Judges 15

Today’s Passage: Judges 15

Samson comes back to claim his wife and finds she has been given to another man, and from that spark the whole chapter catches fire. He ties torches to the tails of foxes and burns the Philistine harvest to the ground. They answer by burning his wife and her father to death. He answers that with a great slaughter, and then hides in a cave. When the Philistines march into Judah to arrest him, his own countrymen bind him with new ropes and hand him over rather than defend him. Then the Spirit of the LORD rushes upon him, the ropes fall away like scorched thread, and with the jawbone of a donkey he strikes down a thousand men. And when it is over, this strong man is undone by something as ordinary as thirst, and for the first time in the chapter he actually calls out to God, who opens the ground and gives him water. It is a story of vengeance answering vengeance, and of grace meeting a flawed deliverer at the exact end of his strength.

As you read, hold this: The spiral of revenge only exhausts a man. God still answers the moment he finally calls.

Judges 15:1–3 (BSB)

¹ Later on, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat and went to visit his wife. “I want to go to my wife in her room,” he said. But her father would not let him enter.

² “I was sure that you thoroughly hated her,” said her father, “so I gave her to one of the men who accompanied you. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her instead.”

³ Samson said to them, “This time I will be blameless in doing harm to the Philistines.”

Samson comes back at wheat harvest with a young goat, the ordinary gift of a man returning to his wife, only to be told at the door that she is no longer his. The father’s excuse is almost casual, and his offer of the younger sister treats a marriage like a trade of livestock. There is real wrong done to Samson here, and the story does not pretend otherwise. But watch the word he reaches for in reply. He does not grieve, and he does not walk away. He announces that this time he will be blameless, that whatever he now does to the Philistines will be justified. That is the language a heart uses when it has already decided on revenge and only wants permission. From this point on, everyone in the chapter will be able to say they were merely paying back what was done to them, and no one will be able to say where it stops.

Judges 15:4–6 (BSB)

⁴ Then Samson went out and caught three hundred foxes. And he took torches, turned the foxes tail-to-tail, and fastened a torch between each pair of tails.

⁵ Then he lit the torches and released the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines, burning up the piles of grain and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and olive groves.

⁶ “Who did this?” the Philistines demanded. “It was Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite,” they were told. “For his wife was given to his companion.” So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father to death.

The scheme is grotesque and strangely clever at once, and it lands where a farming people feels it most: the standing grain, the piles already gathered, the vineyards and the olive groves, a whole season’s food and livelihood set ablaze in an afternoon. But notice how quickly the revenge turns and bites the very people it began with. The Philistines ask who did this, and the answer traces the whole quarrel back to a marriage and a broken promise, and so they burn the woman and her father to death. The fire Samson started to punish them has now consumed the very wife whose loss set him off. This is exactly how the spiral works. Each stroke is meant to settle the account, and each one only opens a larger one, and people who had nothing to do with the first offense are the ones who pay.

Judges 15:7–8 (BSB)

⁷ And Samson told them, “Because you have done this, I will not rest until I have taken vengeance upon you.”

⁸ And he struck them ruthlessly with a great slaughter, and then went down and stayed in the cave at the rock of Etam.

Hear the vow he makes: he will not rest until he has taken his vengeance. It is the promise revenge always makes and never keeps, because there is no amount of paying back that finally lets the heart lie down. He strikes them ruthlessly, and then, having emptied himself into the slaughter, he goes down and hides in a cleft of rock. There is something telling in that retreat. The man who cannot stop taking vengeance also has nowhere to go afterward but a cave. Violence had not brought him rest; it had only driven him into hiding.

Judges 15:9–11 (BSB)

⁹ Then the Philistines went up, camped in Judah, and deployed themselves near the town of Lehi.

¹⁰ “Why have you attacked us?” said the men of Judah. The Philistines replied, “We have come to arrest Samson and pay him back for what he has done to us.”

¹¹ In response, three thousand men of Judah went to the cave at the rock of Etam, and they asked Samson, “Do you not realize that the Philistines rule over us? What have you done to us?” “I have done to them what they did to me,” he replied.

Now the sad state of Israel comes fully into view. Three thousand men of Judah muster, not against the enemy camped on their soil, but against the one man God raised up to fight for them. Their question to him is the question of a people who have made their peace with slavery: do you not realize the Philistines rule over us? They are frightened of losing the little they have, and would rather bind their own deliverer than risk a fight for their freedom. And Samson’s answer shows he has learned nothing about the trap he is in. “I have done to them what they did to me,” he says, which is the whole creed of revenge in a single sentence. Everyone in this chapter is only doing back what was done to them, and that is precisely why the killing never ends.

Judges 15:12–13 (BSB)

¹² But they said to him, “We have come down to arrest you and hand you over to the Philistines.” Samson replied, “Swear to me that you will not kill me yourselves.”

