TEXT [Commentary]

d.   The revenge of Samson: Vengeance, victory, and vindication(15:1-20)

1 Later on, during the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat as a present to his wife. He said, “I’m going into my wife’s room to sleep with her,” but her father wouldn’t let him in.

2 “I truly thought you must hate her,” her father explained, “so I gave her in marriage to your best man. But look, her younger sister is even more beautiful than she is. Marry her instead.”

3 Samson said, “This time I cannot be blamed for everything I am going to do to you Philistines.” 4 Then he went out and caught 300 foxes. He tied their tails together in pairs, and he fastened a torch to each pair of tails. 5 Then he lit the torches and let the foxes run through the grain fields of the Philistines. He burned all their grain to the ground, including the sheaves and the uncut grain. He also destroyed their vineyards and olive groves.

6 “Who did this?” the Philistines demanded.

“Samson,” was the reply, “because his father-in-law from Timnah gave Samson’s wife to be married to his best man.” So the Philistines went and got the woman and her father and burned them to death.

7 “Because you did this,” Samson vowed, “I won’t rest until I take my revenge on you!” 8 So he attacked the Philistines with great fury and killed many of them. Then he went to live in a cave in the rock of Etam.

9 The Philistines retaliated by setting up camp in Judah and spreading out near the town of Lehi. 10 The men of Judah asked the Philistines, “Why are you attacking us?”

The Philistines replied, “We’ve come to capture Samson. We’ve come to pay him back for what he did to us.”

11 So 3,000 men of Judah went down to get Samson at the cave in the rock of Etam. They said to Samson, “Don’t you realize the Philistines rule over us? What are you doing to us?”

But Samson replied, “I only did to them what they did to me.”

12 But the men of Judah told him, “We have come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.”

“All right,” Samson said. “But promise that you won’t kill me yourselves.”

13 “We will only tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines,” they replied. “We won’t kill you.” So they tied him up with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.

14 As Samson arrived at Lehi, the Philistines came shouting in triumph. But the Spirit of the LORD came powerfully upon Samson, and he snapped the ropes on his arms as if they were burnt strands of flax, and they fell from his wrists. 15 Then he found the jawbone of a recently killed donkey. He picked it up and killed 1,000 Philistines with it. 16 Then Samson said,

“With the jawbone of a donkey,

I’ve piled them in heaps!

With the jawbone of a donkey,

I’ve killed a thousand men!”

17 When he finished his boasting, he threw away the jawbone; and the place was named Jawbone Hill.[*]

18 Samson was now very thirsty, and he cried out to the LORD, “You have accomplished this great victory by the strength of your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of these pagans?” 19 So God caused water to gush out of a hollow in the ground at Lehi, and Samson was revived as he drank. Then he named that place “The Spring of the One Who Cried Out,”[*] and it is still in Lehi to this day.

20 Samson judged Israel for twenty years during the period when the Philistines dominated the land.

NOTES

15:1 Later on. The impression created here is of an appreciable interval. To characterize Samson as “sulking” during this period (Younger 2002:305) ignores the culture in which Samson lived and superimposes modern psychological categories on the text. Samson had lost face before his in-laws, had countered in a move to recover face and pay the lost bet without bankrupting himself, and then publicly humiliated his wife and her family in reprisal for their betrayal. In an honor-shame culture, Samson had taken the superior position. He rightly waited a significant interval before returning in order to offer a restoration on his own terms. His Philistine father-in-law, however, would turn the tables on him and prove dishonorable in every way.

wheat harvest. The Sorek valley, along which Timnah stood, is prime agricultural land. The hard limestone of the highlands washes down the creek beds and accumulates on the winding, flat valley floors in the Shephelah to form a deep layer of fertile soil. The wheat harvest varied in Israel according to the altitude, but for the Sorek valley it normally came in May-June.

