8
Awhile later, as he was returning to claim his bride, he turned aside to look at the carcass of the lion and saw that there was now a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey.
9
He scraped the honey out into his hands and went on, eating as he went; and when he came to his father and mother, he gave them some; and they ate too. But he didn't tell them that he had scraped the honey out of the body of the lion.
10
His father went down to the woman, and there Shimshon gave a banquet - this is what the young men used to do.
11
When the P'lishtim saw him, they provided thirty companions to be with him.
12
Shimshon said to them, "Let me present you with a riddle. If you can solve it within the seven days of the banquet and tell me the solution, I will give you thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of good clothes.
13
But if you can't solve it, you give me thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of good clothes." They answered, "Tell us the riddle, we want to hear it."
14
So he said to them, "Out of the eater came food; out of the strong came sweetness." Three days passed, and they couldn't solve the riddle.
15
On the seventh day, they said to Shimshon's wife, "Coax your husband into telling us the solution to the riddle. Otherwise we'll burn down your father's house and you with it. You two called us here to turn us into paupers, didn't you?"
16
Shimshon's wife went to him in tears and said, "You don't love me, you hate me! You told a riddle to my fellow countrymen, and you haven't told me the answer." He said to her, "Look, I haven't even told it to my father and mother! Should I tell you?"
17
But she had been crying throughout the seven days of the banquet; so on the seventh day, because she had kept pressing him, he told her the solution; and she passed it on to her people.
18
Then, before sundown on the seventh day, the men of the city said to him, "What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?" Shimshon answered, "If you hadn't plowed with my young cow, you wouldn't have solved my riddle now."