"The Futility of the Flesh: Samson IV”
Judges 15
July 23, 2006
by C.W. Powell
Judges 15:
“1 But it came to pass within a while after, in the time of wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid; and he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber. But her father would not suffer him to go in. 2 And her father said, I verily thought that thou hadst utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to thy companion: [is] not her younger sister fairer than she? take her, I pray thee, instead of her. 3 And Samson said concerning them, Now shall I be more blameless than the Philistines, though I do them a displeasure. 4 And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails. 5 And when he had set the brands on fire, he let [them] go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, with the vineyards [and] olives. 6 Then the Philistines said, Who hath done this? And they answered, Samson, the son in law of the Timnite, because he had taken his wife, and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire. 7 And Samson said unto them, Though ye have done this, yet will I be avenged of you, and after that I will cease. 8 And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and dwelt in the top of the rock Etam.”
“9 Then the Philistines went up, and pitched in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. 10 And the men of Judah said, Why are ye come up against us? And they answered, To bind Samson are we come up, to do to him as he hath done to us. 11 Then three thousand men of Judah went to the top of the rock Etam, and said to Samson, Knowest thou not that the Philistines [are] rulers over us? what [is] this [that] thou hast done unto us? And he said unto them, As they did unto me, so have I done unto them. 12 And they said unto him, We are come down to bind thee, that we may deliver thee into the hand of the Philistines. And Samson said unto them, Swear unto me, that ye will not fall upon me yourselves. 13 And they spake unto him, saying, No; but we will bind thee fast, and deliver thee into their hand: but surely we will not kill thee. And they bound him with two new cords, and brought him up from the rock. 14 [And] when he came unto Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him: and the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him, and the cords that [were] upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands. 15 And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. 16 And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men. 17 And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramathlehi.”
“18 And he was sore athirst, and called on the LORD, and said, Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised? 19 But God clave an hollow place that [was] in the jaw, and there came water thereout; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: wherefore he called the name thereof Enhakkore, which [is] in Lehi unto this day. 20 And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.”
The life of Samson is a riddle, as Matthew Henry says. It is not a very good moral tale, because it is so tangled and twisted. A great many people have trouble with the story of Samson, because he doesn’t fit their definition of how God works in the world. Samson gets honey from the carcass of a lion. Didn’t he know that a dead animal is unclean? I guess that Samson just figured honey was honey. Didn’t matter where it came from. Another thing: he wanted to marry a Philistine. God also wanted him to marry a Philistine. But God didn’t want Samson to marry a Philistine so that he could live his life in wedded bliss. No, God had another agenda.
Some very great men in the history of the church have come from what some people might call a bad family. They were like the honey in that lion carcass.
“Can anything good come out of Nazarus?” the Jews sneered concerning Jesus. He’s a carpenter’s son. They said to the man born blind, “You were altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach US?” The trouble with some people is they live in a moral box that even God cannot penetrate. This was the whole trouble with the Jews. They did not understand God, and therefore they did not understand the law. They thought that God was in the box with them and couldn’t do anything unless it passed their moral judgment. Honey from a lion’s carcass; you’ve got to be kidding! Marry a Philistine? Burn the standing corn? One of the greatest offenses laid to the charge of Jesus was that he ate with publicans and sinners. He was a friend of sinners was a perjorative.
But even the life of Samson should have been instructive to Israel. He married a Philistine under the moving of God’s Spirit so that God might find an occasion against the Philistines. He went into the world of the Philistines that he might destroy the Philistines. In the same way Jesus came into our world, but not to destroy us, but to save us. Jesus came into the world and came under the power of the devil himself, so that he might destroy the devil and his kingdom. Yes, Jesus took our sins upon Him and was treated by God as a sinner under the wrath of God, so that we might be delivered from the power of the devil.
The life of Samson shows the weakness of the flesh. All Samson could do was to kill Philistines. That was necessary, but salvation will not come to Israel no matter how many Philistines you kill. Even as Samson was killing Philistines, the worship of God was being defiled by the sins of Hophni and Phinehas and the weakness of Eli the priest. Samuel was just growing up in the house of the Lord. But let us look at the text.
Vs. 1,2.
The injury done to him by his wife’s family: his wife had been given to another. They thought that he had hated his wife because of the injury that she had done to him. The ungodly cannot understand mercy and forgiveness. Samson is to be commended here for wanting to cement the relationship with his wife, no matter how much she had offended him in the matter of the riddle. But she had been given to one of his thirty companions.
Vs. 3-8.
He is now free of any treaty or friendship with the Philistines so he does not go far away as he did when he went to Ashkelon to get garments to pay his debt. Instead he burns their grain crop. The “foxes” were probably the mixed offspring of wolves and foxes that were very plentiful there. There was a strange custom at Rome many years later of letting loose foxes with lighted torches fastened to their tails, which might have had its origin here, for there was nothing in the experience of Romans, but was said to have come from Asia. Samson maybe had some help in catching the foxes, but it was clever of him to tie them two to two, for this would have caused them to run this way and that and increase the damage to the crops. Needless to say, Samson did not have to worry about modern societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals!