Samson took a young goat. A young goat figured previously in the author’s description of Samson’s rending of the lion. Far from the ridiculous suggestion that the kid was the ancient equivalent to a “box of chocolates” (Boling 1975:234) or even a “peace offering” (Matthews 2004:151), Samson’s gift was a signal that his anger had subsided. Until this moment, Samson believed he had the upper hand. He bested the Philistines even after they broke his riddle, and he properly shamed his new wife and her family for betraying him. Having waited a reasonable interval, Samson now graciously (in his mind) came to make the first move toward reconciliation, removing their shame by ending his rejection of them.

took a young goat as a present to his wife. Lit., Samson “attended to his wife with a goat-kid.” The verb “attended to” (paqad [TH6485, ZH7212]) is often undertranslated “visit.” The idea is a visit that entails the exercise of a right or responsibility.

I’m going into my wife’s room to sleep with her. Samson seemed to regard it as normal that he reside with his family, and his wife with hers, and that he periodically visited her. The Hebrew text uses the idiom “to go in to my wife (into) the inner room.” The idiom “go into” is used for sexual congress, but not exclusively. The NLT thus elaborates, probably rightly.

15:2 I truly thought you must hate her. The Hebrew emphasizes both the father’s speaking and his reference to Samson’s hatred. The term “hate” (sane’ [TH8130, ZH8533]) connotes not merely malice and hostility, but rejection. This word figures in divorce proceedings, so that the father-in-law actually was implying that he interpreted Samson’s behavior as divorce.

her father explained, “so I gave her in marriage to your best man.” Commentators often claim that the father was stuck: He’d given the woman to another man, and according to Deut 24:1-4 could not give her back to her original husband (Boling 1975:235; Soggin 1981:245). But the man was a Philistine and utterly indifferent to Israelite marriage law (Schneider 2000:213). Moreover, Samson’s marriage to a Philistine already violated biblical boundaries. If anything, the text underscores the murky mix of expectations created by violating the exogamy/endogamy boundaries established by Yahweh for Israel and highlighted by the author of Judges (cf. 3:5-6).

But look, her younger sister is even more beautiful than she is. Marry her instead. That Samson refused the offer of the more beautiful, younger sister might suggest he was more devoted to his chosen bride than claims of his being a sensualist or womanizer might suggest. Or perhaps he was more focused on justice and honor, and how he was being wronged. More importantly, the author portrays the Philistine father treating his daughters like mere property to be disposed of, whereas Samson remained devoted to the woman he loved. These women were interchangeable in Philistine eyes, but not in Samson’s eyes. Moreover, Samson realizes what was at stake was not his conjugal rights, but his own honor and the honor of his people, which resided in him as their champion.

15:3 This time. Heb., happa‘am [TH6471, ZH7193]. The verbal form of this word appears in Samson’s first encounters with the Spirit of Yahweh (13:25) in which the Spirit impels or drives him. It suggests an acute occurrence of some kind. Used temporally, it denotes a discrete moment or distinct event. It appears only 14 times with the definite article, and in all these cases it has the sense either of “at last” or “just this once.”

I cannot be blamed for everything I am going to do to you Philistines. The core idiom in this sentence involves more than mere blame. The verb naqah [TH5352, ZH5927] (to be innocent, unpunished) when followed by the preposition min [TH4480, ZH4946] (from) always denotes a direct or literal freedom from something such as an obligation or a consequence, even a kind of immunity. Samson was not talking so much of blame as actual obligation or punishment. The line is best rendered, “As of now I am free of any Philistine obligation,” or even, “I will be free of the Philistines.” Previously, Samson was obligated by his wager and marriage. With Samson’s wager paid and his marital obligation terminated, the Philistines had no claim on him, nothing to expect from him but retribution. Ironically, Samson articulated the boundary between Israel and the Philistines, a boundary he seems unable to observe regularly. For the moment, though, Samson seems to envisage himself “divorced” from the Philistines altogether, free from his enmeshment with them. He had no idea how wrong he was!

15:4 Then he went out and caught 300 foxes. “Foxes” probably refers to an animal usually called a “jackal” (Boling 1975:235).

