No King in Israel (35)

Othniel led an army to drive out Israel’s oppressors in his generation. Ehud used a successful solo mission to raise an army to do the same. Deborah’s general Barak, Gideon and Jephthah were all leadership figures behind which the nation (or parts of it) rallied and successfully defeated invaders.

In every case to date, a judge’s appearance on the scene meant Israel entered a period of rest and relief from its enemies.

Guerrilla Judge

We are given so little information about five of our twelve judges that we cannot say precisely what each did or didn’t do during the time he or she led Israel. That acknowledged, I believe Samson was the first and only guerrilla judge.* Like most guerrillas, at times he acted against the perceived interests of his own people. I’m not sure if that’s more a comment on Samson’s distinctive calling, character and gifts or on the times in which he lived. I suspect it’s the latter.

What we can say with certainty is that Samson’s deliverance of Israel was uniquely unresolved, and that every account of his exploits portrays him as a solo act. He waged a twenty-year one-man war on the Philistines that ended with his death, and seems to have spent much of it on the move or in hiding. If he ever raised an army, or even a ragtag band of ne’er-do-wells like David, during those two decades, the writers of Judges did not see fit to document it. Samson depleted, compromised and intimidated the ruling nation of his generation, but died without ever driving out his enemies. This was just as the angel of the Lord prophesied concerning him: “He shall begin to save Israel.”

Saul would continue to battle the Philistine threat with his armies behind him, but it would take David to end it.

II. Twelve Judges in Chronological Order (continued)

12. Samson (continued)

Judges 15:1-8 — The Foxes Were Less Than Thrilled

“After some days, at the time of wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife with a young goat. And he said, ‘I will go in to my wife in the chamber.’ But her father would not allow him to go in. And her father said, ‘I really thought that you utterly hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her instead.’ And Samson said to them, ‘This time I shall be innocent in regard to the Philistines, when I do them harm.’ So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches. And he turned them tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails. And when he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines and set fire to the stacked grain and the standing grain, as well as the olive orchards. Then the Philistines said, ‘Who has done this?’ And they said, ‘Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.’ And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. And Samson said to them, ‘If this is what you do, I swear I will be avenged on you, and after that I will quit.’ And he struck them hip and thigh with a great blow, and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam.”

“Catch the foxes for us,” wrote Solomon. Apparently little foxes spoil vineyards. Who knew? Possibly Solomon had this incident in the back of his mind. Samson’s foxes did not consume the Philistine grape harvest as far as we know, but they did unprecedented damage to their food supply.

Two Confirmations

Two verses confirm facts we might have suspected in last week’s reading:

Verse 1 confirms Samson had no idea leaving Timnah in a huff after paying off his lost bet had effectively voided his marriage. He was simply being Samson, which invites us to speculate what sort of husband he might have made had the union persisted. He wandered back into his former father-in-law’s home as if he owned the place, only to find his wife’s father had given her (probably with great relief) to a fellow Philistine. Unfortunately, this ignited Samson’s temper again; the younger sister offered him was no acceptable substitute.

Verse 6 likewise confirms Samson’s wife had good reason to fear the Philistines, though they were relatives. They did to her exactly as they had promised, burning her and her father with fire. One wonders what might have happened if, instead of betraying her new husband, she had simply told him the truth and asked him to defend her. I’m guessing that might have produced better results for her than deceiving him and earning his mistrust. Her end came about despite all her efforts to avert it.

Strange Thought Processes

The statement “This time I shall be innocent in regard to the Philistines, when I do them harm” shows Samson’s inventive cast of mind. One might reasonably infer that Samson felt at least a little guilty about murdering thirty random citizens of Ashkelon who had done him no personal injury so he could steal their clothing. Comparatively speaking, he seems to be saying, taking revenge on people who threatened his wife’s life, answered his riddle by cheating, put him to the inconvenience of traveling to Ashkelon and murdering their neighbors, then married off his wife behind his back was completely justifiable. I’m not entirely sure I follow the thought process but, again, God often displays himself sovereign in situations where everyone else is behaving in a self-serving way.

I feel a little sorry for the foxes, though not the Philistines. Did Samson trap them by normal methods and number them in a pen somewhere, or was this fox collection process attributable to miraculous speed and stealth as well as strength? We don’t know. But 150 pairs of foxes running frantically in all directions with their tails shooting out sparks definitely accomplished what Samson was looking for, consuming all the crops in the area. The Philistines immediately looked for revenge, and the fact that Samson was responsible shortly came to light.

Double Revenge

The Philistines then escalated the situation by killing Samson’s ex and her father, provoking Samson to respond in kind. Shakespeare understood the phrase “struck them hip and thigh” to mean something like “overthrew completely”, the implication being that Samson went up against the best of the best among the Philistines and came out victorious. Wilhelm Gesenius understood it to indicate he smote all without distinction. Either way, the Philistines did not escape with a mere bruising.

All commentators agree “great blow” denotes a slaughter, and some even suggest it means Samson ripped the Philistines limb from limb, strewing arms and legs in great piles. That’s awfully literal. I tend to think the writer is using a figure of speech familiar to his original audience that has since become obscure.

I’m in the Lord’s Army

Ellicott writes, “It is not said, nor is it necessarily implied (any more than in the case of Shamgar), that Samson was absolutely alone in these raids. There is nothing either in the narrative or in the ordinary style of Hebrew prose which makes any such inference necessary, nor, indeed, is there any such inference drawn in many similar passages.”

I might normally agree. Often, when the scriptures say something like, “David has slain his ten thousands”, they mean nothing more shocking or miraculous than that David led troops that won victories over tens of thousands of the enemy. The writer attributes the actions of many to the individual who directed and led them. That’s often how it goes in Hebrew and other languages too.

This seems different. Shamgar’s story, which Ellicott cites, is literally one line, leaving lots of room to speculate about what else might have happened in those days. But all the “major judge” narratives in Judges to date detail which tribes went to battle and which didn’t (usually Ephraim). Often they even give us the numbers involved. For example, Barak went down from Mount Tabor with 10,000 men following him. Gideon whittled his army down to 300 at the Lord’s command. The elders of Gilead begged Jephthah to lead them “that we [the Gileadites] may fight the Ammonites”. Samson’s story is by far the longest of the bunch, and contains not a hint of anyone else fighting alongside him. If anything, I suggest these “similar passages” strongly suggest Samson acted alone. For one, after this incident, Samson went to stay in “the cleft of the rock of Etam”. How many accomplices do you figure he could fit in there?

We will confirm that with next week’s portion of the story, in which 3,000 men of Judah declare they were not responsible for Samson’s actions and cooperate with the Philistines in trying to capture him. Why should we suppose from such craven behavior that Samson’s courage had inspired other unnamed Judeans to join him in his conflicts? That spirit seems to be sadly lacking in Samson’s neighbors.

The Rock of Etam

The cleft of the rock of Etam, where Samson went to hide, was probably in the tribal territory of Simeon at the time. (Later passages put it in Judah, but the tribe of Simeon had become dispersed throughout Judah by then, so that would be a natural conflation.) Either way, Etam was most likely south of the area Samson had destroyed with the foxes.

We will find Samson there next week when we pick up our story.

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* Shamgar and his oxgoad initially sound a bit guerrilla-like, but the text credits him with saving Israel. It’s unlikely he accomplished anything so conclusive as driving out an oppressive neighbor nation with nothing more than a farmyard poker and 600 enemy deaths in a single engagement. As with Ehud, it’s probable Shamgar’s memorable skirmish inspired Israel to rally to him and drive out their oppressors, something Samson, for all his attested feats of strength, could not accomplish.