40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Judges 14:9-15:8 (Episode 213)

Episode Date: April 26, 2020

Samson's wedding goes side-ways and he presents a high-stakes wager involving an impossible riddle. He then lives up to his end of the deal in the most intimidating way possible resulting in tragedy for his wife and father-in-law. And a whole lot of fire-tails are put to use. 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. You can just go to 1517.org in general because still in the great quarantine of 2020 and you might need something to read, something to listen to, something to watch, and all that stuff is sitting over there. So check it out. Just go through the content. If videos are more your speed right now because you just want to get all your senses, you know, or at least two of them engaged, then go over to YouTube, type in 1517.

First thing that comes up, subscribe to that YouTube channel. we're producing a lot of extra content in these times a lot of extra video content you can listen to me and chad and scott go through the decalogue we're doing that right now those videos come out a couple times a week and we're just going bit by bit i think it'll probably end up being 11 or so videos total so uh go give that a give that a watch if you haven't checked it out already chad you still uh holding it down i'm still holding it down yeah i mean it's uh every like everybody else i wake up every day i'm like what is today no idea what day of the month it is i know we're in april besides that yeah i'm pretty much lost yeah well we have the people don't know but we

have objective evidence that that's the case for me guys before we got on here chad texted me like we doing this and i thought it was a different day than it was literally we do this in the morning so i mean i don't think i would have made it too much longer but i made it an hour believing it was a different day than it was yeah that's the way it goes these times these days all right i saw me the other day uh said something like i think i'll sleep on the couch tonight uh it'll shorten my commute work your way from the bedroom to the living room that's right yeah and I work in my, in my, uh, we have an enclosed garage. That's my study. So it's about a, you know, 15 yard commute for me every day from the bedroom to,

uh, back here where I work. That's it. That's it. Go for a walk, go for a run, go to the backyard. That's my life. I saw, I saw somebody say, um, when this is all over, they're going to have to get a new couches cause they've worn them out. I'm sure they have spent 10 years worth of time on the, on the couch. If you have any extra money, invest in furniture companies, right? There's going to be buying up couches. Or they're just tired of looking at them, too.

They're like, I hate this couch. Let's get rid of it. New couch, new look. Indeed. Yeah. That's where we are. Well, Samson's thinking about buying couches and a house and filling out a wedding registry and all that kind of stuff.

Something has looked good in his eyes. That's where he left it. mr romance yeah he's a he's quite the uh quite the romeo so we're in judges 14 second uh second chapter of the samson saga so yeah he yeah this is a this is quite the story you know i was thinking this morning uh too going over this and the next chapter some stuff coming up never i well there's several things i had never seen before that i'll bring out the podcast but have you ever noticed how many animals pop up in the samson story yeah a lot about this morning yeah i was like it's kind of weird it's never hit me before like in a little bit he's gonna bring a

a goat to uh to his wife and then we got we got a lion we got bees we got the the the donkey jawbone coming up right and got the foxes i mean that i'm discounting that's just five animals right there just in just in the samson stories i don't know if there's something to that or if it's just a coincidence but anyway it is one of the distinguishing features of this this particular part of judges yeah he doesn't he doesn't raise up an army he just uses nature he just gets nature on his side it's like creative guerrilla warfare that samson is engaged in but right now anyway he's got his eyes on uh this uh philistine girl which uh as you said looks uh right in his eyes whatever that meant you know something seems right in samson's eyes it's a little bit dubious as to

uh just exactly what we're looking at because samson kind of has a different perspective on things but anyway whatever whatever samson was looking for i guess whatever his type was well this was it so some some translations i pointed this out last time say she looks good to me and i i really wouldn't have translated it that way she's right my eyes because that actually fits with what we see elsewhere in judges or everyone did what was right in their own eyes in this particular time period but anyway he uh he was out and about and he went to a place called temna which is a philistine town saw this girl she looked right in his eyes and he goes back home and he's like hey dad found my wife get her for me because she's right in my

