Judges 14:5

Samson had seen a woman of the Philistines in Timnath and asked his father and mother to get her for him as his wife, and they objected to his taking a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines (Judges 14:1–3). Their objection stood on the law of Moses, which forbade Israel to intermarry with the peoples around them, because such marriages would turn their hearts to other gods (Deuteronomy 7:3–4). The law guarded Israel’s identity as God’s covenant people. Samson’s own calling made the matter weightier still, for he had been set apart as a Nazirite from the womb for the work of delivering Israel from the Philistines (Judges 13:5). The law of the Nazirite is given in Numbers 6.

Then the narrator tells us something hidden from Samson’s parents: “his father and his mother knew not that it was of the LORD, that he sought an occasion against the Philistines” (Judges 14:4). God was using even this marriage to bring about conflict with the Philistines, who were oppressing Israel in these years. The time of the Judges, around 1200 to 1000 BC, ran in a repeated cycle. Israel turned from God, a foreign power oppressed them, they cried out, and God raised up a judge to deliver them. The Philistines had settled the southwestern coastal plain of Canaan. They were well organized for war, had weapons of iron, and pressed hard on Israel’s land and faith.

The journey itself followed custom. Marriages were arranged between families, so Samson’s father and mother went down with him to negotiate the match even though they disliked his choice. They still carried a parent’s responsibility for their son, and they may have hoped to influence how things turned out. Zorah, Samson’s home, lay in the hill country of Dan and Timnath in the lowlands, so the road went down.

As they came to the vineyards of Timnath, “behold, a young lion roared against him.” Vineyards lay on the edge of the cultivated land, often bordering wilder country, and lions lived in the land in those days and were a real danger to travellers and flocks. David later told of a lion and a bear that took a lamb out of his flock (1 Samuel 17:34–37).

The word for the young lion is kᵉphîyr, a young male lion. Strong’s connects the word, with a “perhaps”, to a covering, which could be a lion’s mane. A young lion in its strength was a fearsome beast of prey. Its roar, shâʼag, is the deep, rumbling sound of a lion, and here the lion roars “against him”, so it is coming straight at Samson. The small word “behold” (wəhinnēh) marks how sudden and startling the moment was. Scripture uses the lion’s roar elsewhere for the voice of the LORD (Amos 3:8) and for the devil, who prowls like a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8).

The setting carries a quiet irony. A Nazirite was to eat nothing from the vine, neither grapes nor wine (Numbers 6:3–4), and here is Samson among the vineyards on the way to a forbidden marriage. Verse 5 says nothing of his eating anything there. Yet on this very road God first showed his power through him. The attack came at an unexpected moment, and God made it the occasion to confirm the strength he had promised at Samson’s birth, as the next verse shows.

Verse 6 names the source of Samson’s strength before it describes the deed: “the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him.” The word for Spirit is rûwach, from a verb meaning to blow or breathe, and it can mean wind, breath or spirit. Here it is the Spirit of the LORD himself, God’s own presence equipping a man for work far beyond his natural power. “Came mightily upon” translates tsâlach, a verb of rushing upon, breaking through and prevailing. The Spirit came on Samson suddenly and with overwhelming force.

This is how God raised up deliverers in this period. The Spirit of the LORD came upon Othniel (Judges 3:10) and upon Gideon (Judges 6:34), it came mightily upon Samson again at Lehi (Judges 15:14), and the Spirit of God came upon Saul when he rose to deliver his people (1 Samuel 11:6). The same God promised the disciples power when the Holy Spirit came upon them, to be his witnesses (Acts 1:8).

Samson “rent him as he would have rent a kid.” The verb shâçaʻ means to split or tear apart, and a kid, gᵉdîy, is a young goat. Tearing a lion was as easy for him as tearing a small goat. “He had nothing in his hand”, so he had no weapon or tool to help him. The whole victory came from the LORD.

Then comes the line that opens up Samson’s character: “but he told not his father or his mother what he had done.” ʼâb is father, a word that can also mean a chief or forefather, and ʼêm is simply mother. His parents had come with him on this journey, and he kept from them the first great sign of God’s power upon him. The verse gives no reason. His silence is the first of many secrets in his life, and his secrets, above all with Delilah, would in the end bring about his fall.

“And he went down, and talked with the woman; and she pleased Samson well.” The verb yârad means to go or come down, to descend, and here it describes the road from the hills of Zorah down to Timnath. Samson’s story takes him down toward the Philistines again and again, and that road fits the way his life moves step by step away from his consecration.

He “talked with the woman.” dâbar is the ordinary verb to speak or tell. Marriages were usually arranged by the parents, so Samson’s speaking with her himself shows him pursuing the match in person and by his own will, with his mind already made up.

