38 – Samson & The Goat

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The parallels between Samson and Yeshua continue in this chapter as Samson presents himself with a goat which parallels Yeshua BEING the goat!

Judges 15:1  But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat. He said, “I will go in to my wife’s room.” But her father wouldn’t allow him to go in. 

It may be that Samson betrothed his wife at Passover which makes this reference to the wheat harvest to be at Shavuot, the giving of the Holy Spirit to Israel at Mount Sinai. It was soon after the wheat harvest that Moses was on the mountain again getting instructions on how to live in YHVH’s “house”, His Kingdom, for 40 days and nights. It was now that Samson would bring YHVH’s Spirit to his wife and to consummate their marriage.

“Samson visited his wife with a young goat”. The goat stands out in the account of Samson. Samuel compared the killing of the lion to nothing more than the killing of the goat for Samson. That Yom Kippur goat named “YHVH” slaughtered the roaring lion with little effort. A little effort was required, but it was little effort. It was the effort of an annual Yom Kippur which will remain through eternity according to Leviticus 16:34, albeit not in the same fashion as in the beginning. The bigger effort was when Yeshua came to BE the goat that was slaughtered.

So here we have again a goat. It was a gift of forgiveness from Samson to his wife for her sniveling attitude and betrayal of him at their wedding. Yom Kippur is a gift of mercy for Israel from YHVH over the golden calf incident when she fornicated with a molten metal image. Samson wanted to be reconciled with his wife and YHVH wants to be reconciled with His. That is the work of the cross. Thus, we have the goat at Yom Kippur with YHVH’s name on it that came to die for Israel’s restoration, and through that death and resurrection, all the world can come to be Israelites and have eternal life.

Judges 15:2  Her 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.” 

Did you notice how the father of the bride had not made any effort to find out Samson’s intentions regarding the marriage to his daughter? The father did not go to see Samson or call Samson to see him to find out if Samson still wanted her now that she had betrayed him. The bride, apparently, made no effort, either! They simply cast Samson away! And then when he showed up again:

“Isn’t her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her, instead.” It is the way of the world to offer a consolation prize instead of being true and faithful to their word. They judge, they judge wrongly, and then expect the one they betray to be OK with that. We don’t need to be OK with betrayal. Betrayals can only be resolved through repentance. This Philistine father showed that he was not about to repent. Nothing could have been done about the situation but perhaps if he had asked for forgiveness, instead of trying to give Samson a consolation prize, the thing that happened next might not have happened.

The world is not trustworthy. Samson was trustworthy. He kept his marriage vow but his wife’s father had her break her vow. The devil and his family care nothing for keeping their word or the vows.

Judges 15:3  Samson said to them, “This time I will be blameless in the case of the Philistines, when I harm them.” 

The Greek reads differently. It says, “I am innocent this once” when he harms the Philistines. To harm the Philistines, YHVH’s Spirit came on him. Samson was not acting of his own accord. He was acting out YHVH’s retaliation for the world of the Philistines messing with His “woman”!

This time, and when he killed those 30 Philistines to pay the bet when they cheated (Judges 14:19), Samson was acting righteously because YHVH was in it. It wasn’t that Samson couldn’t afford the 30 new garments and new changes of clothing. It was that the companions did not deserve new garments and changes of clothing. He could have simply said he would not pay because they had plowed with his heifer but they deserved no clothing. Instead, YHVH’s Spirit came on him because YHVH was using Samson to stir up the Philistines against Israel so Israel would stop being happy being ruled by them. They deserved punishment. So, with that statement, “I am innocent this once”, Samson is not apologizing for the previous incident of the garments, nor is he apologizing for what was to come. He likely was already feeling YHVH’s Spirit moving in him when he said those words. That was YHVH’s doing. Samson was only declaring his innocence ahead of what he was about to do now that his wife is remarried to someone else without there even being a proper divorce, no word from the father as to Samson’s intentions or anything! Do you see how the world abuses YHVH’s people and then they act all innocent like they have the right to abuse?

Judges 15:4  Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the middle between every two tails. 

The number “3” keeps showing up in Samson’s story. There is 3, then 30, and now 300. The increases indicate the increase in the strength of the situation with YHVH’s divine involvement. It indicates the prophetic escalation of Tribulation.

The foxes represent desolation and devastation. The 300 foxes speak about the magnitude of YHVH’s punishment against the world for messing with His wife.

Judges 15:5  When 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. 

This is what the vengeance of YHVH looks like against His enemies who are also Israel’s enemies. Yeshua took a whip to money changers. He overthrew their money. The world relies on money for its power, so that is where YHVH starts.

Revelation 6:3  When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come!”
Revelation 6:4  Another came out, a red horse. To him who sat on it was given power to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another. There was given to him a great sword. 

Revelation 6:1 opens with the white horse the rider of which will cause the coming economic devastation. So with the foxes, there is judgement against the Philistines.

Judges 15:6  Then 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. 

The Philistines then kill their own people to show Samson a lesson. The world is stupid like that. The world believes if they oppress their own people, the people will never rise up against them. This is “rule by fear”. YHVH rules through love, something the world knows nothing about.

Judges 15:7  And Samson said to them, Though you have done this, yet I will be avenged of you, and after that I will stop. -MKJV 

It was not Samson’s intention that the Philistines would turn on their own people to burn them with fire. So now, in this escalation, he took revenge for the killing of his ex-wife and her father.

Judges 15:8  He struck them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; and he went down and lived in the cave in Etam’s rock. 

Samson slaughtered any and all of the Philistines who had anything to do with burning his ex-wife and her father. It was such a great slaughter that he had to hide afterward. Samuel does not tell us how many men Samson killed but there was more to come.

