When We Turn on One Another

Judges 15:9-20

⁹ Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah and made a raid on Lehi. ¹⁰ And the men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” They said, “We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he did to us.” ¹¹ Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” And he said to them, “As they did to me, so have I done to them.” ¹² And they said to him, “We have come down to bind you, that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines.” And Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.” ¹³ They said to him, “No; we will only bind you and give you into their hands. We will surely not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. ¹⁴ When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. Then the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. ¹⁵ And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, and with it he struck 1,000 men. ¹⁶ And Samson said,

“With the jawbone of a donkey,

heaps upon heaps,

with the jawbone of a donkey

have I struck down a thousand men.”

¹⁷ As soon as he had finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone out of his hand. And that place was called Ramath-lehi. ¹⁸ And he was very thirsty, and he called upon the Lord and said, “You have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant, and shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” ¹⁹ And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it. And when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore the name of it was called En-hakkore; it is at Lehi to this day. ²⁰ And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.

It’s one thing to turn on your enemy and another completely to turn on your own countrymen. I’m continually amazed at how the Scriptures mirror what is happening now, several thousand years after the words were written. By this point in his story, Samson has a reputation for violence and both the Philistines and his own people fear him. The men of Judah go to him with a contingent of 3,000 men! The fear is real but slightly puzzling for we never see Samson turn on his own people.

One can only wonder what Samson was thinking as he is led bound into the Philistine camp to be handed over to the enemy. He has already killed several hundred Philistines and they were looking for revenge. Had I been a Judean, I would have feared that the Philistines would turn on me as well after they had dispatched Samson. But God had other plans and uses this shameful act by his Judean brothers to exact even more punishment upon the Philistines. Despite the people’s apathy and Samson’s moral weakness, God kept His promise to the chosen nation. His plan of deliverance is still in place.

After his victory, Samson crafts a poem that is incredibly clever in the Hebrew. The cleanest translation comes from Moffat. “With the jawbone of an ass I have piled them in a mass.” Not being a Hebrew scholar, I can only take in what those who possess this knowledge say, but apparently there is quite a clever usage of the Hebrew here.

After the killing was over, Samson uttered a two-line poem full of clever word play. The words donkey, red colored, and heap are all spelled with the same Hebrew letters. In a few words Samson was saying much: “With the fresh, blood-red bone of a red-colored donkey, there is a heap of red [that is, bloody] donkey-men, yes, two red heaps of red [bloody] donkey-men! With the fresh, blood-red bone of a red-colored donkey, I cut down one thousand men!”

Lawrenz, J. C. (1997). Judges, Ruth (pp. 163–164). Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Pub. House.

After his victory, we find Samson calling on the Lord for the first time in his story and that is for a drink of water. The defeat of 1,000 men with the jawbone of a donkey has left him weary and thirsty. At least with this rather demanding prayer we find that he is willing to seek the Lord – finally.

I am disappointed when I read that Samson’s own people chose to turn him over to their common enemy. When our fears run our lives, we are in grave danger. Fear is a powerful motivator and can lead us to things that are unwise and lacking in faith. In fact, faith is never born from a fearful place. But, God is not stymied by our fear. He moved through Samson (who didn’t seem to be afraid) and showed the people of Judah that fear had no place in this fight. The reward for this faith was 20 years of peace under Samson. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that.