Commentaria in Judices
Chapter 15
Samson, on account of his wife taken from him and given to another, sets fire to the crops of the Philistines by 150 torches tied to the tails of three hundred foxes; wherefore the Philistines burn his wife with her father. Soon, verse 8, Samson strikes them with a great slaughter. Wherefore they gather an army and demand Samson from the Jews; these give him up bound, but he, breaking the ropes, kills a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, verse 15. Then, thirsty, by praying he draws water from the same jawbone, and quenches his thirst, verse 19.
1. But after a little while, when the days of the wheat harvest were at hand, Samson came, being desirous to visit his wife, and brought her a kid of the goats. And when he would have gone into her chamber as usual, her father hindered him, saying: 2. I thought that thou hadst hated her, and therefore I gave her to thy friend; but she hath a sister, who is younger and fairer than she, let her be thy wife instead of her. 3. And Samson answered him: From this day there will be no blame in me against the Philistines; for I will do you evils. 4. And he went and caught three hundred foxes, and tied their tails to tails, and put firebrands between them; 5. and setting them on fire, he let the foxes go, that they might run about hither and thither. And they presently went into the corn of the Philistines. Which being set on fire, both the corn that was already bound in sheaves, and that which was yet standing on the stalk, was burnt, so that the flame consumed also the vineyards and oliveyards. 6. And the Philistines said: Who hath done this thing? And it was said to them: Samson, the son-in-law of the Thamnathite, because he took away his wife and gave her to another, hath done these things. And the Philistines went up and burnt both her and her father. 7. And Samson said to them: Although you have done this, yet I will be revenged of you, and then I will be quiet. 8. And he smote them with a great slaughter, so that, astonished, they put the leg upon the thigh. And going down he dwelt in a cave of the rock Etam. 9. Then the Philistines going up into the land of Juda, camped in the place which afterwards was called Lechi, that is, the Jawbone, where their army was spread abroad. 10. And the men of the tribe of Juda said to them: Why are you come up against us? They answered: We are come to bind Samson, and to repay him for what he hath done against us. 11. Then three thousand men of Juda went down to the cave of the rock Etam, and said to Samson: Knowest thou not that the Philistines rule over us? why hast thou done this? He said to them: As they did to me, so have I done to them. 12. We are come to bind thee, said they, and to deliver thee into the hands of the Philistines. And Samson said to them: Swear and promise me that you will not kill me. 13. They said: We will not kill thee, but will deliver thee bound. And they bound him with two new cords, and brought him from the rock Etam. 14. And when he was come to the place of the Jawbone, and the Philistines shouting met him, the Spirit of the Lord came strongly upon him; and as flax is wont to be consumed at the approach of fire, so the bands with which he was bound were broken and loosed. 15. And finding a jawbone, that is, the cheek-bone of an ass, which lay there, he took it up, and slew with it a thousand men. 16. And he said: With the jawbone of an ass, with the cheek-bone of the colt of asses, I have destroyed them, and have slain a thousand men. 17. And when he had made an end of speaking these words, singing, he cast the jawbone out of his hand, and called the name of that place Ramathlechi, which is interpreted the lifting up of the jawbone. 18. And being very thirsty, he cried to the Lord, and said: Thou hast given this exceeding great salvation and victory into the hand of thy servant; and behold I die for thirst, and shall fall into the hands of the uncircumcised. 19. Then the Lord opened a molar tooth in the jawbone of the ass, and waters came out of it. And when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he recovered strength. Therefore the name of that place was called, The fountain of him that called upon [God] out of the jawbone, until this day. 20. And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.
3. FROM THIS DAY THERE WILL BE NO BLAME IN ME AGAINST THE PHILISTINES; FOR I WILL DO YOU EVILS,—as if to say: I shall avenge the injury done me in the taking away of my wife; wherefore impute to yourselves the disasters to be inflicted by me, not to me. For I have not done you injury, but you have done it to me. The fault is therefore yours, yours also shall be the penalty. Moreover Samson chiefly intended to avenge the public injuries done to the whole people by the Philistines, but, passing these over in silence, he alleges to them his own private ones; that the Philistines might turn their anger and arms not against the whole people, but against himself alone. For he challenged them all as it were to a duel, which was a work of heroic fortitude, and likewise of prudence and charity towards his own countrymen and citizens, that he might make them immune from the Philistines’ vengeance.
4. HE CAUGHT THREE HUNDRED FOXES.—Hence it is plain that Samson was as cunning as he was strong, since he overcame and caught by guile foxes so full of guile. That saying is trite: “An old fox is not caught by a snare;” but he knew how to play the fox with foxes, and did what Lysander said: “If the lion’s skin is not enough, sew on to it the fox’s hide,” that is, what you cannot do by strength, do by cunning. And that of Pindar, On Melissus, ode 4: “He, like in spirit to the boldness of lions roaring heavily in the toil of the hunt; but in craft a fox, which, lying on its back, checks the swoop of the eagle; but one must, whatever one does, undermine the adversary.” Add that God, through the Angel favouring Samson’s acts, gathered these foxes in the place and manner in which he knew they could be easily caught by Samson, as he led all the animals to Noe at the time of the flood, that he might preserve them and their kind in the ark, or certainly suggested to Samson the art and method of catching these foxes. Moreover Judea, and especially the tribe of Dan, abounds in woodland pastures, whence in the tribe of Dan there was a place Salebim, in which there were foxes, chap. i, 35, as the Septuagint render. Hence also that of Cant. ii: “Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vines.” So Julius Caesar gave Rome a spectacle of four hundred lions. Probus a hundred thousand pounds of spiders and flies, as Lampridius and Vopiscus testify in their Lives, and Pliny, book VIII, chap. xvi. What wonder if Samson collected three hundred foxes? He collected them both that they might not lay waste the vineyards of his fellow citizens, and that they might set fire to the crops of the Philistines. So he benefited his fellow citizens as much as he harmed his enemies. AND TIED THEIR TAILS TO TAILS.—Samson did not wish to tie torches to single foxes, though Abulensis thinks so, lest they should each hide in their dens and extinguish the torches, but tied single torches to the tails of pairs of foxes, so that while one tries to escape the torches this way, another that, they flee into fields full of crops and set them on fire. Again, that he might impose on them the delay necessary for setting fire to all the crops, while one fox fleeing the other stops, or hastens to dash elsewhere. AND PUT FIREBRANDS BETWEEN THEM.—For “torches” the Hebrew is lappidim, that is brands, torches, firebrands of pine, cedar, cypress and other resinous matter, which easily catch fire, and long nourish and retain it. The Hebrew is: He turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the middle of the two tails. The tails of the foxes were therefore not entwined or bound by Samson; for this would have been difficult and an impediment to the foxes’ running, but the tails of each fox being firmly joined, and a rope drawn rather long, Samson tied the middle brand or torch, that it might be drawn the more strongly by the pair, and less retained by stubble or obstacles in the way: but if anywhere it were entangled, it would be freed by the sharp and cunning wit of the foxes. Moreover these foxes, fleeing the fire which continually followed at their tails (for foxes greatly dread fire), took refuge in the crops, to lie hid in them, thinking they could escape the fire; and fleeing again from these set on fire by themselves, they ran into other and other crops, and likewise sent fire into them; wherefore they set on fire very many not only crops but also vineyards and oliveyards. Samson therefore here inflicted immense damage on the Philistines.
The Emperor a thousand, likewise a thousand leopards, a thousand deer, a thousand boars, a thousand ibexes, a thousand ostriches; Heliogabalus collected a thousand weasels, as many shrews, ten thousand mice.