Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Judges · About this commentary
The Riddle at Timnah
Judges 14:1-20
1 Samson went down to Timnah, and saw a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines. · WEB
Samson's story opens with the verb that will run it — he saw — and a wedding that ends with thirty dead men and a wife given away.
Samson went down to Timnah, and saw a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines Judges 14:1.
The first recorded act of the consecrated man is seeing, and saw is the verb that will drive his whole story — a woman at Timnah here, a prostitute at Gaza Judges 16:1, and Delilah in the valley Judges 16:4. His demand strips the marriage conventions to one criterion: get her for me, for she pleases me well Judges 14:3 — literally, she is right in my eyes. In the book whose closing verdict is that everyone did what was right in his own eyes Judges 21:25, Samson is the refrain made flesh: the deliverer himself lives by the nation's disease.
His parents object on covenant grounds — the uncircumcised Philistines Judges 14:3 Deuteronomy 7:3 — and are overruled. Then the narrator lifts the curtain: his father and his mother didn't know that it was of Yahweh; for he sought an occasion against the Philistines Judges 14:4. The sentence must be read carefully. It does not make God the author of Samson's appetite; it says God was steering even this toward the commission Samson was neglecting. A deliverer who will not seek occasion against the oppressor has occasion sought through him — providence working by a man's faults where it cannot work by his obedience.
Yahweh's Spirit came mightily on him, and he tore him as he would have torn a young goat with his bare hands Judges 14:6.
The lion in the vineyards of Timnah — and the detail of vineyards is quietly pointed, the one place a lifelong Nazirite has no business walking Numbers 6:3–4. Later he returns and finds bees and honey in the carcass, took it into his hands, and went on, eating as he went Judges 14:8–9 — a Nazirite scraping food out of a corpse, the vow's no-contact-with-the-dead term spent without a word said Numbers 6:6. He gives some to his parents and does not tell them where it came from, which shows he knew. First mark down; the grape-feast and the hair will follow.
"Out of the eater came out food. Out of the strong came out sweetness" Judges 14:14.
The riddle is a private joke wagered for thirty changes of clothing, and it is unanswerable by design — no one saw the lion. The companions cannot solve it, so they break the woman: entice your husband... lest we burn you and your father's house with fire Judges 14:15. Threatened with burning, she weeps through the feast until Samson yields the secret, and the men of the city answer on the seventh day in a mocking couplet of their own Judges 14:18. His retort — if you hadn't plowed with my heifer — says he knows exactly how they got it.
Yahweh's Spirit came mightily on him, and he went down to Ashkelon and struck thirty men of them Judges 14:19.
The debt is paid with plundered clothing from thirty dead Philistines in another city — the Spirit's power spent settling a gambling loss, which is the Samson pattern established in one chapter: divine strength, private grievances. He storms home; the bride is given to his best man Judges 14:20; and the occasion against the Philistines Judges 14:4 now has its fuse lit, because he will come back.
held with reason What this mark means