eyes and uh his parents aren't too happy about that because they wanted him to marry somebody from the family or at least the extended family of the israelites but this is this is the girl he wants so this is the girl he's gonna get at least that's what he thinks and then we end up with verse four of Judges 14, where it says that his mom and dad didn't know, and neither did we until this happened, didn't know that this whole thing was part of God's plan. This was literally of the Lord. So, I mean, this is one of these cases where, and of course, this is all over the scriptures. This is like part of daily life too. You got like, you got two realities that are kind of intermingled right you've got people not just samson but people just in general doing

all sorts of crazy bad uh you know kind of in between sort of things we're a little bit a little bit gray areas they're doing all this sort of stuff and then there's god who of course is pure and holy and he's somehow kind of manipulating working things behind the scenes through his providential guidance of history. And in this case, he's using Samson and this situation that's going to develop relative to his family and his bride-to-be in order to stir up trouble. I mean, God really is. He's wanting there to be trouble between the Israelites and the Philistines because the Israelites have basically just accepted the status quo. I mean, it's like they've forgotten everything that God told them about their need to conquer this land and drive

out the inhabitants and take possession of what God has given to them, and they're just fine. All right, well, the Philistines are ruling over us. Okay, well, we'll just try not to stir the pot, you know, just kind of keep everything the way it is. We'll see that later in the next chapter, chapter 15, where the Israelites are like saying to Samson, man, don't cause any problems. The Philistines are ruling over us, and we're just going to kind of keep things the way they are. But God's like, nope, I'm going to throw a monkey wrench in all that, and that monkey wrench is named Samson. He's going to mess things up with this kind of accepted equilibrium between Israel and the Philistines. So let's see what happens.

Well, verse 5 says that Samson went down to Timnah with his parents, and they came to some vineyards, which I guess were just maybe on the outskirts of the village, don't really know exactly where they're located. But all of a sudden, this lion came roaring toward him. You know, when we hear the English word roar, we usually think of lions, right? So I thought, well, maybe this is kind of an ambiguous Hebrew word. I looked it up. No, it's pretty much not in every case, but almost every case it's used in the Old Testament.

It's referring to a lion's roar. so this lion comes roaring toward him and i was curious too like you know are there still lions in israel so evidently not many or if there are any they're an endangered species so chances are at least from my reading this probably would have been what are called asiatic lions which evidently at one time and we have evidence from greek and latin writers that kind of talk about the uh the wildlife in this particular region evidently at one point the asiatic lion was all over the place i mean it just covered the holy land if you uh if you kind of can picture those like the wall carvings from the the palaces in babylon that the assyrians would have they'd

have lions that are engraved in the walls those would have been asiatic lions too so man it must have been you know pretty common at this time for there to be lions and we have evidence of other biblical stories where people either killed lions or actually were were killed by lions so samson kills a lion david talks about fighting lions remember to uh to uh protect his flock and the one of his one of his men named benaiah uh must have been like this wild crazy story that every everybody just like you can make reference to and everybody knew you were talking about because it says something like he killed a lion in a pit on a snowy day it's like we want to know more you got video of that but anyway these guys kill lions and then but there's also

was a prophet that was killed by a lion and when uh the assyrians brought in inhabitants to the northern kingdom after the deportation it says that god sent lions and killed some of the people there so i say all that to make the point that at this particular time i mean seeing a line in israel is probably not that unusual and this one goes after samson it's funny that you brought the the line in the pit there's a a book that's not very good uh and so i'm not saying read the book uh it's a it's an entire book about you know faith and manhood based on kind of that one story which is like five seconds long yeah um but i will get i'll give the the author props for like one of the cooler titles ever it's just called in a pit with a lion on a snowy day

and you're like oh really yeah that's pretty good that's a pretty good title yeah that is pretty good title yeah well that's where that's where he gets it it's like kind of a throwaway line in 2 Samuel 23. But besides that, yeah, we don't know. I guess he got creative. He wrote a whole book about it. Anyway, so this line comes roaring toward him and says, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, which is probably too weak of a translation. I mean, this is sort of like he rushed upon him or something like that. I don't know what the ESV says. It just says, came roaring toward oh the spirit rushed upon him yeah that's a better translation so rushed upon him is so it's not like he floated down like a dove this is more like

