Judges 15:1

1 But after a while, during the wheat-harvest season, Shimshon went to see his wife. He brought a young goat for her and said to her father, "I want to go to my wife in her room." But he wouldn't let him.

Judges 15:1 Meaning and Commentary

Judges 15:1

But it came to pass within a while after
Or "after days", a year after, the same phrase as in ( Judges 14:8 ) in the time of wheat harvest; which began at Pentecost, as barley harvest did at the passover; this circumstance is mentioned for the sake of the following piece of history:

that Samson visited his wife with a kid;
by this time his passion of anger subsided, and he "remembered" his wife, as the Targum expresses it, and thought proper to return to her, and attempt a reconciliation with her; and for that purpose took a kid with him to eat a meal with her in her own apartment, which in those days was reckoned an elegant entertainment, and was a present to a king, ( 1 Samuel 16:20 ) . Isidore F19 derives the Latin word for a kid, "ab edendo", from eating, as if it was food by way of eminency, as it is both savoury and wholesome:

and he said, I will go with my wife into the chamber;
where she was, as women had their chambers and apartments by themselves; this he said within himself, or resolved in his own mind, and perhaps expressed it in her father's hearing, or however moved that way, which plainly indicated his design:

but her father would not suffer him to go in;
placed himself perhaps between him and the door, and parleyed with him, and declared he should not go into his daughter's chamber; Samson, through his superior strength, could easily have pushed him away, and broke open the door, but he did not choose to use such violent methods, and patiently heard what he had to say, and submitted.


FOOTNOTES:

F19 Origin. l. 12. c. 1. p. 101.

Judges 15:1 In-Context

1 But after a while, during the wheat-harvest season, Shimshon went to see his wife. He brought a young goat for her and said to her father, "I want to go to my wife in her room." But he wouldn't let him.
2 Her father said, "I really thought you hated her altogether, so I gave her to your best man. But her younger sister - isn't she even prettier? Why not take her instead?"
3 Shimshon said to them, "This time I'm through with the P'lishtim! I'm going to do something terrible to them!"
4 So Shimshon went and caught three hundred foxes. Then he took torches, tied pairs of foxes to each other by their tails, and put a torch in the knot of every pair of tails.
5 Then he set the torches on fire and let the foxes loose in wheat fields of the P'lishtim. In this way he burned up the harvested wheat along with the grain waiting to be harvested, and the olive orchards as well.
Complete Jewish Bible Copyright 1998 by David H. Stern. Published by Jewish New Testament Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.