His enemies took their revenge by burning his wife and her family. The justice of the lawless is cruel. Perhaps they got very righteous now and decided to punish her for adultery; or maybe they thought this would pacify Samson. She thought to escape this punishment by disclosing Samson’s riddle, but now it comes upon her anyway. The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. His response to this act of cruelty was to slaughter more Philistines, as it says in verse 8.
He then moves his dwelling to the top of the rock Etam, probably a cave near the top, for caves were and are still very plentiful in this region.
Vs. 9-17.
The Philistine method of warfare was to move up the ravines in large groups, and then spread out in small bands. When they came into the land of Judah, the men of Judah were completely demoralized and were willing to buy peace at the expense of Samson. They agreed to deliver him over to the Philistines. But it took three thousand of them to get up enough courage to go talk to Samson.
Samson does not pick a quarrel with his countrymen, as base as they were. They thought they were realists, “Don’t you know that the Philistines are our rulers?” No. God was their ruler, but a man without faith cannot see Him who is invisible. But Samson does not quarrel with them, but agrees to be bound, as long as they promise not to kill him themselves. This points again to the need of a true Savior, Jesus Christ, for Israel, for no judge could change their hearts.
Moses had not given them that bread from heaven, for they ate of his bread and died in the wilderness. Those who did not believe in the promise of Messiah were corrupt in heart and mind and could not do valiantly, for they did not have the Spirit of God. What Samson did, he did by the Spirit, but even Samson only had power over the bodies of the Philistines, not over the souls of the people of God.
The men of Judah brought him to the camp of the Philistines. When the Philistines saw him, they raised a great shout of triumph, thinking that their enemy was helpless, for he was bound with ropes. But the Spirit of God came upon Samson, and the cords broke from his body as though they were nothing. He looked around and found a jawbone of a donkey, freshly dead, and not yet dried and brittle. He used it as a weapon and killed a thousand Philistines with it. They must have been in a panic and fled from him, some perhaps dying in the crush. There didn’t seem to be any resistance to him and they fell in piles.
Vs. 18-20.
Even this is a riddle, because the word for ass is also the word for heap. The words “hollow place in the jawbone” can also mean a "basin in Lehi," for "Lehi" the word for jawbone. There is much here that points to the “riddle” of Samson, as we said before. The spring of Samson is refered to by Jerome and other writers of the 7th, 12th, and 14th centuries according to the commentaries.
What is the application? Some I have already mentioned, but here are some others.
1. The ways of God are mysterious to us, and we ought to be humble. The work of God may come in all kinds of packages and we are to receive it at His hands and rejoice. He can work with means, as He used Samson and Pharaoh to accomplish His will. He can work without means, as he destroyed Nadab and Abihu and Sodom and Gomorrah. He can work against means, as when He brought parted the Red Sea and brought water from the rock in a dry desert.
2. Samson slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. This would not be the weapon of choice even in that age of primitive warfare. I am reminded of Moses many years before. “How shall I deliver Israel,” he complained against God. “What is that in thine hand,” was the reply of God. The poor shepherds staff of Moses became a terror to Egypt under the power of God. God can use anything that He pleases to accomplish His will. Do not count yourself without means to do what God has called you to do. Even five loaves and two fish, the lunch of a boy, became enough to feed a multitude in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ.
3. The salvation of the church did not come until the coming of the Lord Jesus. The Philistines were not the true enemy of Israel, any more than the Amalekites, the Midianites, or the Canaanites before them. The true enemies of Israel are the same that we contend with today: the sins that are in our hearts and minds: unbelief; evil thoughts, contentiousness, murmuring and complaining, meddling in other people’s affairs, pride and arrogance.
4. Let us add knowledge to our virtue, as we said last week. The knowledge that perfects virtue or morality is the knowledge of God and His ways. Without the knowledge of God and His ways, the story of Samson is an impenetrable riddle that will lead us astray, rather than to faith and trust, as is true of all the Scriptures.
5. But along with the knowledge of God will come the true knowledge of ourselves. It is when we get puffed up and think we can battle the Philistines in our own strength that troubles come. A great many people who have taken it upon themselves to subdue all evil around them have been overcome by the very evil they think to subdue. The battle then, and now, is the Lords, and he prosecutes it in his own way and according to his own wisdom. We should know that we cannot make straight that which the Lord made crooked. That is best, and we should be content to follow in his train, as the faithful do in Revelation
- “11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him [was] called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. 12 His eyes [were] as a flame of fire, and on his head [were] many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. 13 And he [was] clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies [which were] in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. 16 And he hath on [his] vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.” (Revelation 19:11-16 AV)
7. The wickedness in the world was here long before you arrived, and it will be here long after you and I are gone. You do not need to pick a fight, for God has commanded us to live at peace with all men. The battles he wants you to fight will come to you, just they did with Samson. All he wanted to do was get married, and you shouldn’t even rush into that.
- “Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, [and] bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? 7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, [or] with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn [for] my transgression, the fruit of my body [for] the sin of my soul? 8 He hath showed thee, O man, what [is] good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah 6:6-8 AV)
May God bless you.
Amen and Amen. May God bless you.