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Jdg_14:11-19
First, then, we are informed, that “Samson made there a feast, for so used the young men to do.” Such feasts are still celebrated throughout the East, during which all kinds of merriment prevail. This feast, as we learn further on, lasted for seven days, exactly the same period as the feast with which, six hundred years before, Jacob celebrated his successive marriages. Considering that Samson was a stranger at Timnath, his feast was no doubt held at the house of a Philistine acquaintance. The common reader may suppose that the feast was held at the house of the bride’s father, after the nuptial ceremonies. But this would have been contrary to all the ideas of the East. There would be indeed a feast there; but it was the feast of the bride, her female relations, and her fair companions. The sexes do not eat together in the East, and did not feast together, even among the Jews, although, in matters that concern women, we find among them more liberal and less unsocial usages than now prevail among the Orientals. On such occasions they did not, and do not now, feast in the same house, unless under circumstances that render this unavoidable. Some would fancy that this separation of the sexes renders such feasts more decorous than they might be otherwise. We apprehend not. Men are most indecorous when unrestrained by the presence of women; and in every nation, those feasts are always the most proper and becoming in which women take part. This is in favor of our own usages, in the balance between the East and the West.
It was usual that the bridegroom should have a certain number of companions, who were always with him at his service during the period of the feast, and who exerted themselves to promote the good humor and hilarity of the entertainment. These are in the New Testament called the “friends of the bridegroom,” and “the children of the bridechamber,” Mat_9:15; Joh_3:29. One of these, usually an intimate friend of the bridegroom, and distinguished for his social qualities, and by his capacity for keeping the guests at their ease, and for his tact in repressing disorderly conduct, presided over the whole, and managed all the business that grew out of the protracted entertainment, that the bridegroom might be left free from all the distracting cares which are apt to beset the man who gives a feast. This important bridal officer is called, in the account of the marriage at Cana, “the governor of the feast;” and in the Baptist’s discourse to his disciples, “the friend of the bridegroom” that rejoices to hear the bridegroom’s voice.
Such “companions” and such a “friend” were not wanting at the marriage feast of Samson. Of the former there were no fewer than thirty; and as he was a stranger in the place, the choice of them was left much to the Philistines. Looking at the subsequent conduct of these men, there is probably an intended emphasis in its being stated, “when they saw him, they brought thirty companions to be with him.” We may perhaps gather, that when they observed the stature, form, countenance, and demeanor of the strong Hebrew, they thought him a man to be watched; and therefore, under the show of enabling him to give his feast with the customary honor and observance, really stationed these young men as spies and guards upon his person. Israel was in bondage; and an Israelite who exhibited a resolute bearing, joined to formidable powers, was likely to be closely watched. They would have watched Samson still more closely, had they been aware of his exploit with the lion, which he had hitherto most studiously concealed.
Among the amusements common at such festivals, was that of proposing riddles, the non-solution of which involved some kind of forfeit, and the solution a reward. They were particularly common among the Greeks, who were wont to call riddles, contrived to puzzle and perplex, by the significant name of “banquet-riddles,” or “cup-questions.” This was altogether a very favorite exercise of ingenuity among the ancients; and perhaps, taking into account the ingenuity required to devise them, and to discover their significance, with the faculties they keep in pleasant exercise, and the small surprises they involve—this species of wit has fallen into undeserved neglect among our sources of social entertainment. There may, however, be something in the fact, that our festal entertainments are so comparatively short, as to need fewer and less varied sources of ingenuity to prevent them from becoming a weariness. If we held feasts of seven days long, without the society of our womankind, we should betake ourselves to riddles and other resources of the sort, for beguiling the long hours; and, as it is, the numerous people among us who cannot get through the brief space of our own entertainments without having recourse to cards, have small reason to regard the riddles of the ancient feasts with disrespect.
This kind of sport had been going on probably for some time, and Samson had perhaps been somewhat chafed by some defeats in this play of wit; when he at length declared, that he would now, in his turn, put forth a riddle, the terms being, that if they, that is, any one of the thirty, could make it out, he would forfeit to them thirty dresses of a superior description, that is, one to each; but if they could not solve it, each of them should forfeit a dress of the same kind to him. Thus the hero put himself and his riddle as it were against the whole body of his companions. If the riddle were not solved, each of them lost but one dress; if it were solved, he singly, had to provide thirty. The advantages were all on their side; but it suited Samson’s humor that it should be so. In these, as in other matters, he liked to have the odds against him. It is possible, however, that he might not have made so unequal a bargain, had he not felt assured in his mind, that it passed the wit of man to find out the riddle he meant to propose, seeing that it was founded on his recent discovery in the carcass of the lion, with which he was quite sure that none but himself was acquainted. It was indeed soluble; but it depended upon a combination of incidents of very rare occurrence, and which was not likely to present itself to any one’s mind. It was—
“Out of the devourer came forth meat;
Out of the strong came forth sweetness.”
