Judges 14 – Study
For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each passage has a four-Part approach to help you take in and think further about what you have read.
Passage: Jud 14:1-20
1 Samson went down to Timnah and saw there a young Philistine woman. 2 When he returned, he said to his father and mother, ‘I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah; now get her for me as my wife.’
3 His father and mother replied, ‘Isn’t there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife?’
But Samson said to his father, ‘Get her for me. She’s the right one for me.’ 4 (His parents did not know that this was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over Israel.)
5 Samson went down to Timnah together with his father and mother. As they approached the vineyards of Timnah, suddenly a young lion came roaring towards him. 6 The Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him so that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat. But he told neither his father nor his mother what he had done. 7 Then he went down and talked with the woman, and he liked her.
8 Some time later, when he went back to marry her, he turned aside to look at the lion’s carcass, and in it he saw a swarm of bees and some honey. 9 He scooped out the honey with his hands and ate as he went along. When he rejoined his parents, he gave them some, and they too ate it. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the lion’s carcass.
10 Now his father went down to see the woman. And there Samson held a feast, as was customary for young men. 11 When the people saw him, they chose thirty men to be his companions.
12 ‘Let me tell you a riddle,’ Samson said to them. ‘If you can give me the answer within the seven days of the feast, I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes. 13 If you can’t tell me the answer, you must give me thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes.’
‘Tell us your riddle,’ they said. ‘Let’s hear it.’
14 He replied,
‘Out of the eater, something to eat;
out of the strong, something sweet.’
For three days they could not give the answer.
15 On the fourth day, they said to Samson’s wife, ‘Coax your husband into explaining the riddle for us, or we will burn you and your father’s household to death. Did you invite us here to steal our property?’
16 Then Samson’s wife threw herself on him, sobbing, ‘You hate me! You don’t really love me. You’ve given my people a riddle, but you haven’t told me the answer.’
‘I haven’t even explained it to my father or mother,’ he replied, ‘so why should I explain it to you?’ 17 She cried the whole seven days of the feast. So on the seventh day he finally told her, because she continued to press him. She in turn explained the riddle to her people.
18 Before sunset on the seventh day the men of the town said to him,
‘What is sweeter than honey?
What is stronger than a lion?’
Samson said to them,
‘If you had not ploughed with my heifer,
you would not have solved my riddle.’
19 Then the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him. He went down to Ashkelon, struck down thirty of their men, stripped them of everything and gave their clothes to those who had explained the riddle. Burning with anger, he returned to his father’s home. 20 And Samson’s wife was given to one of his companions who had attended him at the feast.
A. Find Out:
- What did Samson demand that upset his parents? v.1-4
- What happened on the way to Timnah? v.5-7
- What did he see when he went back some time later? v.8,9
- How did he challenge the Philistines? v.10-14
- How did they seek to defeat him? v.15-18
- So what did he do in his anger and what resulted? v.19,20
B. Think:
- How is Samson shown to be foolishly wilful at the outset?
- What effect did the Spirit of God have on him?
- Why did all this happen?
C. Comment:
This is a story about a man that God is using without him being aware of it. It seems that the cycle is not following its usual course and Israel have not been crying out to the Lord. Indeed, if Samson’s behaviour is anything to go by, they are learning to live with the world.
Samson is clearly a wilful young man, not overly concerned with God or His will. He wants a wife from the Philistines and badgers his parents to consent to this. He marries her and when his parents come for the wedding feast, as was the custom, Samson provokes the Philistines with a riddle based on the lion that he had previously killed and whose carcass had become a home for a beehive with its honey.
The Philistines can’t cope with this and put pressure on his new wife who puts pressure on him, so he tells her, and she tells them. The end result is that Samson realises what has happened and killed 30 of their men and abandons his new wife. Discord has been sown between Samson and the Philistines to replace the wrong peace between God’s holy people and the idol-worshipping pagans. And how has God done this? He’s simply used the worldly attitudes of Samson, given him a boost of strength along the way, and let the two parties argue and then fight. If that’s the only way to get His people to rise up and cast off the oppressors, He will do it.
D. Application:
- Beware wrong attitudes you haven’t dealt with. They’ll backfire!
- God calls us to be holy/distinct from a godly & unrighteous world.