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Jdg_14:1-10
It is worthy of note that when Samson grew up all the attachments which he successively formed were to females of the Philistines—the power that held southern Israel in bondage. No daughter of his own people appears to have engaged his attention at any time. There was, as intimated, a providence in this, that thereout might accrue circumstances which should bring him into collision with the Philistines, disgraceful and disastrous to them. Samson’s first attachment to a young woman of Timnath, was highly distasteful to his parents. This, however, must have been solely on the ground that a marriage into an idolatrous and foreign nation was adverse to the principles of the law and the feelings of the people, for this was not one of the Canaanitish nations—marriages into which were absolutely interdicted. As the Israelites had been much in the habit of contracting even such marriages, notwithstanding this prohibition, a marriage with a Philistine woman must have seemed no very heinous offence; and although the parents of Samson did somewhat demur to the match, and did suggest that he had better seek a wife among the daughters of his own people, they were easily prevailed upon, not only to give way to their son’s inclination, but to go down to Timnath and make the proposal to the damsel’s family in due form. Some commentators, unacquainted with the customs of the East, assume that the parents went down to see how they liked the young woman who had won their son’s regard, and whose consent had been by him already obtained. This would have been in the highest degree indecorous. They went to make the proposal and to arrange the conditions with the parents of the damsel—all these matters being settled by the parents, or through some confidential retainer, before the young pair have any near access to each other.
A singular adventure happened in the way down. Samson had digressed from the road into the vineyards, “probably to eat grapes,” Matthew Henry supposes, but Quarles more poetically conjectures that he had stepped aside—
“To gain the pleasure of a lonely thought,”
when a “young lion came and roared against him.” By “a young lion” is meant not a young whelp, for which the Hebrew has quite a different word; but a young lion arrived at the fulness of its growth, and therefore more full of animal spirits and vigor than at a later age, and consequently a more dangerous enemy to encounter. A lion, in presence of prey or of an enemy, only roars when it springs, and Samson, therefore, only became aware of the presence of this fierce adversary in the very moment of onset. But the weaponless hero received the strong beast in his sinewy arms, and “rent him as he would have rent a kid,” leaving the carcass dead upon the ground. He then rejoined his parents, and said nothing of what had happened, which is certainly a singular instance of discretion, modesty, and self-control, the more so when we consider that it is not at all, in the East, considered unseemly for a man to speak vauntingly of his own exploits.
This is the first instance which occurs of the presence of lions in Palestine; but the frequent allusions to lions by the sacred writers, and the familiar acquaintance with their habits evinced by them, as well as the variety of names by which the various circumstances of the lion’s growth and age are distinguished, show how common in former times, in Syria, was this noble animal, now not found nearer in Asia than the banks of the Euphrates, and there very rarely. Its presence, indeed, is shown by historical incidents, such as David’s combat with a lion in defence of his flock; Note: 1Sa_17:36-37. the slaughter of two lions, in a pit, on a snowy day, by one of David’s worthies; Note: 2Sa_23:20. 1Ch_11:22. the destruction of the disobedient prophet by a lion; Note: 1Ki_13:24. the notice of the lions being driven up, by the swellings of the river, from the thickets of the Jordan; and the remarkable instance of the rapid increase and ravages committed by the lions when the land became thinly occupied, through the slaughter and departure of the Israelites. Note: Jer_49:19. This strikingly illustrates the reason given why the Lord would not all at once drive out the Canaanites before the Israelites, when they entered the promised land, “Lest the beasts of the field should increase upon them.” Note: 2Ki_17:25. Deu_7:22. If in the later period, much more in the earlier, must lions have been included. The lion lives to above fifty years; and consequently, having annual litters of from three to five cubs, they increase very rapidly when the depopulation of any country in which they are found, leaves them comparatively unmolested.
European readers will expect that Samson would marry, the damsel of his choice, and take her home with him. Not so. The contract of betrothal was then to be entered into, and it was, and is still, a custom among the Jews, and one probably of the Philistines, for an interval of some months, commonly not less than a year, to elapse between the betrothal and the marriage.
It was after some such interval that Samson went down once more to Timnath to celebrate the nuptials. On the way his curiosity prompted him to turn aside to see whether any traces existed of the lion he had some months before slain. To his astonishment he found the dead carcass replete with life:
“His wond’-ing ear
Perceived a murmuring voice; discerning not
From whence that strange confusion was, or what,
He stays his steps and hearkens. Still the voice
Presents his ear with a continued noise.
At length his gently moving feet apply
Their paces to the carcass, where his eye
Discerns a swarm of bees, whose laden thighs
Reposed their burdens, and the painful prize
Of their sweet labors, in the hollow chest
Of the dead lion, whose embowell’d breast
Became their plenteous storehouse.”—Quarles
It has seemed to many, judging from what happens to the dead body of a beast in our own climate, scarcely credible that so sensitively clean and neat a creature as a bee should establish itself in so offensive a domicile. The answer is—that it was not offensive. In the East, vultures and insects, particularly numerous swarms of ants, and these abound in vineyards, will, in an astonishingly short time, clean completely out all the soft parts of any carcass, leaving the skeleton entire, covered by its integuments, for the flesh having been picked out, the skin would not be rent and destroyed. This would happen rather in the country than in a town, where the dogs would not be likely to leave the outer form of the animal in this state. The circumstances are therefore entirely appropriate to the situation in which they occurred. All the softer parts being thus removed, the bones and skin will rapidly be deprived of all their moisture by the heat of the sun; and the skeleton covered over with the dry parchment into which the skin has been turned, becomes a sweet and very convenient habitation in which a swarm of bees would be very likely to settle, especially in a secluded spot, among the shrub-like vines. In the East, bees establish themselves in situations little thought of by us; many wild swarms being left to find homes for themselves, fix in any hollow which seems to them suited to their wants. Often in the clefts of the rock, whence the mention of “honey out of the rock,” Deu_32:13; often in trees, whence the mention of the dropping of the honey-comb—a singular instance of which we have in the case of Jonathan, who found honey dropping from the trees to the ground, in his way through a forest—1Sa_14:25-26. In this case, Samson took some of the honey-comb, and gave some of the honey to his parents when he rejoined them, without telling them how it had been obtained. The whole of the affair of the lion is mentioned in the sacred narrative not merely as an exploit, but on account of the circumstances which grew out of it. Samson doubtless performed many mighty feats which are not recorded; those only being mentioned which directly influenced the current of his history, and brought him more or less into collision with the Philistines. No one would have thought that out of this slaughter of the lion, and the finding a swarm of heel in the skin-enveloped carcass—occurring while the hero was engaged in forming amicable relations with the Philistines—occasion for the exertion of his destroying energies against the oppressors of Israel would have arisen. But so it came to pass. The most unlikely agents—lions, bees, honey-combs—may become the agents of accomplishing the purposes of God, and of leading or driving man to his appointed task, when he thinks not of it.