He tied their tails together in pairs, and he fastened a torch to each pair of tails. Commentators often note the similarity of this story to a Roman festival in which foxes, with torches tied to their tails, ran through the circus (Burney 1920:369, 393-395; Soggin 1981:248-249). The ancient world was probably full of stories of such exploits, so that no direct connection need be claimed.

15:5 Then he lit the torches and let the foxes run through the grain fields of the Philistines. He burned all their grain to the ground. Younger (2002:306) brands Samson’s action as “wrong,” claiming Samson’s motives were purely personal; he cites the law in Exod 22:6, making one who burns a field of standing grain liable to replace it, observing that such destruction implied “the potential for famine and death.” But are we to apply to Philistine oppressors a civil liability law governing relationships among Israelites? Moreover, Samson was, for all practical purposes, at war with the Philistines who sought ultimately to dominate Israel completely. His actions, though personal, were not merely personal, and concerns about the personal element of his vengeance anachronistically impose the politically correct standards of our age on Iron Age antagonists. All conflicts of force feature a motley mix of motives and methods.

He also destroyed their vineyards and olive groves. Burning the grain destroyed a year’s worth of crops. But vineyards and olive orchards require years of growth and cultivation before they yield. Contrary to the claim that this “ancient dry farming society that lived on the edge of hunger” (Younger 2002:306), the Sorek valley was rich agricultural land producing surpluses of grain, wine, and olive oil, much for export (Matthews 2004:151). Egyptian pharaohs prized the produce of the Sorek, Aijalon, and Jezreel valleys. Samson set back the economy of the Philistine invaders in Timnah by a generation. In fact, never again in the OT do the Philistines attempt a move up the Sorek valley. While the destruction in war of enemy trees bearing any kind of food or fruit was prohibited by Mosaic law (Deut 20:19-20), it is not clear whether this law applied only to cities “far away” or to those in Israel’s land. Recent commentators often charge Samson with an excessively violent response, destroying a whole town’s economy. They forget, however, that the Philistines invaded land that Yahweh had promised to Israel, and thus were oppressors of Israel (13:1). This was land under the conquest mandate. Samson’s vengeance, though far from the dispassionate dispensing of justice admired by moderns, nevertheless embodied Yahweh’s quest for an opportunity against the Philistines as a whole (cf. 14:4).

15:6 “Who did this?” the Philistines demanded. “Samson,” was the reply, “because his father-in-law from Timnah gave Samson’s wife to be married to his best man.” Referring to the woman’s father as Samson’s “father-in-law” and assuming that punishing him was appropriate suggests the Philistines regarded Samson and his Philistine lover as married. Schneider (2000:214-215) rightly comments that on any view of Samson’s ties to the woman, the Philistines committed a heinous act. If they were truly married, then they had given his wife to another man. If they were not truly married, then these men, in blaming the woman and her father, lied about the relationship as a pretext.

So the Philistines went and got the woman and her father and burned them to death. The very threat Samson’s wife hoped to avoid in betraying him (14:15) was visited on her anyhow. Like the Judeans in 15:9-19, who hoped that by betraying Samson they could avoid aggravating the Philistines, Samson’s Philistine in-laws discovered that betraying him did not avert the retribution they feared.

15:7 “Because you did this,” Samson vowed. The NLT interprets certain particles in the sentence as indicating a vow. Samson was to avenge a deed done against his own wife and father-in-law. To reduce this to a petty, personal vendetta is to deny the historical, human ties depicted in the story. Standing before the smoking ruins of the home of his brutally murdered wife, living in a culture whose fundamental notion of justice was rooted in reciprocal actions of honoring and shaming, who would not have vowed to even the score? To walk away would also have left the Philistines confident that they could defy Israel with impunity. Samson’s vengeance is therefore much more than a personal grudge.

