility. Such is the curse of treason. But the instruments of this fate were still more guilty than its victims. For did they not know that it was against themselves that Samson had directed his national vengeance? Had he been desirous of personal vengeance on his wife’s family, could he not have inflicted it himself as well as they? If they intended to punish the recreant family for having deprived Samson of his wife, they certainly could not expect thereby to inflict pain on Samson? What a difference between them and him! The injured hero turns his vengeance against the powerful; and these take satisfaction on the weak. He elevates a personal conflict into a national challenge, which they lower into vengeance on individuals. He spares the house of the Timnite, although Philistines: they murder it, from cowardly circumspection, although it is the house of a countryman. He burns their fields in order to rouse them to battle, and they burn their brethren in order to pacify the enemy.

Jdg_15:7. And Samson said to them, If ye act thus. This cruel cowardice awakens Samson’s utmost contempt and resentment. They seek to conciliate, but only provoke. They judge the hero by themselves when they think to have quieted him by such an abomination; and he smites them according to their deserts. The loss which he had suffered was not great; but what the Philistines do, becomes to them, through his action, a source of misery. The words, “if ye act thus,” express the full measure of his contempt. In Jdg_15:3 he only spoke of “doing them evil” (damage); but now he says, I will not cease until “I have taken satisfaction on yourselves” ( áָּëֶí ). The cowardly Philistines afforded him an occasion for wrath and victory such as he had not hitherto possessed. For he must take advantage of such opportunities, on account of the torpor of his own people. He must estimate the loss of a faithless wife and a characterless Philistine father-in-law sufficiently high, in order to give free course to the national wrath against the pusillanimous foe.

Jdg_15:8. And he smote them, shank and thigh, with a great slaughter. What Philistines he smote is not stated; but it is to be supposed that he surprised those who burned the Timnite. These he attacked, man by man; and inflicted a “great defeat.” For the words îַëָּä âְãåֹìָä are explanatory of the proverbial expression ùׁåֹ÷ òַìÎéָøֵêְ , “shank and thigh.” In the ùׁåֹ÷ —the word is manifestly the same as the German Schinke, Schenkel, English, “shank”—the Hebrew saw a sensible representation of the strength of the body. “God,” says the Psalmist (Psa_147:10), “takes no pleasure in the ùׁåֹ÷ֵé of a man.” When oriental narrators wish to indicate a close battle-array, they say: “shank stood on shank” (cf. Diez, Denkw. von Asien, i. 133). Both Romans and Greeks employed forms of expression which imply that to break a person’s loin, hip, and shank to pieces is equivalent to hewing him down completely (cf. infringere lumbos, percutere femur, ìÞñïõò ðáôÜóóåéí ). The shank is underneath the thigh. The proverbial phrase is therefore equivalent to: “he smote them upper leg and lower leg,” i. e. completely; and the completeness of the defeat is yet more vividly expressed in that the writer says, ùׁåֹ÷ òַìÎéָøֵêְ (literally, “shank upon thigh”), whereas the natural order is éָøֵêְ òַìÎùׁåֹ÷ (“thigh upon shank”). He turned them upside down, and cut them to pieces. Bertheau’s endeavor to explain the words by the Arabic expression, “he smote them shank-fashion,” is not satisfactory, since this phrase seems rather to denote a man to man conflict. The explanation, “horseman and footman,” given by the Targum, is worthy of notice, by reason of the knowledge of oriental languages which its authors may be supposed to have had. Marvelous are the explanations of many of the church fathers and elder expositors (cf. Serarius, in loc.). The LXX. translate verbally: êíÞìçí ἐðὶ ìçñüí ; but only êíÞìç êáὶ ìçñüò is found in Greek authors (Plato, Timœus, 74 e).

