Judges 15:1

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.

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 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.
Scripture taken from the New Century Version. Copyright © 1987, 1988, 1991 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.