Do you like riddles? I never could guess them myself, but some people can, and are very fond of them.
Here is one for you to try:— “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.”
As I am pretty sure you will not be able to unravel it, unless you have heard it before, I will tell you what put it into Sampson’s mind, for he it was who made this riddle.
Sampson was on his way to a city of the Philistines, called Timnath, to get a wife, when a young lion met him, and roared against him. He had no weapon in his hand, but the spirit of the Lord came upon, him and he tore the lion as he might have torn a kid.
But he was not vain on account of his strength, so he told no one what he had done, not even his father or his mother, but went on quietly to see the person he wanted to marry, and he liked her very much.
After a while he went down again to bring her to his own home, and his father and mother went with him. On the way he turned aside to see the dead lion, and found that a swarm of bees had settled in the carcass, and made honey there. He took of the honey and went on, eating it, and though he gave some to his father and mother, he did not tell them where it came from.
When they came to Timnath, Samp son made a feast, for that was the custom. And the people brought thirty young men to be with him. It was to them that Sampson proposed this strange riddle, and he bargained with them that if they could not tell it, they were to give him thirty sheets and thirty changes of raiment, but if they could, he was to give as many to them.
The feast lasted seven days, and they could not in three days expound the riddle. At last on the seventh day they said to Sampson’s wife. ‘“You have just brought us here to take our things, if you do not find out your husband’s riddle and tell us, we will burn you and Your father’s house with fire.”
So the woman teased him to tell her. But he said, “Behold I have not told it my father nor my mother, and shall I tell it thee?” However, she kept on coaxing him, until at last he told her,’ and then she told her own people, and they gave the answer, which you may read in Judges 14:1818And the men of the city said unto him on the seventh day before the sun went down, What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion? And he said unto them, If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle. (Judges 14:18); “What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?”
And what, dear children, is stronger, than that roaring lion, Satan? And what is sweeter than the fruits of the victory the Lord Jesus has won over him by His death on the cross?
Messages of God’s Love 2/3/1907