Commentaria in Judices
Virgil, at the end of the Georgics, relates, or rather fables, that bees flew to the boy Jove, who afterwards became king of Crete, and after death a god and prince of the gods, and filled his mouth with honey, and so nourished him. Moreover, bees, as Pliny, Virgil, Plutarch, Columella and others attest, whom Ulysses Aldrovandus cites and follows in his treatise On Bees, are wont to be born naturally from the bodies of dead oxen, and the king of the bees from the head of the ox itself, the rest from the remaining body. Why may they not also be born from the carcass of a lion? Although here they are not said to have been born from the lion, but to have settled in its mouth, namely flying about through the flowers of the field in which the lion’s carcass lay, they entered its mouth, built a comb in it, and stored their honey there as usual. Finally God, directing Samson by the Angel, brought it about that bees were born from the lion’s carcass, or, born elsewhere, flew into the lion’s mouth and made honey there, on account of the deeds of Samson that followed from it, and the mysteries which God wished to represent by this, of which presently. So in the tomb of Hippocrates, prince of physicians (as his Life has it), a swarm of bees was found making honey for a long time; likewise in the head of Onesilus, already emptied, as Herodotus testifies.
Allegorically, the lion signified Christ, for he is the Lion of the tribe of Juda, Gen. xlix, and Apoc. iv and v, who by his death overcame death, sin, the demon and hell. Hence from him after death came forth the honey of the Eucharist, and a swarm of bees, that is, an innumerable multitude of the faithful and the saints. So St. Augustine, whose words I shall soon cite.
Moreover Abulensis and Lyranus think that these bees born from the lion were fouler and viler, because the lion’s smell and breath is heavy, which bees cleanly flee. As in Sardinia the honey is bitter, because the bees there feed on wormwood, which is bitter, as Pliny testifies, book XXI, 13. But Serarius and others think the contrary; for it is the living lion’s breath that is heavy, not the dead lion’s. Would the Lord give vile honey to his servant? Would Samson give it to his parents, and, as Josephus would have it, to his betrothed? In the most generous of animals I judge also the bees were most generous, and the honey given by God to Samson most generous, which he did not falsely praise below, verse 14.
12. I WILL PROPOSE TO YOU A RIDDLE,—In Hebrew chidah, that is a riddle; for properly this was an enigma, that is an obscure, secret and involved proposition.
14. OUT OF THE EATER CAME FORTH MEAT, AND OUT OF THE STRONG CAME FORTH SWEETNESS.—Behold this is the riddle, that is the enigma, proposed by Samson to the young Philistines at the feast. For it was the custom of the ancients to propose to the guests at a banquet enigmas and similar riddles, with a reward promised to the solver, as I showed on Ecclesiasticus chap. xxxii, verses 4 and 5. The same is plain from Plutarch and Athenaeus On the Banquets of the Wise: “No less,” says Macrobius, book VII of the Saturnalia, chap. x, “than the sweetness of wine do words cheer a banquet; and to the liquor of the bowl, born for gladness, there must be applied a moderation by the admixture not only of the nymphs but also of the muses.”
Bees might fly about it. Hence bees were seen to settle on the mouths of Pindar, Plato and St. Ambrose, so that settling on their mouths they signified their honeyed eloquence.
In the Hebrew there is a beautiful play on words; for it has, out of the eater came forth something eatable. The sense is, as if to say: From the mouth of the lion, who is wont to devour other animals, came a honeycomb, which is a most sweet food; and from the strong, that is from the same lion, who is the strongest of animals, went forth sweetness, that is most sweet honey; namely the lion slain by me furnished honey, to signify that the heroic acts of my fortitude would bring forth for me and for anyone else wonderful pleasure, joy, happiness and glory.
Allegorically, St. Augustine, sermon 107 On the Time: “Out of the eater,” he says, “came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. What else does this signify than Christ rising from the dead? Out of the eater, that is out of death, which devours and consumes all things, came forth that food who said: I am the living bread which came down from heaven, whom human iniquity embittered, and to whom it offered the bitterness of vinegar and gall, and by whom the people of the Gentiles, converted, received the sweetness of life, as if from the mouth of the dead lion, that is from the death of Christ, who lay down and slept like a lion, there came forth a swarm of bees, that is of Christians.”
June, chap. xi; reading with some Greek codices (which for “strong” have “bitter”: out of the bitter came forth sweet, he adds, but it also may be laborious; for sweetness comes forth from sadness or labour; hence also Hebrew az signifies hard, bitter); for in temptations and labours overcome, as in lions slain, most sweet honeycombs of consolations, joys and rewards are found; wherefore “Christ tasted honeycombs after gall,” says Tertullian. The Martyrs did the same, of whom Samson here exhibits an express type. So Paul rejoices that he was delivered from the mouth of the lion, that is of Nero, 2 Tim. iv, 17. For “the fruit of good labours is glorious, and the root of wisdom never faileth,” Wis. iii, 15. This is “to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the hardest stone.” Wherefore St. Ambrose, in the place already cited, teaches that bitter things are to be preferred to sweet, and sweet things to be tempered with them, and especially feasts with fasting: “Our very bodies,” he says, “are often puffed up by sweet things and the liver is stretched with honey; yet the same food is tempered by bitterness. Therefore it is no moderate but a praised question: Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong sweetness.”
The same Ambrose, in the book On Tobias, chap. xv, explains this enigma of almsgiving: “Out of the eater,” he says, “came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweet.” The Greek has also “out of the bitter.” “So we find. Yet it is understood of the strong, because the lion is strong in fierceness: and what is fierce is bitter. And from you, who have devoured money and avarice, let mercy go forth. For this is the food of the needy. And out of the bitter let sweet come forth, that you may forgive him who has not wherewith to pay.”
Moreover between the lion and the bee there are many analogies. First, in colour, which is tawny in both, and in complexion, which is in both fiery and choleric. Secondly, in strength; for the bee, though small, puts all to flight with its sting. Thirdly, in nobility; for the bee is noble, and suffers nothing impure. Fourthly, in industry, in which the bee surpasses the lion; for it labours assiduously and makes combs, and in them honey and wax. Fifthly, in bringing forth; for the lion first bears five cubs; then fewer, and at last one, then none; so also the bee at first produces more little bees, then fewer and smaller, and at last none. So Aldrovandus on the bee.