take possession of samson came upon him mightily and he tore the uh he tore the lion as one tears a kid a baby goat though he had nothing in his hand and he didn't tell his mom or his dad what uh what he had done pretty impressive that's some strength there even though i'm like i'm thinking it's got to be pretty hard to tear a baby goat not that i've ever tried it but the analogy is not the analogy that we would have used we might have said as one tears a piece of paper or something like that but that's what samson samson did so this is uh of course the the first evidence that we have of Samson's strength. The first chapter was all about the prophecy of his upcoming conception and birth, and then the story of that, and the naming of him. And

then the first thing that we're told about him is that he finds this woman. So this is the first of Samson's great feats of strength, which of course, as we mentioned earlier, is not owing to any kind of like muscular superiority but this is all about the spirit of god working through him to accomplish these great things so he didn't he just you know kind of keeps this to himself then tells parents they go down they talk to the woman i don't know if samson ever even talked to her but anyway they talked to her and she looked right in his eyes so some time passes and he goes back later and to get ready for get ready for the wedding and he says i guess he remembered you know oh i'm gonna go check out this lion and so as he turned aside to look at

the carcass of the lion and strange thing had happened there was a swarm of bees and honey inside the body of the lion so he scrapes out some of it and he goes along eating it and he gets to his parents and he gives them some of it and they eat it but he didn't tell them that he had scraped the honey out of the body of the lion now there's a couple of things that i think are worthy of comment here one is that now i'm no bee expert maybe some of our listeners are bee experts i don't think yeah and i don't think that bees usually build hives inside carcasses i could be wrong there somebody somebody can correct me if i'm mistaken there but that's a little strange i mean bees can swarm in all sorts of crazy places i am i'm friends with a couple of uh

couple of guys that will uh they're they're bee removal experts in fact uh we had a swarm of bees that built a hive inside under the eaves of our house uh two or three years ago and uh i watched those guys work getting the getting all the the honey out getting the bees out and we've got a facebook facebook friend who does that and they'll post pictures i mean they'll when they're swarming they'll just kind of mass in all sorts of places could be on a i've seen them on a tire a spare tire uh they'll be anywhere really in a tree on a car you name it but i i i'm not familiar with anything happening inside the carcass of a of a dead animal but that's what happens here so that's one thing that's kind of strange maybe there's some message there that i'm missing but one thing

that that is important to to bear in mind about this is that sanson just broke his nazirite vow right yeah that's that's the main thing i think we need to take away from this is one of the one of the requirements of someone who's a nazirite is you can't have any contact with with with dead things even if say you have to take nazirite vow your dad gets sick he dies there's a funeral you can't can't have any contact with with the corpse because that would defile you and the nazirite cannot be defiled so this would have been this is the first example of many as we shall see where samson although he is a nazirite does not i remained faithful to the vows that he took yeah and i mean this is sort of all alluded to in the fact that he doesn't tell them where it came from

right so he doesn't he doesn't he doesn't tell them so uh killed this lion so you know went back checked on it found some honey inside of it like because and also just practically speaking you're like wait you got this honey out of a dead animal body like yeah not something you want to be eating yeah yeah and i guess i should point out i mean he he just defiled his parents too i mean because you know they're coming to contact with death as well this was just part of the israeli ritual system if you came into contact with something that was dead then you had to go through certain processes of cleansing well he just kind of brought his parents under this the same umbrella of uncleanness as well and didn't didn't tell him about it it does yeah that's gonna tell you