¹³ “No,” they answered, “we will not kill you, but we will tie you up securely and hand you over to them.” So they bound him with two new ropes and led him up from the rock.

There is a strange restraint in Samson here. He, who could surely have fought his own countrymen, instead lets himself be bound, asking only that they not be the ones to kill him. He submits to two new ropes and is led up from the rock like a prisoner delivered by his own kin. The men of Judah imagine they are keeping the peace, buying safety by handing over the troublemaker. What they cannot see is what the reader is about to see: that God is not finished with this bound and betrayed man, and that the ropes meant to end the trouble are about to become the setting for a rescue.

Judges 15:14–17 (BSB)

¹⁴ When Samson arrived in Lehi, the Philistines came out shouting against him. And the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him. The ropes on his arms became like burnt flax, and the bonds broke loose from his hands.

¹⁵ He found the fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and struck down a thousand men.

¹⁶ Then Samson said: “With the jawbone of a donkey I have piled them into heaps. With the jawbone of a donkey I have slain a thousand men.”

¹⁷ And when Samson had finished speaking, he cast the jawbone from his hand; and he named that place Ramath-lehi.

The Philistines rush out shouting in triumph over a man already tied and delivered, and in that moment the Spirit of the LORD rushes upon him, and the new ropes on his arms turn to burnt flax and simply fall away. That is the true source of everything Samson has ever done; his strength was never his own, but God’s Spirit at work through him. He snatches up a jawbone lying in the field and strikes down a thousand men. And then, standing among the heaps of the dead, he makes a little rhyming boast: with the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps. It is a victory chant with God almost entirely left out of it. The Spirit did the delivering, and the deliverer takes the song for himself, naming the hill for his own weapon. Even God’s clearest work in us can be received with a boast rather than a thanks, and Samson names the place for the jawbone before he ever names the LORD who freed his hands.

Judges 15:18 (BSB)

¹⁸ And being very thirsty, Samson cried out to the LORD, “You have accomplished this great deliverance through Your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”

And now the strong man is brought down by the smallest and most human thing in the whole chapter: he is thirsty. He has burned harvests, killed thousands, broken ropes, and made his boast, and none of it can produce a single cup of water. Notice what this exhaustion finally does. For the first time in two chapters, Samson actually cries out to the LORD. There is real theology buried in his desperate words, even mixed with complaint. He now confesses that it was God, not the jawbone, who “accomplished this great deliverance,” and he calls himself God’s servant. It often takes the end of our own strength to make us pray, and it is worth seeing that God had to let a man who could kill a thousand grow too weak to lift a cup before that man would look up and call Him Lord.

Judges 15:19 (BSB)

¹⁹ So God opened up the hollow place in Lehi, and water came out of it. When Samson drank, his strength returned, and he was revived. That is why he named it En-hakkore, and it remains in Lehi to this day.

Here is the quiet center of the whole story. Samson has done nothing to deserve this. He has been vengeful, self-absorbed, and slow to thank the God who keeps rescuing him, and the very first time he honestly calls out, God answers, opening the ground so that water gushes up in that dry place. He drinks, and his strength returns, and he is revived. And this time, unlike the hill he named for his jawbone, he names the spring for the prayer: En-hakkore, the spring of the one who called (קָרָא) qara, pronounced kah-RAH. Strong's H7121, to call, call out, proclaim, read aloud. The name Samson gives the spring, En-hakkore, means “the spring of the one who called,” and this is the verb hidden inside it: to call, to cry out, to call upon a name. It is the same word for calling on the LORD in prayer all through the Old Testament, the cry of someone who has run out of every other option and turns at last to God. The whole chapter has been full of Samson doing, and the one thing that finally opens heaven is not another mighty deed but this: he called. Scripture will not let the miracle be remembered by the strength of the man; it names the place for his cry. When we have nothing left to offer but the calling itself, that turns out to be enough, because the God who hears is faithful. . That is the name that ought to be carved over the whole chapter. Not the harvest he burned, not the thousand he slew, but the moment a flawed man finally called and a gracious God answered. Grace like that is not earned by the strong; it is poured out for the thirsty who ask.

Judges 15:20 (BSB)

²⁰ And Samson judged Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.

The chapter closes on a strangely steady note after all its fire and slaughter: Samson judged Israel for twenty years. For two decades this flawed, impulsive man stood as God’s chosen deliverer for a people who could barely be bothered to want deliverance. It is not a tidy summary of a righteous life, and Scripture will go on to show us just how far his weaknesses ran. But it is an honest witness to how patiently God works through imperfect people over long stretches of time. The Lord did not wait for a flawless deliverer before beginning to save His people. He worked, year after year, through the one He had.