Judges 15:3

3 Shimshon said to them, "This time I'm through with the P'lishtim! I'm going to do something terrible to them!"

Judges 15:3 Meaning and Commentary

Judges 15:3

And Samson said concerning them
His wife's father, and other relations, and the citizens of Timnath; this, which is what follows, he said either within himself respecting them, or he said it to them openly and publicly before them all:

now shall I be more blameless than the Philistines, though I do them a
displeasure;
signifying, that if he did them an ill thing, or what might be reckoned an injury to their persons or properties, and which would be disagreeable and displeasing to them, they could not justly blame him for it, since they had given him such a provocation as to dispose of his wife to another man; though Samson did not mean to act, nor did he act in the following instances as a private person taking private revenge, but as a public person, and judge of Israel; and took occasion, from the private injuries done him, to avenge the public ones of the children of Israel upon the Philistines; and they might thank themselves for giving the opportunity, which they could not justly condemn him for taking.

Judges 15:3 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.