And he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock Etam. After such a deed he deemed himself no longer safe in Zorah and its vicinity. He looked now for a determined attack from the enemy, and sought therefore a secure place for defense and refuge. He found it in a “cleft of the rock Etam.” Opinions differ widely as to the position of this locality. Bertheau finds it in an Etam near Bethlehem (the Urtâs of Robinson, Bibl. Res. i. 477), which seems to be too far east, while Keil looks for it too far south, in the vicinity of Khuweilifeh. Samson cannot have intended to withdraw altogether from further conflicts, his declaration, “after that I will cease,” notwithstanding; for this referred only to his recompense of the abominable deed at Timnah. Nor can he have removed to too great a distance from his home. Etam is a name which, from its signification, might naturally be of frequent occurrence, and which is very suitable for the abode of the lion-slayer and jackal-conqueror. It signifies “wild-beasts’ lair;” for òַéִè is a ravenous beast. The name, which probably still answered to the reality, offered a guaranty for the sustenance of the hero who took up his dwelling there. From Deir Dubbân to Beit Jibrîn (Eleutheropolis) there are found remarkable rock-caverns, which in later times became places of refuge for Christians, and which even in very ancient times doubtless served as asylums for warriors and wild beasts. Their position is such that for Samson it could not have been better (cf. Ritter, xvi. 136, etc.). In the name Deir Dubbân—dub, dob, is a bear—a reminiscense of that of Etam might still be found.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

[Henry: “Visited her with a kid.” The value of the present was inconsiderable, but it was intended as a token of a reconciliation…… It was generous in Samson, as the party offended, and the superior relation, to whom therefore she was bound to make the first motion of reconciliation. When differences happen between near relations, let those be ever reckoned the wisest and the best, that are most forward to forgive and forget injuries, and most willing to stoop and yield for peace sake.—The same: “I verily thought thou hadst utterly hated her.” It will never bear us out in doing ill, to say, We thought others designed ill.—The same (on Jdg_15:6): See His hand in it to whom vengeance belongs! Those that deal treacherously, shall be spoiled and dealt treacherously with, and the Lord is known by these judgments which He executes; especially when, as here, He makes use of his people’s enemies as instruments for revenging his people’s quarrels one upon another.—Bp. Hall: If the wife of Samson had not feared the fire for herself and her father’s house, she had not betrayed her husband..… That evil which the wicked feared, meets them in their flight. How many, in a fear of poverty, seek to gain unconscionably, and die beggars! How many, to shun pain and danger, have yielded to evil, and in the long run have been met in the teeth with that mischief which they had hoped to have left behind them!—Tr.]

Footnotes:

It may be mentioned as an exegetical curiosity that earlier interpreters sought to explain the word shualim of wisps of straw. Cf. Stark, Observ. Select. (Lips. 1714) p. 127.

A great deal of debate was formerly had on the question of the greater or less difficulty involved in the capture of the jackals. It was finally concluded that a good pair of mittens had rendered useful service. Oedmann, Verm Samml., ii. 32.

The Greek name of the jackal, èþò , is derived from èüïò , nimble, swift, since they run very fast, faster than wolves. Benfey holds a different opinion (Gram. ii. 276).

[Dr. Cassel renders ëֶּøֶí æָéú (Jdg_15:5) by “vineyards.” It is difficult to account for this, except upon the supposition of inadvertence. ëֶּøֶí is in the construct state, and is used here in its general sense of garden, plantation.—Tr.]

It is worthy of remark that the Persian for jackal (shaghiel) occurs also with the sense of carbo and pruna, glowing coal (cf. Vullers, Pers. Lex., ii. 433, 438), and that the Old High German cholo, a coal, seems to be the same word. Hence the terms Brandfuchs, Kohlenfuchs, renard charbonler, volpe carbonaja.

[The German word is kornbrand, “corn-burn.”—Tr.]

From rufus. Cognate names for the fox are found in various dialects: Spanish, raposo; Portuguese, rapozo, Danish, raev; Swedish, raf; in the Finnish tongues, repe, rebbane (cf. Pott, Etym. Forsch., i. lxxxii.).

Speaking of Hannibal’s stratagem of fastening firebrands to the horns of two thousand cattle, Livy (2:17) says: “Haud secus, quam silvis montibusque accensis, omnia circum virgulta ardere.”—The instance of the burning fox-tails from Roman customs, is remarkably paralleled by a Persian superstition. Whenever from want of rain the grain threatened to burn up, it was the practice to fasten combustible materials to the tail of a young bullock, and set them on fire. If the bullock thus treated ran over a hill, it was regarded a favorable sign. Cf. Richardson Abhandlungen über Sprachen etc. morgenländischer Völker p. 236.

Keil (on Jos_12:15) inclines to locate the Cave of Adullam at Deir Dubbân.