Judges 15:16

16. Samson said Samson’s words form a short poetical distich, and contain, in the Hebrew, a noticeable paronomasia, which may be thus presented in English:

With a jawbone of the ass, a mass, two masses, With a jawbone of the ass have I slain a thousand men.

It deserves notice, also, that the Hebrew word for mass or heaps is the same as that for ass and the word for thousand means also an ox; so that a further idea of Samson’s pun may be given by rendering:

With a jawbone of the ass, an ass, two asses, With a jawbone of the ass have I slain an ox of men.

This saying, like the method devised to burn the Philistines’ corn, shows us the extent of Samson’s humour. “His most valiant, his most cruel actions, are done with a smile on his face and a jest in his mouth. It relieves his character from the sternness of Phenician fanaticism. As a peal of hearty laughter often breaks in upon the despondency of individual sorrow, so the joviality of Samson becomes a pledge of the revival of the greatness of his nation. The whole point of the massacre of the thousand Philistines lies in the cleverness with which their clumsy triumph is suddenly turned into discomfiture; and their discomfiture is celebrated by the punning turn of the hero, not forgotten even in the exultation or the weariness of victory.” Stanley.