40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Judges 13:8-14:4 (Episode 212)

Episode Date: April 21, 2020

Manoah asks God to send the messenger back to speak with him. The messenger returns, and they quickly discover they have seen God. Samson is born, grows and is looking for a wife. And a pretty cool rabbit hole gets explored regarding Hagar and the name of God. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. while you're in the quarantine, you might have time to listen to things. Even though I've seen statistics, not our statistics per se, but nationwide or worldwide statistics that say podcasting numbers are a little bit down in the quarantine.

And I was trying to figure that out. I was like, really? That's odd. Now, our numbers, because you guys are the faithful, are not down. but overall uh over the podcasting industry they are down and then it occurred to me oh i know why that is people aren't commuting this is the problem people are not commuting to work and this is when most people listen to podcasts but not you guys you'll you'll listen no matter what so uh so thanks for that but uh if you're looking for other podcasts to listen to because maybe you're maybe you decided to do one of those home projects man i drove i drove by home

Depot just yesterday, Chad. That place was packed. There was no social distance. There's no way that those people were 10 feet apart or six feet apart or whatever. That parking lot was completely full. It was nice outside and everyone decided they were going to get that honeydew list done while they were in quarantine. And that's the way it's been going. Maybe that's you. Maybe you like planted a garden maybe you build a stand-up garden maybe it's time to build the shed whatever remodel the house you're gonna need some podcasts to listen to this one's not gonna be long enough it's only 40 minutes a week that's not enough you can't get anything done in 40 minutes go check out some of those other podcasts see if one of them suits your fancy but what

numbers are up everywhere are video numbers chad people uh when they're sitting around they don't want to just listen a lot of times they want to get their eyes involved they want to get more senses involved apparently we got you covered chad's doing a video a week now and if you haven't checked those out you should he's doing old he's doing the gospel through old testament eyes that's what he's doing and you can get those videos on facebook or you can just go over to youtube and watch those videos you can watch the new series that i did with scott keith and caleb keith on the form of concord and just out it's coming out now the first video is out and more videos are coming out. Chad Bird, myself, and Scott going over the Decalogue. I think we're

doing 11 different videos on the Decalogue. And it might be a little different than you think. We're not just, you know, just talking about here's what you should do and here's what you shouldn't do. But we're going all over the place in the Decalogue. So check those out. Those are actually, those two series are only available on YouTube. So if you're one of those people that's like, yeah, I'm really into watching content right now. I'm really into using my eyeballs right now and not just my ears because i don't i'm not on that commute anymore go to 1517 on youtube and uh hit subscribe and you will be at you'll have access to every video we've ever done well chad no events to talk about uh because we still don't know what's going on

no just get up in the morning drink coffee go to work in my study that's it that's about that's my events of the day yes yes it's very uneventful uh times that we're having here i i imagine this is going to result we'll see uh in a very packed 2021 because i feel like people are going to be ready to go yeah ready to hold events ready to to get out there and mix it up with people so we'll see i hope i hope that's the case uh just because even i who i'm used to being home Who doesn't mind being by themselves I'm like, it wouldn't kill me to be around some other people At this point

We're hoping We're obviously hoping that Here We Still Stand is a thing We're still holding out Alright Today We sort of just Touched on Samson a little bit

Not really Samson hardly at all Mostly Samson's mother And a messenger who's more than an angel last week. Now I think we're going to get right into the thick of it. Yeah, we are. We got through the first seven verses of Judges chapter 13, where we are introduced to the parents of soon-to-be-born Samson. We don't know his mom's name. For some reason, she is left anonymous. We do know his dad's name, Manoah, and we're going to hear a little bit more about him today. What we know so far is that the Philistines are the bad guys in

this particular story, bad guys being the current oppressors of Israel. You know, it kind of goes back and forth between different groups, but pretty much from, I think I mentioned this in the last podcast, pretty much from here all the way through the time of King David, the arch enemies of Israel, the ones that just kind of, you know, keep giving them problems are going to be the Philistines. And that's the situation that we're in now. In fact, it's been that way for about four decades. For the last 40 years, the Philistines have been oppressing the Israelites one way or another. But it seems as if, judging at least by the way that the story of Samson unfolds, it seems as if the Israelites and the Philistines have kind of come to a sort of a

