Judges 14:20-15:13
Samson fulfilled his promise of supplying thirty changes of raiment to those who told his riddle, by killing thirty Philistines to get them. It is well to notice here that when the world leads the believer away, they, too, have to suffer in the government of God. It is, as we have remarked, very wrong for a believer to marry an unbeliever (2 Cor. 6:14), but when an unbeliever lures a believer away, God deals with the unbeliever too. God has said “He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of His eye.” Zech. 2:8.
And what of this unhappy marriage? After the seven days of the feast were ended, Samson did not get his wife at all, and when he returned for her he found his father-in-law had given her to his companion. Oh, what sorrows there are in the path of disobedience to God, and yet how slow we are to learn. All this ought to have been a voice to Samson, but he did not listen. Although God overruled this sad and unhappy circumstance, as He often does, Samson did not appear to learn anything from it. And how often we see this even today. Some dear young believer comes to the point of being almost married to an unbeliever, and God intervenes in His faithfulness and breaks it up. Then, instead of taking it from the Lord, the believer either tries to get together again with his friend, or finds another unbeliever to go with, as poor Samson did in the next chapter.
We find, however, that God was overruling all this, and using Samson to deal with the Philistines, the enemies of God’s people. And so Samson caught three hundred foxes, put a firebrand between their tails, and let them loose in the Philistine’s wheatfields, thus destroying their crops. The Philistines, realizing the wrong that had been done to Samson by his father-in-law, then burned his wife who had been given to another man, and also her father, with fire.
Samson was still not satisfied, however, and he went out to battle and killed a great number of Philistines. God was thus using him as the “judge” upon these enemies of the Lord. All this made the Philistines very angry, and they gathered together to battle against the men of Judah. The men of Judah asked them why they had come to fight against them, and the Philistines replied that they wanted to bind Samson because of what he had done. When we realize that the children of Israel were in bondage to the Philistines, we would think they would have been glad of a fearless deliverer, but they were not. Many of God’s children fear to do anything that excites the hatred of the world, especially the religious world (as typified in the Philistines). They want peace at any price. And what is worse still they will actually turn against those who, because of faithfulness to God, stir up the world’s enmity. They would rather try to work with the world, than take a separate or Nazarite path, like Samson.
It is not surprising, therefore, to find the men of Judah, the very people of God, coming up to the top of the rock Etam to bind Samson and deliver him over to the Philistines. They said, “Knowest thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us?” Samson was not afraid, for he did not own them as rulers over God’s people, but undoubtedly he was grieved that the men of Judah should turn against him and choose the rule of the Philistines instead.
ML 12/06/1953