Samson Gets Married – Cheaters never prosper

Remember, a Nazarite can never touch anything dead, not even a recently deceased relative

Sabretooth

After Samson reached adulthood, I imagine he looked and acted a lot like Tyler Mane’s portrayal of Sabretooth in X-Men. I consider this mental image to be helpful when trying to understand Samson’s behaviour.

Anyway, after he was old enough to be interested in women Samson took a walk through Timnath. He saw a philistine girl there “dressed so fine and lookin’ so pretty” and he knew he “got to have her, she’s a one-of-a-kind.” When he got home he told his father about the girl and demanded that a marriage be arranged. His parent’s were concerned that he wanted a philistine wife and asked him to consider an Israeli woman, but Samson would not be dissuaded.

While Samson was going down to Timnath with his parents to arrange the marriage, Samson came across a lion. The spirit of the Lord came upon Samson and he ripped the lion in half, but he didn’t tell his parents. I’m pretty sure that it’s considered bad form for a Nazarite to rip an animal in half, if not banned outright. Fortunately the trip was a success and the marriage was arranged. Later, when Samson was on his way to collect the unnamed girl he stopped to check on the lion. He discovered that bees were living in the corpse and had produced a sizable amount of honey. Samson broke the rule about touching dead things and collected the honey. He ate a bunch of the honey and gave the rest to his parents, who also ate and were not told about it coming from a corpse.

So Samson and his unnamed philistine bride were married and Samson threw a feast. 30 young men attended the feast and Samson decided to show them who was boss. He proposed a contest: Samson would put forth a riddle, if the men guessed it Samson would give them 30 sheets and 30 sets of clothing; if they did not guess, the men would have to give Samson 30 sheets and 30 sets of clothing.

Here’s the riddle: Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.

After seven days the 30 youths couldn’t figure out the riddle so they went to have a chat with Samson’s unnamed wife. They said, “Listen up she who must not be named. You need to get the answer to the riddle from your husband or we are going to burn you and your family to death.”

She who must not be named didn’t want to die so she started to harass Samson for the answer. She cried and said, “You hate me. You don’t love me at all. You put forth a riddle to the youths of my people and have not told me the meaning.” Samson didn’t feel like giving up the answer so he said, “Listen woman, I haven’t even told my parents, why should I tell you?” She who must not be named had some really good motivation so she just kept crying and harassing Samson. After seven days of this, Samson finally relented and told her about the lion and the honey.

After learning the riddle’s meaning she who must not be named immediately told the philistine youths who then approached Samson and said, “What is sweeter than honey? And what is stronger than a lion?” They presented the answer in the form of a question to fool Samson into thinking they hadn’t been fed the answer by his wife. Samson saw straight through this and said, “You would never have figured it out if my new wife wasn’t such a stupid, traitorous slutty slut slut.” Samson was mad. He was really mad. He walked straight down to Ashkelon, killed 30 random men, took their stuff, and gave it to the 30 youths who found the answer. Then he ditched his new wife and moved back in with his parents.

Samson: some men just specialize in class.

Ref: Judges 14