Judges 15:1-6

1 After a while, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, bringing along a kid. He said, "I want to go into my wife's room." But her father would not allow him to go in.

2 Her father said, "I was sure that you had rejected her; so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister prettier than she? Why not take her instead?"

3 Samson said to them, "This time, when I do mischief to the Philistines, I will be without blame."

4 So Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took some torches; and he turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails.

5 When he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and olive groves.

6 Then the Philistines asked, "Who has done this?" And they said, "Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken Samson's wife and given her to his companion." So the Philistines came up, and burned her and her father.

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]. Heb [them]
• [b]. Gk Tg Vg: Heb lacks [and]