Judges 15:1-6

1 And it came to pass after a time, in the days of the wheat-harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid of the goats. 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 didst utterly hate her; therefore I gave her to thy companion. Is not her younger sister fairer than she? Let her, I pray thee, be thine instead of her.

3 And Samson said to them, This time I am blameless toward the Philistines, though I do them harm.

4 And Samson went and caught three hundred jackals, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the midst between the two tails.

5 And he set the torches on fire, and let [them] run into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, and the olive gardens.

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

Judges 15:1-6 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.

Footnotes

• [a]. Or 'of them.'
• [b]. Or 'shall be more blameless than.'