Judges 15:1-6

1 At the time of the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, tak- ing a young goat with him. He said, "I'm going to my wife's room," but her father would not let him go in.

2 He said to Samson, "I thought you really hated your wife, so I gave her to your best man. Her younger sister is more beautiful. Take her instead."

3 But Samson said to them, "This time no one will blame me for hurting you Philistines!"

4 So Samson went out and caught three hundred foxes. He took two foxes at a time, tied their tails together, and then tied a torch to the tails of each pair of foxes.

5 After he lit the torches, he let the foxes loose in the grainfields of the Philistines so that he burned up their standing grain, the piles of grain, their vineyards, and their olive trees.

6 The Philistines asked, "Who did this?" Someone told them, "Samson, the son-in-law of the man from Timnah, did because his father-in-law gave his wife to his best man." So the Philistines burned Samson's wife and her father to death.

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.