I won’t rest until I take my revenge on you! Lit., “I will take my revenge on you, and afterwards, I will cease.” The overall construction of the sentence in most translations, as in the NLT, makes the second clause “afterwards I will cease” a statement of Samson’s determination. Instead, given his claim earlier that he was terminating his entanglement with the Philistines (see note on 15:3), Samson more likely meant to declare this as his final act of vengeance. However much moderns disapprove of Samson’s penchant for revenge, we must recall that Israel in Iron Age I had no central government. The family and clan bore the obligation to uphold what was right, and vengeance was much more than a mere feud: It was a passionate belief that every wrong must be balanced out by a reciprocal act. Samson’s honor was not simply the machismo of an egomaniac. He, and others in such cultural settings, believed they were derelict of their duty to their family if they did not pursue proper vengeance. In addition, Samson was the divinely empowered and called judge of Israel, and if any vengeance was to be taken, he would be the one authorized to do so. Properly translated, Samson’s statement also indicates he hoped to set a boundary on his quest for vengeance: “I will cease.” Nevertheless, the context of Samson’s liaison with the Philistines, his violation of the basic identity boundaries of his people, and his failure to honor his Nazirite status complicate his otherwise culturally appropriate concern for vengeance within proper limits. Samson had in fact become enmeshed with the Philistines, and his expectation of legitimate vengeance undermined his efforts to be free of them. His cry, “Just one more time and I’m finished,” is ever the mantra of the addict. God will use Samson’s entanglement to harm the Philistines, but that very power only accelerates the cycle of revenge.

15:8 So he attacked the Philistines with great fury. The NLT renders Heb. shoq ‘al yarek [TH7785/3409, ZH8797/3751] (hip on thigh) safely enough: Clearly Samson did wallop them thoroughly. Burney (1920:370) suggests the expression is a wrestling term and notes Mesopotamian art depicting Gilgamesh throwing his antagonist over his own thigh. The author thus perhaps presents imagery from hand-to-hand grappling.

killed many of them. No onrush of the Spirit of Yahweh occurs here. Samson’s strength is never inextricably tied to the Spirit, but only to his vow. The Spirit’s coming provoked him in the use of his strength.

the rock of Etam. Many proposals for this location exist, but none is definitive.

15:9 The Philistines retaliated by setting up camp in Judah. With this verse, for the first time, the reader sees Samson’s feuds with the Philistines in a context larger than his own personal vendetta, but the image of “larger Israel” is not positive. Judah’s territory lay just south of the Danite inheritance. The Philistines attempted to move up to the Israelite heartlands up on the watershed ridge by means of the valleys through the Shephelah. This would bring them into direct contact with Judah, as occurred later when their thrust up the Elah valley brought David to confront Goliath (1 Sam 17).

15:10 We’ve come to capture Samson. The word “capture” translates ’asar [TH631, ZH673] (to bind), foreshadowing both the fateful pillow talk of Delilah who asked how Samson might be “bound” (9 occurrences in 16:4-20) and his incarceration (3 occurrences in 16:21-25).

We’ve come to pay him back. The Philistines ignored the fact that Samson’s actions were provoked by Philistine duplicity and betrayal.

15:11 So 3,000 men of Judah went down to get Samson. Whether “thousand” (’elep [TH505, ZH547]) denotes the number or a clan-muster (i.e., “contingent”) of the militia (see note on 8:10), it reflects a remarkable concern about Samson’s ability to resist. Also, the Judeans here outnumber the Philistines three to one (cf. 15:15), but still whined in anxiety about them. That the Judeans served the purposes of the Philistines suggests at best that they were poorly integrated into the needs and concerns of the rest of the Israelite tribes. Conversely, their attitude could also reflect a sense that the Danites were second-class members of the Israelite coalition, and the Judeans felt no particular loyalty to a Danite hero.

Don’t you realize the Philistines rule over us? This interaction underscores how little kinship the Judeans felt with the Danites. No appeal to Israelite unity appears, nor is there any sense that they faced a common foe. If the Danites, or a segment of them, were originally from among the Sea Peoples (see note on 13:2), the Judeans might well see them as more closely tied to the Philistines. At any rate, the Judeans express no sense that Samson was the ordained deliverer of the nation. He only upset the equilibrium of compromise and acquiescence the Judeans had struck with the Philistines. The “rule” of the Philistines likely took the form of practical domination, not colonial administration. Judah, at least in the Shephelah, lived under the shadow of Philistine power.

