Chapter 15

Samson goes back to see his wife.  (not ex- as far as he was concerned).  He intends to sleep with her it seems.  Her father refuses, tells Samson his wife has been given to the best man, but that he can have her younger sister.  But Samson wants the older sister, after all, it was his attraction to her that started this whole sequence.  He is so angry at being denied the older sister, and learning that in fact she's now another man's wife, that in his anger, he ties the tails of 300 foxes together in pairs, puts a torch with each pair and sets them free in the ripe wheat.  All the standing wheat, stacked wheat and the olive grove burn down. This isn't really vengeance, this is just out and out anger.  MSB note says it must have taken Samson a long time to catch so many foxes.  He'd have had to feed and water them until he caught so many, and all just so he could turn them loose with torches in their tails.  His anger - his brooding anger, smoldered all that time.  Samson was a hater.  Yet we know that God was using him to throw off the Philistine oppression.  Just as Jephthah had a lot of faults but was used by God, so Samson has many flaws.  The name Donald Trump just popped into my head.  Wouldn't that be interesting if Trump is like a Samson, raised up with all his personal flaws and problems to throw off the corruption that has become our government.

The Philistines find out who did it, and instead of going after Samson, they burn up Samson's new father-in-law and his wife that's been given to another.  They just burn them with fire.  So now Samson is mad again.  They have killed his "wife" - he is apparently quite obsessed - and he swears that he's going to avenge them, and then he will stop this spiral of violence.  It says he "struck them hip and thigh with a great blow".  NASB translates it "ruthlessly with a great slaughter".   Samson seems to go into hiding.  Here is the wording:

8 And he struck them hip and thigh with a great blow, and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam. [Jdg 15:8 ESV]

So the Philistines send an army to Judah to retrieve Samson.  They do some raiding and looting while there, and this becomes a concern to the men of Judah.  They don't try to defend themselves at all, but ask their "rulers" why they are being treated this way.  The Philistines say they are there to get Samson.  Judah sends 3000 men to Etam, where Samson went after the slaughter, to accuse him of causing them lots of problems.  Three thousand men and they go to get Samson and turn him over, rather than to fight for themselves.  That seems like a lot of guys.  Brave men, as is usual in such circumstances.  Samson makes them promise they won't attack him themselves, and when they agree, he lets them tie him up and take him to the Philistines.

The Spirit of the Lord rushes on him, and he breaks his bonds, picks up the jawbone of an ass, and kills 1000 Philistines all by his lonesome.  Only God's power could do such a thing.

Samson judges Israel in the days of the Philistines for 20 years.