AM Bible Study Group; September 16, 2015 from Judges 15:1-20
Theme: Through the unlikely usefulness of Samson’s acts of revenge, God cut down the enemies of His people.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
Chapter 14 told us the story of the beginning displays of Samson’s great God-given strength. But it also showed us the beginning displays of his dreadful passions and his penchant for revenge. By the time we get to Chapter 15, we find that these things combine in Samson to make him a terrible force unleashed on the Philistines. He was a one-man menace cast down upon the hostile oppressors of God’s people; a deadly force that could not be stopped by men; the Philistine’s worst nightmare—and yet whose actions, somehow, were under the control of the sovereign God to accomplish His will.
How do we explain this? How could God accomplish His purposes through what must have seemed to the Philistines as a ‘monstrosity’ of a man? Perhaps it helps to remember that this is God’s way. He uses powerfully that which the wise of this world would think unusable. And it’s a good thing He does; because that’s our story: “For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence” (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
This chapter gives us a series of dreadful blows that Samson inflicted upon the Philistines—and shows us how this overly-emotional menace was, nevertheless, God’s instrument to inflict blows on the enemies of His people.
BLOW #1: THREE-HUNDRED FIREFOXES (vv. 1-5).
A. It began on a lovely spring morning. At wheat-harvest time—when a young man’s fancy turns to love—Samson went back to Timnah to visit his Philistine wife. He was planning on doing more than just sitting and chatting over old times, by the way. He brought a young goat (today we would bring flowers and chocolates); and went to her family and said, “Let me go in to my wife, into her room” (v. 1). He thought that she was still his wife; but he didn’t know that, after the fiasco of Chapter 14, her father assumed Samson no longer wanted her, and gave her to Samson’s best man instead (see 14:20).
B. The woman’s father probably came to realized rather quickly that that had been a rather hasty mistake; and now he had put himself and his family under a terrible threat. He offered an alternative; “Is not her younger sister better than she? Please, take her instead” (v. 2). But it was nothin’ doin’. “This time I shall be blameless regarding the Philistines if I harm them!” (v. 3). Why “this time”? Could it be that he had thought himself blameworthy for the destruction of the men in Ashkelon? (14:19). Perhaps so; but he seems to have gotten over it.
C. He then went out and accomplished a remarkable physical feat—as well as a terrible act of devastation. He captured—and somehow corralled three-hundred “foxes” (the same word can be understood to refer to jackals), tied them in pairs tail to tail, stuck a burning torch between them, and set the traumatized animals loose into the Philistine’s fields of standing grain, vineyards and olive groves. He inflicted a dreadful blow to the Philistine’s produce—right at “wheat harvest” time!
BLOW #2: PHILISTINES PILED HIGH–HIP AND THIGH (vv. 6-8).
A. It’s interesting to see how this chapter tells the story of retaliations against Samson that ended up only making the Philistines situation worse. They tried to ‘fight fire with fire’; but ended up compounding their losses even more. When they had figured out that this had happened because the man at Timnah had given Samson’s wife to another man, they came and burned both her and her father with fire. But this only intensified Samson’s anger further. “Since you would do a think like this, I will surely take revenge on you, and after that I will cease” (v. 7). (He was wrong, however. He didn’t cease.)
B. Verse 8 tells us, “So he attacked them hip and thigh with a great slaughter . . .” This remarkable phrase has an ominous sound to it. It may be a way of saying that he thoroughly beat them from head to toe. But it may also mean that when he was done with them, they were a mangled and tangled mess of limbs. It might be that he ‘did a lion’ to them (see 14:6. It was, after all, “a great slaughter”—and this was no ordinary man. He then “went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock of Etam”. The fact that the next blow that Samson would inflict would involve the loss of 1,000 Philistine men come out to kill him suggests how much of a menace Samson was proving to be.
BLOW #3: THE BATTLE OF JAWBONE HEIGHT (vv. 9-17).
A. The Philistines marshaled an army of at least 1,000 men and went to Lehi; and when the men of Judah asked why, they said, “We have come up to arrest Samson, to do to him as he has done to us” (v. 10). (There’s that ‘retaliation’ thing again.) The men of Judah became fearful; and were happy to oblige the Philistines by taking Samson into custody. They thought it wise to use 3,000 men to do that!
B. They were angry with Samson. “Do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? What is this you have done to us?” (v. 11). It’s sad that they, at this point, were resigned to their oppressors. But they didn’t understand what God was yet going to do through Samson. He “pleaded” with them not to kill him; but the “plea” was probably a pretended one, because he knew at this point what God could do through him. And besides, he had no quarrel with his own people. But they said, “No, but we will tie you securely and deliver you into their hand; but we will surely not kill you” (v. 12). They figured that the Philistines would take care of that!
C. When the shouts of the Philistines came against him at Lehi, “the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him; and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that is burned with fire, and his bonds broke loose from his hands” (v. 14; literally, they were “melted”). We’re told that he found “a fresh jawbone of a donkey”; and we might suspect that the only place where someone might find such a thing would be in a fresh donkey! He took it in hand; and this seemingly unlikely instrument became a weapon with which he slew 1,000 men. He even wrote a poem about it. James Moffatt—in seeking to capture the play on words—translated it, “With the jaw-bone of an ass I have piled them in a mass! With the jaw-bone of an ass I have assailed assailants!” When it was all over, Samson called the place Ramath Lehi (“Jawbone Height”). And what a picture this is of Samson himself! He was an instrument in the hand of God that no one would have imagined could have been used; and yet, with this unlikely human instrument, God fulfilled His purposes and delivered His people. Samson was God’s ‘jawbone’. May He even be able to use such unlikely instruments as we are?
BLOW #4: KEPT ALIVE FOR MORE (vv. 18-20).
A. All of this left Samson exhausted. He is, after all, only a human instrument (if, admittedly, a seemingly ‘super-human’ human instrument). After this great deliverance, Samson became very thirsty; and he cried out to the Lord and said, “you have given this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant; and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” (v. 18). Perhaps they knew his frail condition; and were ready to pounce.
B. But it was not to be. God miraculously provided water from the rock (see Exodus 17:1-7). He drank and his spirit was restored. He called the place En Hakkore (“Spring of the Caller”). And once again, God frustrated the enemies of His people. This living ‘menace’ from God would yet live to further defend his people and judge them for twenty years! The Philistines just couldn’t get rid of him!