“What are you doing to us?” But Samson replied, “I only did to them what they did to me.” The Judeans were clearly trapped between two parties, each of which claimed only to be repaying a wrong done by the other. The reader knows the balance of justification probably lies with Samson, and that the Philistines were probably using Samson as a pretext to extend their power over more Israelite territory. Samson’s reply, however, cannot have sounded very hopeful to the Judeans. Whether the reader should see Samson here as failing to serve as the deliverer, only complicating further the oppression, or whether the Judeans emerge as singularly reluctant to deal with deliverance, remains unclear. But one thing is so obvious it is often missed: Samson, who would “judge Israel for twenty years” (15:20; 16:31b), displayed a very keen, perhaps extreme, sense of reciprocity and justice. The narrative’s emphasis on “reprisals and counterreprisals” (Younger 2002:310) does not imply that the characters cared only for vengeance. Rather, in the absence of any overarching authority, they were thrown back on their ability to assert justice themselves. This reality, however unpalatable to more civilized readers, predominates any frontier region and characterized Iron Age I generally. To criticize the characters for talking about vengeance provokes the question of what else they should be discussing under the circumstances.

15:12 We have come to tie you up. As in 15:10 and in 15:13, the term is “bound” (’asar [TH631, ZH673]), foreshadowing Samson’s final binding in ch 16.

15:13 two new ropes. “New ropes” anticipates 16:11, where Samson baits Delilah with the claim that new ropes will bind him.

15:14 As Samson arrived at Lehi, the Philistines came shouting in triumph. As with the lion (14:6), a sudden, loud, hostile sound immediately preceded the onrush of the Spirit of Yahweh.

But the Spirit of the LORD came powerfully upon Samson. The expression in Hebrew is the same as found in 14:6 and 19 and is the last time the Spirit is said to possess Samson in the narrative. Ironically, the impulse of the Spirit results in Samson violating his vow. In 14:6 the slaying of the lion led to Samson’s eating honey from the corpse; the slaughter of the Philistines in 14:19 was followed by his stripping of the bodies and transport of the contaminated clothing all the way back to Timnah. Here, the Spirit-empowered hero wielded an unclean weapon (see note on 15:15).

15:15 jawbone of a recently killed donkey. The term “jawbone” is lekhi [TH3895, ZH4305], the ultimate name of the location where the encounter occurs. “Recently killed” translates a term that seems to mean “fresh,” and is used of open wounds in Isa 1:6. Moore (1895:346) cites an Arabic cognate meaning “fresh, moist, juicy.” Touching a dead animal, especially with blood and putrefaction present, violated once again Samson’s Nazirite vow.

He picked it up and killed 1,000 Philistines with it. Ironically, the Judeans had sent three times as many men to talk to Samson as the Philistines sent to capture him. Single combat against the Philistines forms an important theme in the OT traditions associated with Iron Age I. Shamgar (3:31) had killed 600 with an ox goad. David’s mighty men (2 Sam 23:8-23) included several who defeated large groups of Philistines alone, as had Jonathan (1 Sam 14:1-15). Many of these stories, like Samson’s battle here, call attention to some distinctive feature of the weaponry or of the ground on which the fight occurred, in keeping with Iron Age I heroic tradition. Even Samson’s thirsty cry for water finds a reverberation in David’s longing for the water of Bethlehem’s spring (2 Sam 23:13-17).

15:16 Then Samson said. Just as ch 14 ended on a poetic note (as Samson dueled with the Philistines via his riddles), here Samson erupts in poetry to celebrate his victory. The portrayal of Samson as a witty wordsmith is in accord with the high value ancients placed on speaking well. Israel’s greatest hero, David, was “articulate” (1 Sam 16:18, NET) and a poet of great renown.

