The Chosen Key Word in this Chapter is “Avenge” it comes from the Hebrew Word “naqam” which means “to avenge, vengeance.”
A cycle of revenge between Samson and the Philistines spirals into an all-out feud. Welcome to Bible Life Basics Chapter Reviews, I am Chris and this is Judges 15.
Samson returns to visit his wife, only to discover her father has given her to another man, offering her younger sister instead as a replacement. Enraged, Samson catches three hundred foxes, ties them together in pairs by their tails with a firebrand between them, and releases them into the Philistines’ standing grain, burning up their entire harvest, including vineyards and olive groves. When the Philistines learn why, they burn Samson’s wife and her father to death in retaliation, and Samson responds by slaughtering many of them himself before retreating to a rock cleft.
When the Philistines invade Judah demanding Samson be handed over, three thousand men of Judah come to bind him and deliver him, and Samson agrees, allowing them to bind him with new ropes, on the condition they do not kill him themselves. As he is brought to the Philistines, the Spirit of the Lord comes upon him powerfully, and the ropes on his arms become like burnt flax, falling off completely. Finding the jawbone of a freshly killed donkey nearby, Samson uses it to kill a thousand Philistine men single-handedly.
Afterward, Samson names the place “Ramathlehi,” and becomes extremely thirsty, crying out to God, “avenge,” “naqam” in Hebrew, that he should die of thirst after such a great deliverance. God graciously splits open a hollow place, and water gushes out, reviving Samson’s spirit. He judges Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines, a period marked far more by personal vendetta and individual conflict than by any organized national deliverance.
Even in the middle of Samson’s deeply personal cycle of revenge, God still provides for him miraculously when he genuinely cries out in need. This pattern runs throughout Samson’s entire story, flawed, self-driven motives mixed together with real moments of God’s Spirit working powerfully through him regardless.
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