something about samson too like that he is a weird guy is it i mean okay first obviously it's not it's obviously abnormal to kill a lion with your bare hands that's one thing but maybe if you could you would uh you know yeah right right but you're a different kind of weird guy if you're like scraping honey out of carcasses and just you're like walking like oh yeah like scrape some out with your hand full of this eat it yeah that's yeah he's he's a different kind of guy yeah yeah he's a whole new level of weird uh that's for sure and as we'll see in just a minute uh he's he's there's a certain intelligence to him too i mean he's he's not kind of just like a dumb ox you know i mean he's he's good with words he has these riddles and there's a couple occasions where he

comes up with little rhymes uh and when he's like after a victory he comes up with these little rhymes to name a place so yeah he's uh he's a unique character you can't like put him in a box he's a he's a whole whole new kind of individual even the stuff later on with delilah when when she's pressing him hard to and to tell him where the secret is you know where's the secret of your strength he comes up with interesting explanations yeah that's right yeah he's kind of a he's really a trickster in in many ways so he's uh he's unique anyway they so they go on uh eating their eating there honey and they it says his father went down to where the woman was at and samson makes a feast there and i guess that was the custom in those days now it's a little bit i don't want i don't

want to say this i there's a suggestion in the word feast that this isn't just like a meal because the word the hebrew word for feast is actually formed from the verb to drink so just like our we've seen this before i think i pointed out before that the uh that the word for a symposium it actually comes from the greek word drinking together well the hebrews kind of like this too i mean presumably yeah there would be feasting but uh i don't know that feast is the best word to use or to translate it because it's more directly formed from the verb to drink so a drinking feast if you will big party big party well if if i mean if he's if zansen is drinking now well he's just broken the second of his nazirite vows because of course he's not to

consume any not just any alcoholic beverage but anything from uh from the vine but that's what he did so he's two strikes against him so far so they make this feast and verse 11 says when they saw him they brought or they took 30 companions to be with him there's a the greek translation of changes this a little bit so in hebrew the word for see and the word for fear are very similar in appearance just a letter difference between the two so they'd be easily confused now the greek translation says that it came about that they feared him and so they brought 30 companions to be with him which who knows that might be the case too so that do they see him or do they fear him whatever it was it seems to suggest that they're like oh we better we better get some guys

around samson because he seems a little bit hazardous to us so they bring in these 30 guys who are his yeah whatever his wedding guest i suppose and then samson this is where he gets a little cocky so he's gonna he says you know unprovoked he just comes up with this riddle he says let me let me profound a riddle to you and if you can solve it during the seven days of the feast then i'm going to give you a whole wardrobe right i'll give you 30 linen wraps and 30 changes of clothes whatever exactly that looked like at that in that particular culture but if you can't solve the riddle then you're gonna have to give me 30 linen wraps and 30 changes the clothes and they're like all right we're game let us know the riddle so he comes up

with this riddle uh famous of course famous riddle out of the eater came something to eat and out of the straw and came something sweet that rhymes in uh rhymes in english and it's it's very poetic in the hebrew as well uh but that's it i mean that's i mean if somebody if i didn't know of course anything about this story and somebody told me this riddle it's pretty vague right uh well i think riddle is uh it's a generous term for this but a riddle is something that you that you could yeah presumably figure out yeah you could solve it this is just like without knowing anything there's no way to solve this no yeah which samson probably realized right yeah so uh i'm thinking these guys right as soon as they heard the riddle we're like oh man we

should never have agreed to this uh this this challenge because there's no way we're gonna be able to solve this and and they couldn't it's three days go on this is a this is a long wedding feast by the way i mean i guess some cultures do that i would not want to be a philistine dad be paying for seven days of a wedding party goodness gracious this happens in the in the old testament a lot man like there's a i mean they know how to party these things go on for a while yeah yeah they know how to party there's it like it's not a party of course but the ordination i mean that that goes on for several days when the priest ordained now they got a week-long wedding party so they knew how to they knew how to tie one on back then well three days go by and these

