Judges 15:4

SAMSON'S REVENGE

"And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between every two tails. And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the olive yards. Then the Philistines said, Who hath done this? And they said, Samson the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he hath taken his wife and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire. And Samson said unto them, If ye do after this manner, surely I will be avenged of you, and after that I will cease. And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock of Elam."

Hervey tells us that, "Many cavils have been directed against thee truth of this paragraph, but without the slightest reason."[3]

"The wheat-fields of that section of Palestine extended continuously for thirty miles,"[4] and the fire that ensued was similar to those devastating fires seen occasionally in California, where hundreds of homes and everything else are destroyed. How silly is the critical complaint that the green olive trees would not burn!

Another cavil regards the "foxes." Of course, foxes do not run in packs, so Samson could NOT have allegedly caught as many as three hundred of them! To begin with, Keil explained that, "The Hebrew word here is [~shu`alim], which means `jackals,' an animal that resembles foxes and is classed among the foxes even by Arabs of the present day."[5] "In the Egyptian dialect, the classical name of the fox is given exclusively as jackal."[6] Whichever animal it was, a man like Samson would have caught three hundred of them, exactly as the text says. Besides that, Samson could easily have employed willing fellow-Israelites to help him with the whole project.

"The Philistines ... burnt her and her father with fire" (Judges 15:6). The tragic fate which Samson's wife had sought to avoid by her base treachery against her husband came upon her anyway, reminding us of a similar thing in the N.T. The chief priests of Israel said of Christ, "If we let him alone, all men will believe on him; and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation" (John 11:48), whereupon Caiaphas said, (and I paraphrase his words), "You idiots, don't you know what to do? We shall kill him, for it is better for one man to die than for the nation to perish." Of course, it was that very deed that resulted in the wicked priests' loss of their place, and the Romans took away their nation also!

It is not exactly clear what the purpose of the Philistines was in burning Samson's wife and her family with fire. To us, it seems quite unlikely that they were taking Samson's part and executing a penalty provoked by their treatment of Samson. It seems rather, that they simply BLAMED the Timnathite family for being the original cause of the firing of the grain fields, and treated them accordingly. In any case, Samson did not appreciate what they did, and proceeded to slaughter a great number of them. His immediate retirement to the cleft in the rock of Elam indicates that he probably thought the incident was concluded. He had promised "to cease" when his revenge was complete.

However, feuds never "cease" when one side has completed its revenge. They go on and on, as the sequel indicates.

"If ye do after this manner, I will be avenged ... then I will cease" (Judges 15:7). See the comment in the paragraph above.

"He smote them hip and thigh" (Judges 15:8). "This is a proverbial expression for a cruel, unsparing slaughter."[7]

"And he dwelt in the cleft of the rock of Elam" (Judges 15:8). "This was probably located near the town of Elam in Judah, about two miles southwest of Bethlehem."[8] The reference seems to be to a cave. Moore stated that, "The rock of Elam is an almost vertical cliff, with a large cave, very difficult, and even dangerous, of access."[9] No doubt Samson thought that he had concluded the feud in such a location. The threat of war changed the situation.