The story of Samson just gets more and more ridiculous, grotesque, and morally depraved. He may be a prototype for comic book superheroes -- he has superhuman powers -- but he's actually on the supervillain side of the story. However, it's what God wants.
15 Later on, at the time of wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat and went to visit his wife. He said, “I’m going to my wife’s room.” But her father would not let him go in.
2 “I was so sure you hated her,” he said, “that I gave her to your companion. Isn’t her younger sister more attractive? Take her instead.”
3 Samson said to them, “This time I have a right to get even with the Philistines; I will really harm them.” 4 So he went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs. He then fastened a torch to every pair of tails, 5 lit the torches and let the foxes loose in the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned up the shocks and standing grain, together with the vineyards and olive groves.
Evidently the Canaan SPCA hadn't been founded yet. Note once again that the father gets to decide who boinks his daughters -- nobody asks their opinion.
6 When the Philistines asked, “Who did this?” they were told, “Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law, because his wife was given to his companion.”
So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father to death.
I'm afraid I don't get the logic of this. Why did they burn the wife and father?
7 Samson said to them, “Since you’ve acted like this, I swear that I won’t stop until I get my revenge on you.” 8 He attacked them viciously and slaughtered many of them. Then he went down and stayed in a cave in the rock of Etam.
9 The Philistines went up and camped in Judah, spreading out near Lehi. 10 The people of Judah asked, “Why have you come to fight us?”
“We have come to take Samson prisoner,” they answered, “to do to him as he did to us.”
11 Then three thousand men from Judah went down to the cave in the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Don’t you realize that the Philistines are rulers over us? What have you done to us?”
He answered, “I merely did to them what they did to me.”
Err, no. What they did to you was give your wife to another dude. Actually not even "they," but just your father-in-law. What you did to them was burn all their crops and murder a whole bunch of them. Not really the same thing.
12 They said to him, “We’ve come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.”
Samson said, “Swear to me that you won’t kill me yourselves.”
13 “Agreed,” they answered. “We will only tie you up and hand you over to them. We will not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes and led him up from the rock. 14 As he approached Lehi, the Philistines came toward him shouting. The Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him. The ropes on his arms became like charred flax, and the bindings dropped from his hands. 15 Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey, he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men.
Uhmm, while he was busy killing one guy with the jawbone of an ass, why didn't the rest of them do something like, I dunno, stab him with spears or cut off his head with a sword or something? Seems kind of implausible.
16 Then Samson said,
“With a donkey’s jawbone
I have made donkeys of them.[a]
With a donkey’s jawbone
I have killed a thousand men.”17 When he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone; and the place was called Ramath Lehi.[b]
18 Because he was very thirsty, he cried out to the Lord, “You have given your servant this great victory. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19 Then God opened up the hollow place in Lehi, and water came out of it. When Samson drank, his strength returned and he revived. So the spring was called En Hakkore,[c] and it is still there in Lehi.
20 Samson led[d] Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.
So Samson is leading Israel, but evidently in spite of all the guys he's killed, the Philistines are still in charge, and apparently they're willing to forgive and forget. Yeah, this story makes total sense.
Footnotes
- Judges 15:16 Or made a heap or two; the Hebrew for donkey sounds like the Hebrew for heap.
- Judges 15:17 Ramath Lehi means jawbone hill.
- Judges 15:19 En Hakkore means caller’s spring.
- Judges 15:20 Traditionally judged
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