With the jawbone of a donkey, I’ve piled them in heaps! In Hebrew the term for donkey (khamor [TH2543/2543A, ZH2789/2790]) is identical to the word translated “heaps.” The line is literally “with the jawbone of a donkey, heap and double-heap.” Burney (1920:373) also suggests that the pun might imply something more rude, “with the jawbone of an ass, I have made asses out of them” (cf. NIV’s rendering: “with a donkey’s jawbone I have made donkeys of them”).

15:17 he threw away the jawbone . . . Jawbone Hill. A double pun appears. In addition to the repetition of “jawbone,” the term for “hill” or (better) “height,” (ramath [TH7413, ZH8229]) bears a superficial similarity to a verb meaning to throw or hurl (Moore 1895:345).

15:18 Samson was now very thirsty, and he cried out to the LORD. Though Samson’s strength gave him victory over the Philistines, his thirst presents a crisis for which strength cannot provide the answer. The term for “cry” is not that used in the introductions to the stories in which oppressed Israel “cries out” to Yahweh (omitted in the introduction to the Samson story). Rather, the idiom employed connotes the invocation of the deity by name. This was not a cry of desperation, but a summons he believed would be answered. The sensible appeal of his prayer evokes the memory of his mother’s reassurance in 13:23.

You have accomplished this great victory by the strength of your servant. Far from haranguing God (Boling 1975:239), Samson here expresses clearly a proper interpretation of the event: Yahweh gave the victory through the strength of his servant. This theocentric cry stands alone as Samson’s only affirmation of the essence of his strength until his revelation to Delilah in ch 16.

pagans. Lit., “the uncircumcised.” Here Samson, for the first time, articulates the boundary separating himself as an Israelite from the Philistines, namely, their uncircumcision. Upon his declaration of Yahweh as the author of the victory and his affirmation of the basic boundary between Israel and the Philistines, Yahweh answered by miraculously providing water.

15:19 So God caused water to gush out of a hollow in the ground at Lehi, and Samson was revived as he drank. The cleaving of the rock to produce water to refresh Samson ends a narrative sequence that began with Samson’s ripping of the lion and finding honey for his refreshment. The term “hollow” (maktesh [TH4388, ZH4847]) also has the meaning “tooth socket.”

The Spring of the One Who Cried Out. The expression, “the one who cried out,” is also the typical Hebrew term for “partridge.” Many scholars suggest the spring’s actual name was “Partridge Spring,” a name assigned a new meaning by Samson’s actions.

15:20 Samson judged Israel for twenty years. This statement does more than merely summarize. In fact, Samson did not “judge Israel” in any meaningful way in chs 14–15. The events of these two chapters occupy only a few months in Samson’s early life. Boling (1974:240) suggests they record Yahweh’s efforts to “enlist” Samson as a judge, culminating in the prayer in 15:18-19 where Samson finally accepted his calling. This seems overclever. So to what does the author refer? Chapters 14–15 could well record the wild doings of the young Samson who then led Israel without incident for the next 20 years until his debacle in ch 16.

during the period when the Philistines dominated the land. Unlike the other judges, Samson’s activity parallels the presence of a foreign oppressor that does not flee or leave in defeat at the end of the story as the prior enemies of Israel did. The NLT’s “dominated the land” is not in the Hebrew. The text simply reads “in the days of the Philistines.” Although the Philistines arrived about 1175 BC, they did not achieve real dominance until a century later, about the time of Samson.