guys can't solve it so the fourth day they're like all right we gotta we gotta up up our ante here so they go to his wife and we're not sure by the way how this worked with uh at the consummation of the marriage like was was the first night the wedding night so they were actually together marriage was consummated and then they just party the rest of the time kind of like a honeymoon period or do they have six days of the party and then the seventh day was the consummation of the marriage who knows i mean we can't really tell from the word for wife because in in the hebrew when you were engaged you were often called uh a man's wife so anyway whatever the situation was between the two of them they go to her and they say uh to entice or seduce your husband so this is

this is the same word that's going to be used in the Delilah story so obviously the author is wanting us to kind of read these two stories together because of course they're very similar in both cases people want to find out something about Samson and so they go to the woman that's with him in this case

his bride and in the latter case his lover Delilah and they're like entice or seduce your husband or seduce Samson so that he can tell us the riddle but they don't stop there they're like or if you don't want to do that we'll burn you and your father's house with fire these guys are serious escalated quickly that escalated very quickly uh so sanson's wife

uh she uh she tries the the tear trick she weeps before him and said well not just the tears but she says you only hate me and you do not love me you have propounded a riddle to the sons of my people and haven't told it to me and samson's response uh is just so samson like he's like look i haven't even told it to my father and mother so why should i tell you now guys if uh if you're listening to the podcast and be a little uh you know relationship advice well here's a little relationship advice don't say something like this to your bride not a good start to a marriage you're telling me that if stacy's like listen you haven't told me about this thing that you're doing and you're like yeah well i haven't told my mom or dad either

yeah that's not gonna that's not gonna work i know i'll be sleeping at night the dog and i'll be together yeah that's uh that's samson he he must not have uh taken genesis to the heart right about leaving your father and your mother uh and cleaving to your wife so he doesn't tell her and uh she keeps this up says she went before him long as the feast lasted all seven days and uh it says it came about on the seventh day that he told her because she pressed him so hard again this is the same verb that is used in chapter 16 in the story of delilah so the verb for entice or seduce is used in both stories and the the verb for pressing him hard is also used in both stories so you know obviously we're supposed to read these these two together

so in this case he finally tells uh he finally tells a riddle to her and then she passes it on And so on the last day, right before the sun goes down, the men come and it's kind of strange the way they solve it because they don't really like, their answers are questions, right? I mean, they'll like come right out and say, oh, yeah, yeah. Well, the eater is a lion. And what is sweet is honey. They ask two questions. They say, well, what is sweeter than honey? And what's stronger than a lion?

and it's samson's response again guys relationship advice i don't think i really need to tell you this one but if you want to choose you're going to choose a nickname for your bride don't call her a cow yeah heifer is not the one heifer is not the one uh i mean i i don't know what you want to call her, but do not call her an Eglah, a heifer. I know that Hebrew is kind of creative sometimes with animal names, but this would have been received by a woman during that time in the exact same way that it would be received today if you start calling your wife or your girlfriend a heifer. Not a good name. This, by the way, is Eglah, which is the feminine form of the same word that we saw used back in the story of our uh our fat king Egalon remember

so Egalon his name uh sounds like the Hebrew word for uh for a bull or a or a steer so anyway uh if you had he says if you had not plowed my heifer you would not have found out my riddle so i don't samson uh so any chance of this marriage going well uh it's it's just not looking good not looking at this point well what happens next well he's i guess to samson's credit he does actually i mean he's he follows through right yeah he's not gonna go down to like coals or somewhere and and uh and buy 30 changes clothing for these guys he's he's got a much better method for doing it the spirit of the lord rushes upon him same same verb again as he goes down to another city another philistine city there was a uh a pentapolis a a kind of a unit of five

cities uh of the philistines so ashkelon is one ashdod ekron gaza and goth that's the philistine pentapolis so he goes about 20 miles away from timnah goes about 20 miles away down to ashkelon which is a coastal city on the mediterranean and rather than go shopping he just like takes out 30 guys and strips them and then goes back and hands out the clothes to these 30 wedding companions of his and it says his anger burned and then he just leaves so he he brings him i kind of picture him like showing up he's got all these clothes like in his arms he like throws it to the guys and then he storms off and goes back to his father's house well dude it seems to me like what he does i might be reading into this a little bit but if you go and then you go kill