peaceful coexistence, you might say. Because anytime that Samson causes problems in these stories with the philistines the israelites are like dude no just you know take it easy don't cause problems don't make waves so it seems as if the israelites have just kind of settled down into this uh this coexistence with with the philistines i mean samson so anyway samson definitely seems like a different kind of judge in the sense that he's he acts alone a lot uh Where the other judges, they show up and then they rally the people or some group of people and they go and take care of business. His is more sabotage and undercover of night going in. He's like a special forces guy that's going in there and just wreaking havoc all the time.

And his is sort of a prolonged thing, right? he's like chipping away uh at the philistines and and yeah he's he's not able to do this sort of thing where he just rallies the nation behind him to overthrow the oppressor because they're kind of like i don't know man it's not that bad it's right yeah yeah he's he's different in so many ways from a lot of the other judges i mean he's kind of a loner he's kind of a rebel he's kind of a well i mean he is a one-man army but everything that you kind of pick up about his personality it seems like he's just kind of one of those guys that does his own thing and doesn't really want to have anything to do with with anybody kind of being on his being on his team

uh i'm sure there were many factors that that led to that particular approach but yeah he's definitely not your typical like military leader like gideon was or any of the other judges well as as someone and i we've mentioned this and not to get away from his dad which we'll get into a second but i think part of uh part of this is you know we've mentioned that that samson is probably the most christological of all the all the judges uh so it would make sense that he's also the judge that sort of delivers on his own yeah uh yeah this is this is a very correct this is a very christ-like move i mean christ i don't know if you guys know this but he he doesn't get a lot of help when it comes to overthrowing sin death and the devil uh this is uh this is

something he does all by himself yeah yeah you we're always trying to give him a helping hand there it's it's unneeded and unwanted in fact when he's like maybe we should overthrow these things that are oppressing you we would definitely be the people be like i don't know about that all right i kind of like my sin right yeah yeah so uh yeah that's going to be one characteristic of samson that emerges very quickly in uh in his life we got to get him uh we got to get him born first. So let's see what happens here. So all we know so far is that the Malak Yahweh, the messenger of the Lord, appeared to a woman, I don't know her name, and told her that she was going to have a child. She had been unable to conceive children up to this point, she and her husband.

So this is another one of those many stories in the scriptures where God is appearing to a wife that wants to have children and cannot, and announces that in fact she will. So there's all sorts of these kind of annunciations in the Old Testament, all of which are of course leading up to the annunciation of the angel to the Virgin Mary. But anyway, this is another one of these. But this one is a little bit different because not only is she told that she's going to have a son, but that he is going to be a Nazirite, not a temporary Nazirite, as were most Nazirites in the Old Testament, but a lifelong Nazirite, beginning already in the womb indeed. So his mother herself cannot have any wine or beer or anything like that. I know pregnant mothers

shouldn't drink, but this is like laid down as a law for her because what she takes, the child's going to take. So from the moment of conception on, he's supposed to remain free from all that. And then when he grows up, of course, no, uh, no cutting of the hair, no visits to the barber for, for Samson. And that's basically all that, uh, she is told. And the angel appears to her when she's by herself. She's out in the field when this happens. So, uh, that's, she, she has to, she, she doesn't, interestingly, she never says anything to this messenger. she didn't respond she goes back and tells her husband what what he said and at this point it doesn't seem as if she or as we'll see in a minute or her husband actually know who this is it comes across to me judging from the way the story unfolds that they think it's just some maybe prophet something like that we're told who he is but when she reports this to her husband And she says, a man of God came to me and his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God.

Very awesome. So maybe they suspect, but they don't know yet. They're going to find out relatively soon. Anyway, she relates with a little bit of the parts edited out, but relates basically what the messenger told her to her husband. And then we pick it up here with verse eight. So how does her husband Manoah react to all this? Well, he he prays. It's a good place to start. He prays to the Lord and says, oh, Lord, please let the man of God. Again, no reference to him being a messenger, a divine messenger. Just please let the man of God, the one that you sent to us, come again so that he can teach us what to do for the boy who is to be born.

