Chapter 98. Judges 15. Samson and the Philistines.
ALTHOUGH Samson had left Timnath in great anger, and gone back to his father’s house, he soon wished to see his wife again. So he took a kid as a present to her, and went to her father’s house. It was then wheat harvest time. But when he reached the house, his father-in-law would not let him see her, and said to him: I really thought that you hated her, therefore, I gave her to thy companion; but now her younger sister is fairer than she, marry this one instead of her.
Samson’s anger was again aroused and he sought to be revenged on the Philistines. He went to the woods and caught three hundred jackals and tied them in couples, tail to tail, put a fire brand between the two tails and let them go among the corn in the. fields. Of course, the corn was burnt down to the ground, with the vineyards and the olives.
Then the Philistines inquired who had done that, and when they heard it was Samson, because his wife had been taken from him, they went and took his father-in-law and his wife and burnt them alive. Samson, at this, was still more angry, and said to them. If this is the way you will act, then surely I shall avenge myself upon you, and after that, I will cease. And he struck them right and left, and broke arms and legs. Then he went to dwell in a cave of the rock Etam.
Then the Philistines gathered themselves together, and went up to Judah and encamped against them at Lehi. The men of Judah had no mind to fight their oppressors. Not only had they not cried to God to deliver them out of their hands, but they did not even wish to be delivered. How low they had sunken! They inquired of the Philistines why they had come against them. When the answer came, “To bind Samson are we come up, to do to him as he has done to us,” three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave in the rock Etam, and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What is this that thou hast done unto us?” Samson answered, “As they did unto me, so have I done unto them.” Then his brethren, the men of Judah, said: “We are come down to bind thee, that we may deliver thee into the hand of the Philistines.” Samson made them promise they would not kill him, but only take him prisoner, and deliver him into the hands of the Philistines. He let them bind him with two new ropes, and take him away from the cave. He, went with them to Lehi, where the Philistines were encamped. When the latter saw him, they shouted against him. But the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and the cords that bound him were snapped as if burnt with fire, by his great strength. Then picking up a jawbone of an ass, he slew one thousand of the Philistines.
After the slaughter, Samson was very thirsty, and he cried to God and thanked Him for his deliverance, and asked for water. God heard him, and answered him by cleaving the hollow rock at Lehi (New Trans.), and water came out, He drank and was revived, and in thankfulness, called that place “En-hakkore,” meaning, “The spring of him who calls.” During twenty years, Samson ruled Israel. That was why God raised him up that he might deliver Israel from the Philistines. What might he not have done with the great strength God gave him, if he had lived in obedience to God! And so it is, too, with the child of God, not that we have strength in ourselves to please God, or to resist the temptations Satan places on our paths, but if we trust Him, He will give us, not as to Samson, the great bodily strength perhaps, but the moral power to do His will and work for Him and those who love Him in a world which hates Him. “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” (Phil. 4:1313I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. (Philippians 4:13).)
ML 08/04/1912