The antithesis is, in the first clause of this riddle, clear enough, but scarcely so in the second, seeing that the opposite of sweetness is not strength, but sharpness or bitterness. It is satisfactory, therefore, to find, that in the original the word for “bitter,” is occasionally used for “strong” and “sharp” or “sour” for both. Hence some translators have, “Out of the bitter (or else sour) came forth sweetness.” A word thus equivocal required to be used: for if a word distinctly denoting ferocity had been used, a stronger clue to the meaning would have been given than the proposer meant to furnish. No sooner was the riddle proposed than every mind rushed to seize the meaning, but the nearer they approached the more misty it appeared—the more it eluded the grasp of their understandings. After trying it in every possible way, they concluded that the attempt to reach its meaning was hopeless. Yet they were not willing to lose so great a forfeit, and still less to own that they were defeated, even in the play of wit, by this rough and long-haired Hebrew stranger. Whether they had, in their daily festal intercourse, discovered Samson’s weak point—the yieldingness in a woman’s hand of him whom man could not withstand—or whether their bow was shot at a venture, cannot be said. But they concluded to persuade the bride to extract the secret out of her husband. The argument they used with her was none of the gentlest. They simply threatened to “burn her and her father’s house with fire” unless she get them out of this difficulty. But men do not resort to threats, even in the East, with a lady, until arguments have failed; it is, therefore, but just to this young woman, to draw the inference that she had, in the first instance, indignantly refused the treacherous task they sought to impose upon her, so that they were driven to this cruel threat, by which they at length prevailed.
The first attempt upon Samson was somewhat sternly met: “Behold I have not told it to my father nor my mother, and shall I tell it unto thee?” We perhaps do not see quite so much cogency in this argument as an Oriental does. But to him, especially while he is still young and newly married, his parents are first in his confidence, and his wife only second. Polygamy and the facility of divorce together, had, no doubt, something to do with this; but so it is.
The poet Quarles—for he was a poet, and that of no mean order—works up the scene between Samson and his bride with great effect and poetic fire. He makes the chorus plead extenuatingly for her—
“May not her tears prevail? Alas, thy strife
Is but for wagers; hers; poor soul, for life.”
Her tears did prevail—the strong Samson could never stand out against a woman’s tears. We blame him not for giving way on this occasion—or we should not do so, but we see in this that same fatal facility of temper which eventually led him to—
“Give up his fort of silence to a woman,”
in matters of solemn and sacred obligation. Few would, any more than Samson, have held out in this matter of the riddle—though the woman’s importunity must have looked suspicious to a less open mind than that of his; who is now supplied with an experience, which renders subsequent transgression, under the like influences, the less excusable. His seems to have been one of those natures whom no experience can teach to suppose a woman capable of treachery or harm—or that a fair face can hide a black or selfish heart. This unsuspicion—this reliance upon the tenderness and truth of woman’s nature; is not in itself a bad quality—nay, it is a fine, manly, and heroic quality—and we may be allowed to regret that Samson fell into hands which rendered it a snare, a danger, and a death to him.
When at the appointed time, the companions, in whose sure defeat he was grimly exulting in his thoughts, came boldly before him and interpreted his riddle in the questions—“What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?” Samson saw at once that he had been betrayed. But he scorned to complain. Having bitterly remarked, “If ye had not ploughed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle,” he proceeded to find the means of paying his forfeit, which he resolved should be at the expense of the Philistines. He, therefore, went down to the Philistine town of Askelon, and smote thirty persons whom he found in the neighborhood, and returning to Timnath, deposited their raiment in redemption of his forfeit. The great odds of one man against thirty, relieves this procedure from some of the odium it excites as done against a people of a town which had given him no offence—but it still can only be excused by the supposition that he felt himself acting in his proper vocation as the commissioned avenger of Israel upon the Philistines generally—a commission he was but too apt to forget, when not acted upon by the external stimulus of a personal grievance.