Now, this is a little bit strange because he's they've already been told. I mean, his the wife, the mother now has already been told what they are to do for the boy. so but but anyway Manoah wants to find out more so and God says listens to the voice of Manoah so he's going to answer his prayer and so once again the angel makes a visit and he once again just comes to the woman while she's by herself Manoah's not with her she's sitting in the field and so as soon as he shows up she runs home and says the guy is here again behold the man who came the other day has appeared to me. So they both go out there to meet him. And Manoah strikes up the conversation. He says, are you the man who spoke to the woman? And he responds

just with one word. It's the word, it's the first person personal pronoun, I, Ani. It's not the like the great I am that we usually think of with the divine name. It's just Ani. It's real short, real brief he just says i and manoa says now when your words come to pass what shall be the boys and here we have a translation issue so this is verse 12 manoa is wondering what shall be the literally what should be the boys uh mishpat and doings now mishpat is the word that's usually translated as justice or judgment and sometimes it's translated here as mode of life uh what i'm looking at the esv and the esv has now the what is to be the child's manner of life and oh what is his mission wow that's quite a quite a translation it's a manner of life and

mission the new american standard has uh what is to be his mode of life and his vocation so mission of vocation that's not too bad uh for the second word i mean it's just literally what is his deeds what's he supposed to do what's he going to be doing and the first part mishpot i don't think that that's referring to a mode of life i think i think that's like would you explain a little bit more what this uh announcement was this this decree uh concerning this child i think that's really what that's talking about but it's a little bit ambiguous mishpot is one of those words that you can take several different directions i mean anyway it kind of seems like the simplest way maybe to understand this maybe i'm wrong is uh if somebody told you like this

incredible thing was going to happen you might ask why yeah right i mean like why why why so we're gonna have give birth to a son and then we got to make sure that he does you know that he doesn't have any drink and he doesn't cut his hair uh what's up yeah i mean like that's that's what that's what it kind of that's how it reads to me is that you're you're saying can i get can get a little clarification on like why us why can't he do like this seems like it seems like there's more to this than just you're gonna have a son and make sure this stuff doesn't happen okay see you and you're like wait wait wait wait yeah yeah i think you're right i mean i it's it would be the natural reaction of of any parent right yeah i mean when when you have this you can't

have children then all of a sudden you're gonna have children and it happens because this strange character shows up and tells you you want to know more you know what's going on uh why are we why are we doing all this so are we always going to find out he's going to answer him he says well his response is kind of funny the verse 13 says uh let the woman pay attention to all that i said so i'm like i've already told you she shouldn't eat anything that comes from the vine or drink wine or beer and or any unclean thing and let her observe that all all that i commanded so he's not going to throw the the hair cutting part in here because he's already he's already mentioned that so in other words uh on top of being basically a faithful israelite eating kosher

then make sure that you also you don't have a glass of wine after dinner or a beer on saturday night and don't be eating you know any non-kosher foods then uh manoa responds again he wants to he wants this guy to stay for dinner, basically. He says, please let us detain you so that we may prepare a goat for you. And I don't think that he has in mind a sacrifice at this point. He's just like, hey, this is a pretty special event. So we're going to take a goat from the herd and we're going to have a barbecue. But the messenger of the Lord responds, basically, no. Though you detain me, I will not eat your food. And this is not because these particular appearances of the messenger cannot involve meals. Remember way back in Genesis, when the three

visited Abraham, Abraham prepared this whole feast for him, right? And they sat there eating and drinking with Abraham and his family. So whatever the reason is, he's not going to do it here. He's not going to have a dinner with Manoah and his wife. But he says, if you want to do something like that here's what you need to do you just get a burnt offering prepared and offer it to Yahweh and it says Manoah did not know that he was the Malak Yahweh he didn't know he was the the messenger of the Lord so he then asked him what his name is someone else says the angel of the Lord well this is kind of funny it's it's almost comes across in the Hebrew as if he's a little bit uh flabbergasted because the guy won't uh uh stay for dinner because literally in the

