Judges 15:1-7

Samson Burns Philistine Crops

1 But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife ¹with a young goat, and said, "I will go in to my wife in her room." But her father did not let him enter.

2 Her father said, "I really thought that you hated her intensely; so I ²gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please let her be yours instead."

3 Samson then said to them, "This time I shall be blameless in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm."

4 Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned the foxes tail to tail and put one torch in the middle between two tails.

5 When he had set fire to the torches, he released the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines, thus burning up both the shocks and the standing grain, along with the vineyards and groves.

6 Then the Philistines said, "Who did this?" And they said, "Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion." So the Philistines came up and ³burned her and her father with fire.

7 Samson said to them, "Since you act like this, I will surely * take revenge on you, but after that I will quit."

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Judges 15:1-7 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JUDGES 15

This chapter relates, that Samson being denied his wife, did by a strange stratagem burn the corn fields, vineyards, and olives of the Philistines, Jud 15:1-5, and that because of their burning her and her father, he made a great slaughter of them, Jud 15:6-8, which brought the Philistines against the men of Judah, who took Samson and bound him, to deliver him to the Philistines, when he, loosing himself, slew a thousand of them with the jaw bone of an ass, Jud 15:9-17 and being athirst, God in a wonderful manner supplied him with water, Jud 15:18-20.

Taken from John Gill's Exposition of the Bible

Cross References 3

1. Genesis 38:17
2. Judges 14:20
3. Judges 14:15

Footnotes 4

[a]. Lit "better"
[b]. Lit "instead of her"
[c]. Lit "them"
[d]. I.e. the Timnite