COMMENTARY [Text]

This chapter unfolds the consequences of Samson’s enmeshment with the Philistines, narrated in chapter 14. At the end of chapter 14, the balance of offense and retribution lay in Samson’s favor—his victory and prayer climax the chain of events inaugurating a 20-year period of service. However wrong the choice of a Philistine bride had been, he had sought her in good faith and did in fact pay off his lost wager. Moreover, he lost the wager through the dishonorable conduct of the Philistines and the coerced duplicity of his wife. Judges 14 ends with Samson as the party who has defended his honor most successfully, and that against a vastly superior, more militarized, and better-equipped foe. Since he had been treated dishonorably, Samson had a right of further revenge but chose to return home, rather than take out his anger in further violence against the Timnites. As chapter 15 opens, far from being driven by sensuality or anger, Samson took what seems to be a somewhat conciliatory approach. Having waited an interval appropriate to his sense of injury, he traveled to Timnah with a gift for his wife and her household, only to meet deeper betrayal as his wife had been given to another man. Despite the wrongness of Samson’s marriage to a Philistine, this was still a betrayal. Interpreters who use this chapter as a paradigm for the pathology of violence or the endless cycle of revenge, or who wish to portray Samson as driven solely by a personal vendetta, fail to note these important points. This was war; if the Philistines weren’t prepared to have their crops burned, they should have not oppressed Israel. But the author’s principle point does not seem to be to approve or defend the character of Samson as much as to stress the deceitful character of the Philistines. In that light, Samson’s overtures to the Philistines take on a different function. Rather than emphasizing Samson’s betrayal of Israelite law, the stories illustrate that even someone who tried to affiliate with the Philistines discovered them to be utterly ruthless and dishonorable, meriting whatever vengeance they received.

Samson’s months of waiting to visit his wife were months of delusion in that she had, the whole time, lived with another husband. This must not only have shocked him, but would have underscored more starkly the utterly unprincipled character of the Philistines. The rest of the chapter unfolds in a series of reprisals, analyzed very well by Matthews and Younger (Matthews 2004:152; Younger 2002:304-305). The interchange between Samson and the Philistines shifts scenes ranging from Timna to an unknown place in the Judean Shephelah.

Philistine Injury	Samson’s Reprisal
Refusing Samson’s Conjugal Rights (15:1-2)	Samson Burns Timnite Produce (15:3-5)
Samson’s Wife and Her Father Burned (15:6)	Samson Slaughters the Philistines (15:7-8)
Samson Captured (15:9-13)	Samson’s Defeat of Philistines (15:14-17)

The important features of this section actually come at the beginning and the end. At the beginning, Samson is at peace, evidencing no remaining animosity against the Philistines. After the series of engagements in 15:3-17 in which ­Samson wrought enormous damage on the Philistines, he cried out to God, acknowledging God’s power in the victory, acknowledging the boundary between Israel and the Philistines, refusing to be identified with them, and crying for relief. God miraculously answered Samson’s prayer. This conclusion places the narrative under divine approval. Not only had Samson magnificently fulfilled Yahweh’s desire for an occasion against the Philistines (14:4), Samson himself confessed the divide separating himself from Israel’s enemies. He was fully avenged, he had harmed the Philistines deeply, he had been sustained and vindicated by God, and he knew who he was: a servant of God who refused to be aligned with the uncircumcised. Thus, ­Samson could now lead his people as chief, or paramount (judge), and did so for 20 uneventful years.

With the completion of Samson’s vengeance in 15:14-19, his marital entanglement with the Philistines ended, and he assumed his role as judge, a period that the author passes over in silence (15:20). The statement in 15:20 (“Samson judged Israel for twenty years”) begins the concluding formula of the story, forming an inclusio with the retrospective note at the very end of the story in 16:31b. The concluding formulas noted, where pertinent, the land resting (omitted from the judges after Gideon), the duration of the judge’s influence, and a notation of the judge’s death. Previously in Judges, the concluding materials have been expanded. The concluding notes of the Deborah story begin in 4:23-24, but the long poem of 5:1-31a intervenes before the final concluding notation in 5:31b. Similarly, the conclusion of the Gideon story begins in 8:28, with the notes about Gideon’s retirement and large family intervening before the notation of his death in 8:32. In the same way, the note that Samson ruled 20 years (15:20) prepares the reader to see the next unit (ch 16) as part of the conclusion of the story whose final rubrics appear in 16:31. Indeed, the death of the judge, which figures prominently in these concluding formulas, is the central theme of chapter 16. Thus, the reader understands chapters 14–15 to record Samson’s earliest deeds, followed by two decades of what must have been uneventful leadership, followed by the very dramatic narrative of the events leading up to Samson’s death. As one whose early deeds circled around retribution and revenge, perhaps Samson was in a place to understand justice, and judging; likewise, that his end would follow from the violation and renewal of the very vow he had ignored in the early stories, rings true with the theme of retribution. Not even the judge was immune.