Hebrew, it's not what is your name? It's who is your name, which is not the way that you ask this in Hebrew. I mean, no one asks who is your name. It's not like it's some Hebrew idiom. In Hebrew, you say, what is your name? You don't say who is your name. So maybe Manoah was just a little bit rattled by this response, but whatever it was, he says, who is your name? So that when your words come to pass, we may honor you. I'm wondering, I could be totally off base here, but I'm wondering if he wants to know his name so that maybe they could name their child after him. I don't know. It's pure speculation on my part. But when he says that we may honor you, I mean, what kind of honoring does he have in mind? Maybe it's just giving thanks to God or maybe

it's something else. Whatever it is, he's not going to find out because the messenger responds, why do you ask my name? Seeing it is wonderful. This word for wonderful is found in various places in the old testament so you're all familiar around christmas time the reading from isaiah 9 where you hear about the wonderful counselor mighty god everlasting father so on and so forth the word that's used there for wonderful is the same word that's used here a form of the same word that's used here for wonderful so there's a tie-in there between that passage in isaiah about the messiah and this particular figure who is the son of god the word of god the messenger the messenger of the father and there's also a tie-in with the very next verse it says manoa took the

goat with the grain offering he offered it on the rock to the lord who works wonders that's one possible way to translate that that word for wonders is the same root word that he just said was connected to his name so this wonderfully named messenger is uh right there while the god who works wonders does his thing while Manoah and his wife looks on. Oh, I was going to, I almost forgot. Interestingly, the same word is used, and I have to think it's on purpose. Psalm 139, you know, we have the passage about God, you know, crafting me, weaving me together in the womb. I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. That word for wonderfully, that adverb that's used there, is the same root, which is kind of interesting because we've just had a birth announcement,

right? And there's a child that's now in the womb. And so for Psalm 139 to pick up on that same word and use it to describe God's activity of shaping children in the womb, it just makes me wonder if when David was writing that Psalm, if he was not actually meaning for us to kind of make a connection way back here to judges chapter 13 but anyway whatever the reason is what happens is when they offer this goat we have this this kind of a wild scene that takes place because a flame goes up from the altar toward heaven when the sacrifice is offered and the angel of the lord the messenger of the lord ascends in the flame of the altar lamino and his wife were looking on and so they quite naturally fall on their faces to the ground and uh then it says just kind of summarize the

rest of the story he he didn't appear any more to them and manoa now knows that it was the messenger of yahweh and he this is kind of a funny exchange manoa says to his wife we're dead we shall surely die because we've seen God. And I just love his wife's response. He's like completely panicking here, but his wife is like being very logical. She's like, listen, husband, if the Lord wanted to kill us, he would not have accepted our offering. And if you wanted to kill us, he wouldn't have shown us all these things. And if you wanted to kill us, he wouldn't have let us hear things like this so it'll be all right god's not going to come down here and smite us just because uh just because we've seen his his messenger and this is and this this response is

sort of the definitive part of knowing that you've not just encountered an angel but you've encountered god he doesn't say you know god's gonna kill us we've seen an angel uh i mean he says we've we've seen god yeah i mean they're they're sure now and and and i suspect as messed up as israel was at this point everybody still knew who the malak yahweh was it wasn't just a created angel but it was god manifesting himself and uh of course this is if you're a long-time listener to the podcast you know many times we've talked about this uh messenger of the lord shows up first of all in genesis 16 to hagar uh shows up in exodus 3 exodus 23 here in judges 13 uh jacob speaks about him on his deathbed to uh to joseph so all over the place uh in the old

testament and this is this is uh i talked about this actually in the video that i was put out this morning to some extent but there's all different ways in the old testament where the one God has his word or his messenger or his glory or his name, and these are the ways by which he interacts with the world. And we see this picked up in the New Testament as well, where John, of course, will talk about the sun being the logos, or you'll have Paul in 1 Corinthians say that Christ has become to us our wisdom. Well, he's drawing upon Proverbs when he says Christ is our wisdom from God. And there's evidence too that the Malak Yahweh traditions influence some of what Paul said, for instance, when he talks about the Egyptian plagues and the 10th plague

