Judges 15:1

Samson Defeats the Philistines

1 After a while, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a {young goat}. He said, "I want to go to my wife's private room." But her father would not allow him to enter.

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 After a while, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a {young goat}. He said, "I want to go to my wife's private room." But her father would not allow him to enter.
2 Her father said, "I really thought that you hated her, so I gave her to your companion. [Is] not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please, {take her instead}."
3 And Samson said to them, "This time, as far as the Philistines are concerned, when I do something evil I am without blame."
4 And Samson went and captured three hundred foxes, and he took torches. He turned [them] tail to tail, and he put one torch between two tails.
5 He set fire to the torches and let [the foxes] go into the standing grain of [the] Philistines, and he burned both the stacks of sheaves and the standing grain, up to the vineyards of olive groves.

Footnotes 1

  • [a]. Literally "kid of goat"
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