Recent evangelical commentators typically depict Samson as devoid of all positive character, being only ruthless and self-centered. One hears criticisms of the “tone” of Samson’s prayer in 15:18-19, as though 3,000 years later we can assess such things in the absence of clear linguistic markers. These charges reveal more about the interpreter’s pious, anachronistic perspective than about the Samson of real history. Like his Iron Age I peers, Achilles and Odysseus, Samson realized he had a divine gift that made him a distinctive and unique person. He lived in a culture devoid of overarching structures of unity and order. He and his struggling people confronted in the Philistines a new, formidable, determined enemy. In such an era, the honor and dignity of a people often rested in the honor and dignity of their paramount chief. If Samson did not demonstrate a strong response to the Philistines, then he exposed his people to worse indignities, especially given the vastly superior position of the Philistines as an urbanized, politically organized force with greater military resources and discipline. The Philistines, as part of the Sea Peoples, had raided, looted, and burned throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean. Egypt only barely repulsed them, resulting in the Philistine settlement on the south coast of Canaan about 70 years after the Israelites had arrived. Samson had to confront them alone. Nothing in the story evidences any willingness on the part of the Israelites to join him in resisting the Philistine oppression; in fact, the Judeans collaborate with the Philistines. In actual fact, Samson’s actions appear to have stymied the Philistine attempt to expand up the Sorek valley.

Lastly, this story illustrates the importance of the boundary between God’s people and their enemies. The initial protest of Manoah that Samson sought a wife from among the uncircumcised marks the story as one concerned with this distinction. Readers often puzzle over the author’s failure to criticize Samson himself both for the Philistine marriage and for his apparent violation of the Nazirite vow. The author paradoxically shows Samson going from victory to victory, killing thousands of Philistines and destroying the economy of the Philistine town of Timnah, the very heart of the Sorek valley. God, whose secret purpose is conveyed in 14:4, answers Samson’s prayer at the end of the story—a prayer that, tellingly, asserts a repugnance for the uncircumcised. Samson’s border adventures have vindicated the necessity of the boundary. Moreover, the story shows that even when an Israelite does his very best to cooperate with the Philistines, they prove treacherous, dishonorable, and amoral. No Israelite, after reading this story, could believe it worthwhile to compromise on the distinctives of Israelite faith and culture for the sake of an easy truce with the enemies of God. Samson maps that territory for the reader, going there so that readers need not do so themselves.

Does the positive framework of the story created by Yahweh’s secret intention (14:4) and ultimate vindication (15:18-19) justify Samson’s violation of his ethnic identity and his Nazirite vow? Though the author expresses no criticisms in chapters 14–15, the larger framework of the story answers this question negatively, and we will see Samson stumble in chapter 16 precisely at the points where he triumphed before. The author has told the reader back in 3:5-6 that the key to Israel’s downfall is to mingle among the pagans, intermarry with the pagans, and ultimately serve the gods of the pagans. Though Samson emerged from his border adventures victorious, the boundaries remained vital and would determine Samson’s destiny after all. But what of Yahweh’s purpose? This story, perhaps more than any other in the book of Judges, shows that God chooses to work through human beings. He chooses to descend into the fragility, and at times, unbelief and disobedience of his servants in order to bring forth his purposes. From the moment in creation that God vested his honor, dignity, and very image in human beings, he committed himself to manifesting his power, glory, and character through people. So the mystery is not how God could fulfill his purposes through Samson, but why he would ever choose to work through sinful human beings at all.