and Christ being the destroyer that went through the land of Egypt. So all of this was kind of the Old Testament's way of using Trinitarian language. They didn't use Father, Son, and Holy Spirit language. I mean, they did, but not in the exact same way that we did. But this was Old Testament a trinitarian language where you have yahweh and you have his word or you have his glory you have his spirit by which he is interacting with his people it's interesting that the the first person that the messenger of the lord or that that christ actually shows up to i mean you would think that it would be abraham but it's but it's actually uh his servant wife concubine gentile whatever's going on there it's interesting that uh that's the the first person that this that christ shows

up to and which seemed it's also makes sense like well who would christ first show up to well i don't know probably someone out in the wilderness with no hope yes right yeah yeah and an egyptian on top of that yeah yeah yeah so it's uh it's pretty crazy the way uh things kind of work he does seem to show up and jesus does seem to show up when when everything is hopeless yes that's when he shows up right she's also the only one in the old testament who names god she calls him el roy the god who sees so uh pretty powerful testimony to the fact that god has his eye especially locked on people who think that god has abandoned them which i'm sure was where she was at i mean she was in a pretty bad place what's interesting is that they ask his name and he

won't say uh meanwhile someone like you know hagar is uh what gives god a name doesn't add doesn't ask he just gives god a name and it and we have no reason to think he doesn't sort of accept that name yeah yeah i love that name yeah but it's because you know she felt like she felt like she was uh blind to god right like i mean a lot of people feel unseen like nobody really like if if they were to disappear that no one would miss them or if they were to die that no one really paying attention they just you know kind of a just not that significant uh an individual so they feel unseen in that way so that's why i always love that particular story from genesis to point people to that said listen you're not unseen you have elroy you have a god

who sees he's looking at you he's got his eye on you because he he is especially connected to people who are just at their wits end yeah you sort of see this is i know this is like it seems like it's way off the the track here but yeah i whenever i hear that i always think about jesus talking about how uh god's eyes on the sparrow and like i feel like i almost feel like it's an embracing i mean Because it's an embracing of this name, right? Where it's like, I'm the God who sees everything. Like I see, like a sparrow doesn't fall to the ground without me knowing it. Yeah.

One of my favorite quotes in this regard is from Luther's commentary on the Magnificat. And I may have said it on the show before, but if I have, it's been a while. He's talking about Mary's song where she talks about God noticing his maidservant. and he says that god always looks down because there's no one above him there's no one beside him there's no one is equal so he always looks down and the farther away from god one is the better he can see you it's just great yeah it's a beautiful vision because in other words if you're trying to like exalt yourself and climb up to heaven and get close to god he can't see very well but he the the farther you are in the depths the better he sees you

always love that image of uh of luther from the magnifica yeah yeah very encouraging okay so uh all of that is uh is a good aside from what we're talking about here with the appearance of this messenger of the lord christ uh to to these people okay so pick up the story uh what happens next well what you think would happen uh we have a we have a birthday we have a nativity verse 24 says the woman gave birth to a son and she named him well we call him samson but uh if we were speaking hebrew we would call him shimshon which is a pretty cool name too it it's weird these uh you might wonder i mean i have like okay if it's shimshon in the hebrew how in the world do we get samson right well it's i think almost every biblical name it worked it worked like this i

mean not all of them some of them are basically just transliterated but usually what happened is the Hebrew was translated to the Greek and the Greek influenced the Latin and it's from the Greek and the Latin that we get our English names so you know languages make some changes in sounds and in vowels and stuff like that so most of our English names came from the the Hebrew I mean it came from the Greek and the Latin translations Septuagint and the Vulgate so Shemshon in Hebrew, or Samson as we call him, he's got an interesting name because it's a diminutive form of the Hebrew word Shemesh, which is the word for sun. You have a place that's not very far actually from where Samson lives called

