Bible Study Judges 15
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Judges 15 · WEB

The Jawbone of a Donkey

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But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat, and said, "I will go in to my wife in her room." But her father wouldn't allow him to go in.
2Her father said, "I most certainly thought that you utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Isn't her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her instead."
3Samson said to them, "This time I will be blameless in regard to the Philistines if I harm them."
4Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned the foxes tail to tail, and put one torch between each pair of tails.
5When he had set the torches on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the olive groves.
6Then the Philistines said, "Who has done this?" They said, "Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion." The Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire.
7Samson said to them, "If you behave like this, surely I will be avenged of you, and after that I will cease."
8He struck them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; and he went down and lived in the cleft of the rock of Etam.
9Then the Philistines went up and encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi.
10The men of Judah said, "Why have you come up against us?" They said, "We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he has done to us."
11Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, "Don't you know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What is this that you have done to us?" He said to them, "As they did to me, so I have done to them."
12They said to him, "We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines." Samson said to them, "Swear to me that you will not fall on me yourselves."
13They spoke to him, saying, "No; but we will bind you fast and deliver you into their hand; but surely we will not kill you." They bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.
14When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him; and the Spirit of Yahweh came mightily on him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that was burned with fire, and his restraints dropped from his hands.
15He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, and struck a thousand men with it.
16Samson said, "With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps on heaps! With the jawbone of a donkey I have struck a thousand men."
17When he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone out of his hand; and that place was called Ramath Lehi.
18He was very thirsty, and called on Yahweh and said, "You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant; and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?"
19But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out of it. When he had drunk, his spirit came again and he revived. Therefore its name was called En Hakkore, which is in Lehi, to this day.
20He judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.
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Summary

When Samson returns to Timnah to reclaim his wife and finds she has been given to another man, he retaliates against the Philistines by destroying their crops with fire-bearing foxes. The Philistines then burn his wife and father-in-law, setting off a cycle of escalating violence. When Judah hands Samson over to the Philistines to appease them, the Spirit of Yahweh empowers him to break his bonds and slay a thousand men with a donkey's jawbone at Lehi. Exhausted and thirsty after the battle, Samson calls on God, and water miraculously springs from the hollow at Lehi, after which the chapter closes noting he judged Israel twenty years.

Themes

  • The escalating cycle of vengeance between Samson and the Philistines
  • The Spirit of Yahweh as the sole source of Samson's power
  • Israel's accommodation to Philistine rule — even binding their own deliverer
  • Samson's dependence on God in weakness contrasted with his independence in strength
  • God's provision of water as a sign of continued divine care despite Samson's flaws

Key verses

  • Judg 15:14 — “The Spirit of Yahweh came mightily on him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that was burned with fire.”
  • Judg 15:15 — “He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, and struck a thousand men with it.”
  • Judg 15:18 — “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant; and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?”
  • Judg 15:20 — “He judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.”

Context & background

Lehi (meaning "jawbone") was in the Shephelah foothills of modern central Israel, in the region between the Judean highlands and the Philistine coastal plain. The Sorek Valley (modern Nahal Sorek) and surrounding valleys were the agricultural heartland Samson targeted by burning the Philistine grain fields and olive groves. Etam, where Samson hid in the rock cleft, is likely in the hill country near modern Beit Shemesh in central Israel. The episode involving three thousand men of Judah willingly surrendering their deliverer to the enemy vividly illustrates how thoroughly Philistine domination had broken Israel's will to resist. En Hakkore ("spring of the one who called") commemorates God's response to Samson's prayer.

Cross-references

  • 1 Sam 14:6 — Jonathan's faith that God can save by many or by few, contrasting with Judah's defeatism before the Philistines
  • 2 Cor 12:9-10 — Power made perfect in weakness: Samson's thirst and dependence after his greatest victory illustrates this paradox
  • Ex 17:1-7 — Water from the rock at Meribah: God provides water for his people in the wilderness, echoed in the miraculous spring at Lehi
  • Heb 11:32 — Samson listed among the heroes of faith despite his moral failures
  • Ps 34:6 — "This poor man cried, and Yahweh heard him and saved him out of all his troubles" — Samson's prayer at Lehi fits this pattern

Check your reading

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  1. Observe

    What chain of events leads from Samson's return to Timnah all the way to the battle at Lehi?

  2. Observe

    What did Samson do and say immediately after his victory at Lehi (vv. 18-19)?

  3. Interpret

    What does the willingness of three thousand men of Judah to deliver Samson to the Philistines (vv. 11-13) reveal about Israel?

  4. Interpret

    Samson's prayer in verse 18 is the first recorded prayer of his life. What does the occasion reveal?

  5. Apply

    The cycle of "they hurt me, so I hurt them, so they hurt me" drives the whole chapter. How can such cycles be broken in our own relationships?

  6. Apply

    Samson only cried to God when he was at the end of his resources. How can your prayer life cultivate dependence before crisis?

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