30 guys then you strip them you take their clothes and then you go give those clothes to somebody else like in my mind what this is is he goes he kills these guys he doesn't poison them he doesn't like i mean he goes and he like murders these dudes and then he gives him his clothes and i feel like what's happening here is he's got just probably clothes covered in blood and like they're just yeah i don't know how they would be yeah just bloody clothes and he's just like here you go and like there's just i mean the freakiest thing ever when someone's like all right you figured out my riddle but i don't think you played fair and so i just want to like give you this warning and like here's 30 changes of clothes but they're all blood stained and like you know

torn or whatever yeah that's yeah i think you're exactly right i mean how could he kill this many guys without getting some blood on the clothes yeah you know what's gonna happen yeah no matter what he what he used to kill him he didn't like strangle 30 guys no there's blood on these clothes and it's i would i would think it would be intentional like he probably wanted it as bloody as possible i feel like he's making a statement here yeah he's definitely making it definitely making a statement so uh after all this this this uh climactic scene it said this is the way the chapter ends but samson's wife was given to his companion or some translation say his his best man who had been hit or had been his friend who had been his his his best man

i mean what an ending to the story yeah seven days uh they had this feast and the riddle and the the whole uh killing of the guys and then at the end of it all he storms off and the bride's father's like oh well i guess i guess he doesn't want you for his wife hey you come over here you want to marry the girl instead i mean this guy this father is eager to marry off his daughter evidently that's what happens i wonder if this might have been the ultimate mom saying i told you so when he got when he got back from this whole ordeal yeah probably so we told you you should have married one of your cousins yeah this is this is what happens this is this is such an interesting story so entertaining so uh anyway

that so that wraps up uh that's what wraps up chapter 14 but chapter 15 is just kind of going right from this because we're not finished yet with this particular uh part of uh part of samson's life so a little i guess he cools off right some time goes by we don't know how long but it's been a while we know it's weed harvest which was probably may uh springtime anyway it's usually fell around the the israelite festival of pentecost so uh he goes back and uh this time like a true romeo he brings his wife uh not a box of chocolates not a dozen roses but what every girl wants a baby goat yeah yeah more relationship advice no i mean next time valentine's day rolls around forget the roses it's chocolates just bring your wife a baby goat and uh so he's got

this baby goat and kind of picturing it he's holding it in one hand and then he knocks on the door and he's talking to her dad and he says i will go into my wife in her room now the hebrew here is a little bit uh iffy but i'm i'm assuming what he means usually when the hebrew talks about going in it's talking about sexual intercourse and she's inside but of course samson has no idea that after he stormed off in anger that his bride is actually now someone else's bride so her dad's response is this now in that in the hebrew would read something like this i really thought that you really hated her so what the hebrew will do when it wants to intensify something it uses the same verb twice and the second form is called an infinitive

absolute so like repeat the verb so it'd be something like i don't know how i would say in english i thoughtingly thought that you hatingly hated her it was something like that anyway. But that's the way that the Hebrew will bring this out. I think probably also what's hinted at here is that not just the emotion of hate, but judging by some other uses of hate that we have in the Old Testament, that he's saying, I basically thought that you had divorced her. Not that you just hated her, but that you were done, that you were walking away from what would have been a marriage or what at least technically was considered marriage. It was an engagement of sorts. So I thought that this was the case. I thought you hated her. I thought that you

hated slash divorced her. So I gave it to your, to your companion and then never wanted to miss an opportunity. And probably also after seeing all those bloody clothes, also wanting to kind of pacify Samson, he's like, Hey, but I got an idea. I got a younger sister. She has a younger sister, my younger daughter, and she's better looking than the bride that you wanted, so let her be yours instead. Well, evidently, she was not, the younger sister was evidently not right in the eyes of Samson because he wanted nothing to do with her. Instead, he decides that he's going to, he's angry again, so he's going to take out his anger this time on the Philistines in a different sort of way and he says this time i shall be blameless in regard to the philistines

when i do them harm now i don't know what that means i don't know if that means like the first time he thought he was not blameless well i mean it seems like he's like well i'm gonna if i go kill these guys that's on me but if i set something else up and they you know some people i mean i don't know because if you read as this as this continues if you read what he's about to do like i don't know if you're blameless man yeah blameless not be a bit of a stretch of that particular word but i his uh his plan for doing this i mean you got to give you got to give marks to samson freak for creativity he must have just had some like anger that he had to get out like he's like i'm so raging right now that i'm gonna have to go get this energy out because no idea