Beit Shemesh or Beth Shemesh, which means house of the sun. So a little bit of speculation as to why he's named this uh i mean you can you can either kind of go positive or negative with it positively you can kind of do meta the metaphor oh well samson was born as a as a ray of light in darkened times so you can kind of go the whole you know that positive put the positive spin on it or the negative spin would be that the uh the worship of the son of the shemesh was so prevalent and israel that you had israelites naming their children after this pagan god shemesh which is not entirely uh beyond the pale of possibility given this the spiritual state of israel at this time but if you know anything about the life of samson you'd be like how about both it's probably

yeah yeah maybe that's the best answer he is he is a ray of light but man there's a lot of there's a lot of darkness too going on but if you ever wonder what his name is well that's it it's it's the diminutive form of Shemesh, of sons, of Shemshon or Samson. So what happens to Willie? Well, he just says he grew up and the Lord blessed him. That's the same language that's used in 1 Samuel to describe Samuel, who was raised, of course, there with Eli and his wicked son's priest there at the tabernacle. and the spirit of the lord it's verse 25 spirit lord began to to stir him it says it's a

that's a little bit difficult to translate but uh the the verb there means because it doesn't occur very often in this particular form i mean like it this is the same verb that's used for uh like when the king is troubled he can't sleep and he wakes up so it's like god began to trouble samson i mean in a good way but like stir him up you know uh work on him i guess we might say and uh then it lists where this happened it was uh ma hane dan between zora and eshtoel now we don't know what i wish we i wish we knew more about kind of the physicality of samson everybody assumes he looks like thor from uh the uh the strongest man competition right yeah he's one of these these guys from iceland or green that wherever he's from iceland uh you know it's

massive but we we the only physical description we have of samson is is his hair we're not told that he was like you know six eight and four hundred pounds uh that's the impression you get because of his strength but that is that's just kind of speculation we really don't know how big was his strength came from god not from his uh biceps yeah no and i if you get like a children's bible out he's the he's the closest thing you have to a superhero right yeah i mean he looked they the way that they always draw him you know they did they they present him as yeah it looks like you know uh he's he's all jack schwarzenegger yeah he's all yeah he's all jacked up like some marvel superhero right yeah it just kind of fits with our preconception well i mean if you have

this kind of i mean in many ways it kind of is uh oh i don't want to say contradicting the biblical text because maybe that's too strong but it downplays this the importance of the fact that his strength comes exclusively from god well yeah i mean look i don't care how jacked you are you don't get to do the things that samson does there's no there's no it's he was probably some like scrawny guy because that's how god works he's probably working through the opposite right so i would i would assume that probably nothing that physically you know intimidating about this guy um because it makes no difference i mean i don't care how much you work out you can't do the stuff that he does no no right yeah this is beyond just pure physical strength so uh anyway

that that's all we know about his his physicality is he has long hair and besides that uh that's it now that uh i'll say this is a kind of preamble to the next chapter uh there it is kind of interesting you maybe think of this when you mention superheroes uh the the parallels between uh samson and heracles and hercules yeah because they're they're both sort of these strong men and uh the very you know there's they're the traditional 10 uh oh my gosh not 10 challenges 10 feats that hercules had to perform as as penance and his very first one was killing a lion which is just kind of crazy because what's about to happen here in chapter 14 where samson kills a lion so anyway it was uh uh doing some reading going on heracles this morning and

came across that uh parallel here with samson anyway what happens well that a lion is going to be uh a lion and a woman are part of this uh this next story a riddle a lion uh a woman a riddle some honey all kinds of interesting things coming up well samson grows up and he goes looking for a wife, is what this next story is about. He goes down to Timnah, which is about six miles away from where he lived, and there he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines. Now, I will say one thing before we move on. This verb for went down, yarad, does seem to be kind of a thematic part of this particular section of his life, because it occurs five times in the next couple chapters so samson keeps going down just like you know jonah does the same thing

