Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJohn Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: June 24
Today is: Saturday, April 20th, 2024 (Show Today's Devotion)
Select a Day for a Devotion in the Month of June: (Show All Months)
Jdg_15:1 to Jdg_16:3
This exploit drew a short triumphal paean from the victor himself; it being by no means unusual in the East for a man to celebrate his own exploits.
“With the jaw-bone of an ass, heaps upon heaps;
With the jaw-bone of an ass have I slain a thousand men!”
There is in the original an effect which is lost in the translation. It is an elegant play upon the words—a paranomasia, founded upon the identity of the Hebrew word for an ass and for a heap, whereby the Philistines are represented as falling as tamely as asses. Note: The reader may catch this effect even by the eye, in the first clause: Bi echi ha-chamor chamor chamorathayim.
Samson then cast away the jaw-bone; and justly thinking the exploit worthy of commemoration, purposed that the place should be called Ramath-lehi (hill of the jaw-bone) or, for shortness, Lehi (the, jaw-bone). Being then sore athirst from the heat, and from his superhuman exertions, he cried to God for help. It is highly in favor of the reality and active vitality of his faith that he did so. Not many would have had such strong persuasion of the Lord’s providential care as would lead them to cry to him for water to supply their personal wants in the like exigency. This, therefore, is one of the incidents which enabled the author of the epistle to the Hebrews to put the name of Samson among the heroes of the faith. The incident shows what manner of man, essentially, he was, and indicates the kind of spirit in which his great operations were conducted.
The Lord heard him, and suddenly a spring burst out from a cleft in the hill to which he had just given the name of Lehi, or the “jaw-bone.” It is very unfortunate that our translators have perplexed the passage by translating the proper name, thereby making it appear as if the spring arose out of the jaw-bone of the ass, which he had cast away from him. For this there is not the least foundation in the original. Indeed, this is clear from what follows, for it is said of the fountain thus created, that it “is in Lehi unto this day;” but if the spring arose from the “jaw-bone” before, we ought to retain it here, and instead of saying, that it was “in Lehi unto this day,” say, that it was “in the jaw-bone unto this day.” But the translator saw the absurdity of this, and therefore retained as a proper name the very word which he had translated before.
It is immediately after this that we are told “Samson judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years;” and as we see no signs of his being recognized as a judge in Israel before the late events, it must probably have been after them that a sort of authority was conceded to him, on account of his services in holding the Philistines in check, in those south-western parts of the land which suffered most from their oppression. It was “in the time of the Philistines”—for their general domination still subsisted during his lifetime, and was not entirely subverted till the time of David.
From the statement of the duration of his government being interposed at this place, it was probably not until after some years that we come to his next exploit. In the interval he had, no doubt, performed many illustrious deeds, tending to hold the oppressors in check, and to keep alive in their minds their dread of him and hatred against him. The next exploit, however, at whatever interval it occurred, shows that Samson was still the same man in his strength and in his weakness. Indeed, his weakness becomes more and more manifest. Hitherto, though unwise and indiscreet, there has been nothing to allege against his personal purity—but the remaining transactions of his life were stained with vice.
It looks like astonishing and needless hardihood in Samson that be should have trusted himself in Gaza, the strongest and wealthiest of the Philistine cities. However, such a man as he was not likely to weigh nicely the question of safety; and as this southernmost city of the Philistines lay somewhat remote from the main scene of his past exploits and of his usual residence, he might suppose that he could pass in the crowd of that busy commercial town unrecognized. In fact, he did enter and wander about the town unmolested; but perhaps not, unsuspected. His life-long growth of hair pointed him out for a Hebrew and a Nazarite, which, with his stalwart figure, might well suggest that this was Samson, but for the utter unlikelihood that Samson would venture there. It is possible that he might have been also seen by some from Timnath and Ashkelon, who were better acquainted with his person. At all events, it was soon whispered about Gaza that Samson was in the town. The lion was then at last caged, they thought; and as they knew not where to find him, they set a strong force at the gate to destroy him when he should attempt to make his egress in the morning—for the gates being now shut for the night, they had no thought that he would attempt to depart till then.
But where was Samson during all the commotion which the knowledge of his presence could not but occasion? Alas! in the house of a harlot, by whose beauty he had suffered himself to be ensnared as he passed carelessly along. He was not however so absorbed in gross enjoyments, as to be altogether unwatchful. At midnight he seems to have found cause to suspect what was going on without. Perhaps, as Quarles supposes,
“He heard a whisp’ring, and the trampling feet
Of people passing in the silent street.”
He then arose and went forth, making his way straight for the gate. Whether the guards, not expecting him till the morning, were asleep or unwatchful, or whether they were terrified at his unexpected appearance, is not stated, but he does not at any rate seem to have been opposed. He might now, we should think, have kicked open the gate if had liked; but instead of that, and in strong and insulting derision at the attempt to restrain him by bolts and bars, he lifted it off with all its ponderous appendages, by sheer force of arm, and bore it away upon his shoulders to a considerable distance on the road towards Hebron. When they afterwards came to take it back, the number of men required to restore it to its place, must have impressed upon them a very lively conviction of the vast strength with which the hero was invested.
But a word remains to be said of the gates. Mr. Urquhart, in his recent work, Note: Pillars of Hercules. London, 850. Vol. ii. p. 259. speaking of Moorish buildings, and their analogy to those of ancient and modern Asia, observes: “They have such gates as Samson carried from Gaza, or Lord Ellenborough sent for to Cabul, and are traced in the sepulchre of the kings at Jerusalem; they do not fit into the wall, but lie against it. They are not shaped to the arch; they close, but regularly and folding. They cover it as the hurdle did the orifice of the rush mosques I saw along the lake. There is no hinge, but the joints of the door descend into a socket in the stone, and in like manner the door is secured above in a projecting bracket of wood. In the smallest buildings it is colossal.” This kind of door is still used in Egypt; and its antiquity there is evinced by the monuments. It is also the kind of door used in Syria, and in the countries of the Tigris and Euphrates. All the doors, large and small, of the different houses in which we have lived, were of this construction. There is no difficulty, but in the weight of the larger doors, in lifting them out of their sockets; and the feat of Samson consisted in thus lifting out both the valves at once—for they were barred together—of the heavy town gate, and carrying them away.