Because what he's about to do seems difficult. Yeah, yeah. Extremely difficult. So rather than just, like, going around torching Philistine's fields, he catches 300 foxes. That's ridiculous. I have no idea. Like, this is one of those feats that he does where you're like, okay,

being, like, crazy strong doesn't help you here. Like, how are you going to catch 300 foxes? Yeah. no idea i mean i i wish i knew because this is uh this is a great mystery setting up traps everywhere i guess yeah i mean i was i was a trap i was a trapper when i was uh when i was in high school growing up and i mean i was lucky to catch a few coyotes and bobcats every year 300 alive i mean i don't know how he did it but anyway that's the story he catches 300 foxes could be jackals the Hebrew word's the same. So foxes are jackals. And so he ties, he takes two foxes and he ties

their tails together somehow. And then he puts a torch between these two tails. And then he sets fire to the torch. And then he released the foxes by the grain fields of the Philistines. And I guess the reason he did that i mean i've never i've never tied two dogs tails together but i'm assuming that when you do that they don't like running a straight line because they're like you know they're gonna circles or kind of zigzagging and so they're gonna be going all over the place and when they do of course this is what sam this is what samson wants they're setting fire to everything not just the grain fields but to uh the vineyards into the standing grain what they'd already harvested so there's fire everywhere so he's basically destroying their

economy is one way to one way to look at this by the way uh fun fact i learned this morning i don't know if this is uh this is behind this or not but there is a greek word it's a lamp for from two words like lump like lamp light bright that's the that's the one of it one word and the other word is tail so the greeks had a word that basically meant fire tail and it was a nickname they gave to foxes yeah and now the philistines came from the aegean which was a greek speaking area so i can't help but wonder like if samson like is making sort of a pun on this oh so you call foxes fire tails i'll show you fire tails anyway uh a little fun fact from the but he's blameless in this whole thing of course but he's totally blameless in all this so just

kind of wrap up this particular part of the story. The Philistines say, who did this? And somebody found out. They said it was Samson. Not just Samson, but the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion. Now, this makes no sense to me. Like, why would the Philistines want to take their vengeance out on Samson's would-be father-in-law and his uh almost bride but that's what they do they uh they came up and they burned her and her father with fire so this is one of those sad ironies the reason she pressed samson so much is because of course the the 30 companions of samson threatened to burn her and once she finally found out the riddle and gave it to him then everything kind of comes around and in the end

the very thing that she feared the most is what happened happened to her not a very happy ending this story no this is an interesting thing that he says here as he ends right is that if this is what you do i swear i will be avenged on you and after that i will quit famous last words yeah it's kind of a a leading leading expression right after that i will quit well uh don't worry if you don't know the story there's more to it because he's not going to quit he's got a whole lot more tricks up his sleeve after this we have to get to like a we got a donkey jaw bone coming up we got another uh little poetic uh expression of samson and then we have a lot more i mean he's gonna visit a prostitute in gaza he's gonna fall in love with delilah a lot more to the story a lot

lot more going on well all right uh that's that's what we'll uh that's where we'll leave it this week uh guys if you want to do us a favor during quarantine you're sitting around thinking what what should i do with all this time well probably you should go rate and review the podcast i mean like that out there's there's three minutes that you could fill uh so you go over to itunes rate and review five star review say a couple nice words uh makes the podcast more visible when when people are uh are searching for things so helps us out all right chad i will see you next week we'll be here see you then