Judges 14:8

8. After a time he returned to take her That is, to consummate the marriage. Several months, often a year, elapsed between the betrothal and the wedding.

A swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion “This, it must be confessed,” says Dr. Thomson, “is an extraordinary occurrence. The word for bees is the Arabic for hornets, and these we know are very fond of flesh, and devour it with the greatest avidity. I have myself seen a swarm of hornets build their comb in the skull of a dead camel, and this would incline me to believe that it was really our debabir hornets that had settled in the carcass of Samson’s lion, if it were known that they manufactured honey enough to meet the demands of the story. However, we find that not long after this bees were so abundant in a wood at no great distance from this spot that the honey dropped down from the trees on the ground, (1 Samuel 14:26;) and I have explored densely-wooded gorges on Hermon and southern Lebanon where wild bees are still found, both in trees and in clefts of the rocks. It keeps up the verisimilitude of the narrative that these are just the places where wild beasts still abound, and though bees ordinarily avoid dead carcasses, it is possible that they on this occasion selected that of the lion for their hive.” Rosenmuller in his “Bible Archaeology” says: “In the desert of Arabia the heat of a sultry season will often dry up all the moisture of men or camels that have fallen dead, within twenty-four hours of their decease, without their passing into a state of decomposition and putrefaction, so that they remain for a long time like mummies, without change and without stench.” In such a case it would be very possible and likely that a swarm of bees would take up their abode in what more resembled a crust of rock than a decayed carcass. Or we may suppose that the carcass had become a dry and naked skeleton, and that some sort of wild bees had formed their nest and combs within it. On this point we may well add the weighty testimony of Dr. Kitto: “In the East, vultures and insects, particularly numerous swarms of ants and these abound in vineyards will, in an astonishingly short time, clean completely out all the soft parts of any carcass, leaving the skeleton entire, covered by its integuments, for, the flesh having been picked out, the skin would not be rent and destroyed. All the softer parts being thus removed, the bones and skin will rapidly be deprived of all their moisture by the heat of the sun; and the skeleton, covered over with the dry parchment into which the skin has been turned, becomes a sweet and very convenient habitation, in which a swarm of bees would be very likely to settle, especially in a secluded spot, among the shrub-like vines. In the East, bees establish themselves in situations little thought of by us; many wild swarms, being left to find homes for themselves, fix in any hollow which seems to them suited to their wants.”