goes down to the shore goes down to the ship goes down into the ship goes down into the into the heart of the sea so we have this descent and the same thing is happening here with samson but he goes to down to to temna and he came back and told his his father and his mother that he has found mrs right i saw a woman in temna one of the daughters of philistines now therefore get her from me as a wife different times man different times it doesn't even say you talk to her no just yeah sorry went back to mom and dad said i know what i want for christmas wrap her up and put a bow on her that's the one i want so anyways his parents are not too keen on this idea they uh they say samson is is there no woman among the daughters

of your relatives or among all our people if the daughters of our relatives i'm about to say also different time yeah yeah yeah not something i'm saying to my son can't you find a wife from family reunion yeah this is it's like rebecca a mother who is hates one son because he won't marry his cousin yeah they're very different times so yeah can't you find a woman from our relatives what about the family reunion they didn't see anything there that was nothing really attractive or among our people that you go and take a wife from the oh here we come this is a the slanderous accusation the uncircumcised philistines did i learned this morning that in the old testament the only ones that are called this are the philistines yeah yeah they're it's always like

the uncircumcised if it's never like the uncircumcised ammonites or some other people group probably because a lot of the people groups actually did practice circumcision not not all of them as evidenced by the philistines but circumcision wasn't just like an israelite thing it was practiced by lots of different people groups how do we know this because there are there are reliefs on the uh you know walls in egypt for instance where it shows uh semites people from this part of the world and i mean they're protract they are portrayed graphically enough to where you can tell that in fact they are circumcised so uh it was it was practiced by various people groups but not the philistines they are the uncircumcised philistines yeah i

can't i cannot hear uncircumcised philistine without this this is what pops in my head and will for like my entire life that's my dad used to always do this he took this like lifted this from the bible uh and i just remember we used to live way out in the country and our dog used to like always get ticks on it almost every night it would seem like he was like deticking the dog you know yeah running around and stuff so the dog would be sitting there and he'd be and he'd be pulling a tick and when he'd pull a tick out he would like uh he'd pull it off and then he would like a tweezers and then like kill it you know squeeze it till it yeah died every time he'd pull off and he said and he'd be like die you uncircumcised philistine and he's squeezing

this tick every time that's great i love the stories about your dad they're the best that's awesome well it's a it's a if you're gonna insult something like a tick that's a great insult i mean that just you can't get much more biblically insulting than that so uh yeah the uncircumcised philistines so uh samson's response and we'll we'll end here uh it's a little a little bit different in in translation that is in hebrew uh my translation has get her for me for she looks good to me. I don't, yeah, I usually like New American Standard, but I don't like it here for two reasons. First of all, the first word in the sentence, the word that is put forward for emphasis is the word for her or she. So we might translate it, not get her for me, but like she

is the one. So he's saying, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to get some other girl from my fellow israelites but she this philistine girl is the one and the translation she looks good to me i think is a little bit misleading because in the hebrew it's the same kind of phraseology we're going to see in chapter 17 and 21 remember where it says that this was a time there was no king in israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes yeah that's the same phrase used here yeah in the esv uh it says uh samson said to his father get her for me for she is right in my eyes yeah yeah yeah that's the same kind of phrase that's used here because i think when it's translated she looks good to me i mean it kind of comes across as a little bit like almost too

negative towards samson like he killed like a uh you know a knuckle dragger walking around you know oh get her she looked good yeah that's not what it's saying here he's saying that she is right in my eyes now what what he he meant we don't know i mean was she hot uh was there some other quality about her that was attractive really don't know but whatever it was she's the one for samson so she looks right in in his eyes but you can't hear that phrase though without also kind of going to those other two verses and judges and realizing yeah this is not good This is a setup for a bad series of unfortunate events that are about to fall, which we will have to wait, save for next time.

All right. Yeah. Next time we find out that God is afoot and is being sneaky. Yes, he is. Causing problems. That's it. All right, guys. Well, thanks for hanging out.

Go check out all the other content that we're making in this time so that you can have something to do, maybe even just something to distract you from all the other things that are going on. Turn off the news for five seconds and get into the Bible. That wouldn't be a bad idea. Chad, I will see you next week.

All right, see you then.