“She pleased Samson well” uses yâshar, to be straight or even, and so to be right, pleasant or agreeable. The Hebrew pictures her as right in Samson’s eyes (ʻayin, eye), and the KJV gives the sense as “pleased Samson well”. He had said much the same to his parents in verse 3: “Get her for me; for she pleaseth me well.” Meeting her confirmed his first impression and hardened his resolve.

The phrase echoes the refrain near the end of Judges, where “every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6, 21:25). Samson chooses by what is right in his own eyes, while what is right in God’s eyes, set out in his covenant, is pushed aside. Proverbs warns of a way that looks right to a man and ends in the ways of death (Proverbs 14:12).

“And after a time he returned to take her.” The interval was long enough, likely some months to a year, for the lion’s carcass to dry out. Samson was now going down to take his bride, the next step in the marriage. On the way “he turned aside to see the carcase of the lion”, leaving the road on purpose, perhaps from curiosity or to revisit the place of his secret victory. That choice led him to what he found.

The word for carcase here is mappeleth, from the idea of a fall, and it can mean a ruin as well as a carcass or corpse. In the fallen lion there was “a swarm of bees and honey”. The word for swarm, ʻêdâh, means a stated assemblage, a family or crowd, and the KJV translates it congregation and multitude as well as swarm. So this was a whole colony of bees settled in the body. Honey, dᵉbash, is the sweet substance made by bees or from fruit such as dates, grapes or figs, and it was prized in Israel. God had promised Israel “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8).

Bees seldom nest in a carcass, but it can happen. In a hot, dry climate a large carcass can dry hard like a shell and leave a hollow space that bees can use. The “behold” marks it as a surprising sight all the same, and its meaning lies in the surprise: something sweet and living came out of the body of a dead beast of prey.

This find is the source of Samson’s riddle at his wedding feast: “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness” (Judges 14:14). The secret he kept on the road became the puzzle he set the Philistines, and the conflict that followed grew out of it.

“And he took thereof in his hands, and went on eating.” The verb is râdâh, which usually means to tread down or rule, and can also mean to take. Here it describes Samson taking the honey out of the carcass in his hands, which put his hands inside the dead lion’s body. “Went on eating” pictures him eating as he walked, more than a single taste.

He came to his father and mother, “and he gave them, and they did eat”. Then the verse closes as verse 6 did: “but he told not them that he had taken the honey out of the carcase of the lion.” Here the carcase is named with another Hebrew word, gᵉvîyâh, a dead body or corpse, of man or beast. The verb for telling, nâgad, means to put something in front of someone, to make it known and declare it. Samson held back what he could have declared.

The likeliest reason for his silence is that he knew what he had done was forbidden. Taking food out of a carcass went against the purity laws and his Nazirite consecration, and telling his parents would have shown them that the honey had made them unclean as well. Hiding it let him avoid giving an account and keep up an appearance of innocence. Secrecy marks his dealings with Delilah too, until the day he told her the secret of his strength (Judges 16:17).

Samson’s victory over the lion points ahead to Jesus Christ. Samson faced a beast of prey, and every one of us faces the enemy Peter describes: “your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). The Spirit of the LORD came upon Samson, and God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power (Acts 10:38). Christ is the true Lion of the tribe of Judah (Revelation 5:5), who came to overcome sin, death and the devil himself. He won by his death on the cross and his resurrection, triumphing over the principalities and powers and making a public show of them (Colossians 2:15). His victory is the strength in which believers now stand firm against the spiritual powers that oppose them, clothed in the whole armour of God (Ephesians 6:10–12).

The riddle points to him as well. Sin, death and the devil held mankind captive, and from the cross, which looked like death’s triumph, came the sweetness of salvation and eternal life. Christ is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). His resurrection brings new life to all who believe (Romans 6:4), and death is swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54–57).

Samson also stands in contrast to him. Samson went down to the Philistines to please himself, while Jesus came down from heaven to do the will of the Father who sent him (John 6:38) and was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8). Samson defiled himself in secret, and Christ is holy and undefiled, separate from sinners (Hebrews 7:26). John the Baptist spoke of one mightier than himself who was coming after him (Mark 1:7), the stronger deliverer to whom Samson’s strength points. He took away our sin by being made sin for us, though he knew no sin, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). The sweetness he gives is pure and freely given.

These five verses show a God who works where we would least look for him. He sent his Spirit on a man whose choices were wrong, on a road that led toward a forbidden marriage, and still moved forward his plan to deliver Israel. The same LORD brings good out of what threatens and what has died, as a cut-down tree may sprout again (Job 14:7) and those who sow in tears reap in joy (Psalm 126:5). He works all things together for good to them that love him (Romans 8:28).

Samson’s silence belongs to the lesson as well. The strength was God’s gift, and the secret was Samson’s own. What he hid on the road to Timnath was small, a handful of honey, and the pattern it began cost him his eyes and his freedom. The power at work in God’s servants has always been his, given for his work, and the honey in the lion is a sign that the sweetness is his too.