Samuel does not say if YHVH’s Spirit came on Samson. However, the victory Samson got over the Philistines appears like the work of YHVH in him.

Judges 15:9  Then the Philistines went up, encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi.
Judges 15:10  The 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.” 

Interestingly, the leadership in Israel was already shifting from Ephraim to Judah at this point. It is true that Etam was closer to both the Philistines and to Judah than Ephraim’s territory but if Samson had really wanted to hide himself, he could have taken refuge in Shiloh or somewhere else with the Ephraimites. That would have not led to the prophetic acts of the men of Judah, however. Remembering that Samson’s life was highly prophetic of the Messiah, Yeshua, Samson needed to be in Judah’s territory.

Judges 15:11  Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave in Etam’s rock, and said to Samson, “Don’t you know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” He said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.” 

The tribe of Judah was not willing to defend Israel. Three thousand from the tribe of Judah, along with thousands from the other tribes, may have had a successful war against the Philistines. But they were not willing. They preferred the Philistines ruling over them rather than YHVH ruling over them. The New Testament shows us that the Jewish leaders bowed to Rome. Here, Judah’s leaders bowed to the Philistines.

Judges 15:12  They 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 attack me yourselves.”
Judges 15:13  They spoke to him, saying, “No; but we will bind you securely, and deliver you into their hands; but surely we will not kill you.” They bound him with two new ropes, and brought him up from the rock. 

“Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.” Samson could likely have killed many of the tribe of Judah but his mission was not their destruction. It was their salvation. So, just as they would, in about 1100 years, deliver Yeshua into the hands of Rome, the tribe of Judah will now hand Samson over to the Philistines.

Judges 15:14  When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him. Then Yahweh’s Spirit came mightily on him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that was burned with fire, and his bands dropped from off his hands. 

The Philistines shouted at Samson that great roar of a mighty army to intimidate him. Little did they know how Samson was only YHVH’s instrument and YHVH can’t be intimidated. It was YHVH Himself who they faced in battle.

Judges 15:15  He [Samson] found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, put out his hand, took it, and struck a thousand men with it. 

Here is another place where Christian commentators say Samson broke his Nazirite vow. I showed you last time that Nazirites were not prohibited from touching dead animal carcasses over and above what the Law says about that for all Israelites. Neither was this a sin. He was simply unclean until sundown.

The jawbone of the ass (donkey) has 2 expressions. First, it is through the mouth with its jawbones that the ass breys its funny sound. This is what the shout of the Philistines was like to YHVH: the breying of an ass. The Philistines were only as much trouble as 1 ass to YHVH.

The second expression of the jawbone of the ass was in its metaphor of the Philistines being just a bunch of asses!

Let’s talk about the number of Philistines Samson killed under YHVH’s strength. Deuteronomy 32:30 says, “How could one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, and Yahweh had delivered them up?”

That verse is in regard to how Israel would be sold to their enemies for their disobedience in the Song of Moses. However, because Samson was delivered to his enemy by his own people, YHVH reversed the curse by having him chase 1,000 instead of the Philistines getting control of him. This is because Samson was called for just this. In the life of Yeshua, no matter what the Jewish leaders planned for Him, they could not accomplish it. It was only when He, like Samson, handed Himself over to them that they had control.

Last week, my friend Dawn Hagedorn commented in the Midrash that the roaring lion Samson killed, and from which came the honey, has a “Lion of Judah” aspect to it. She is right. But before He could be the Lion of Judah, Yeshua, could chase the “1,000”, He had to let himself be bound and handed over to Israel’s enemy, as I have already said. But it was His resurrection which made Him the Lion of Judah and that got the victory of the 1 that chases 1,000. Thus, at the cross, He overturned the curses against Israel which we will see. It will be only the end times generation that actually sees that roaring Lion of Judah’s strength on earth. We call Yeshua the “Lion of Judah” already but we must wait for Him to come and pounce on the enemy to get that enormous victory. Samson’s great victory prophesies about this. The trouble in the world will keep escalating until the destruction meets this magnitude of 1 divine King obliterating the world as did Samson the Philistines.

Judges 15:16  Samson said, “With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps on heaps; with the jawbone of a donkey I have struck a thousand men.” 

Commentators say Samson was boasting in his own strength. No, indeed! “Heaps on heaps”, he said, as if he himself could not believe what had just happened. Notice he was not speaking with anyone. He was just there with 1,000 dead bodies! A person boasts in the presence of others. As there was no one around for him to boast to, he was not boasting, but was in awe of what had just happened and was expressing it.

Remember, the Philistines had great and advanced weaponry for their day. Those long iron swords could so quickly behead a man or slice him in half. Yet, there was YHVH using Samson’s body in ways that Samson had never done before. Moving in to kill each Philistine soldier as they surrounded him. Don’t you think you would look with amazement at such a scene and open your mouth in wonder if this were you? And wouldn’t you just speak into the air? I know I would. No, Samson was not boasting. He was expressing amazement!

Judges 15:17  When he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone out of his hand; and that place was called Ramath Lehi. 

The tribe of Judah, and even all Israel, must have known about this incident. Don’t you think someone from that 3,000 man tribe of Judah army saw it from a distance? Don’t think maybe all of the tribe of Judah army, or most of them, watched from a distance? This all happened rather quickly. It was like it was today that Samson was handed over and then the Philistines waited for 2 weeks before trying to kill him. No! the 3,000 man army of Judah was right there in the line of sight. And still, no. Samson was not boasting to Judah about the victory. We will see that in the next verse when he called on YHVH.

Judges 15:18  He was very thirsty, and called on YHVH, 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 hands of the uncircumcised?” 

For the first time in his entire account, we now read Samson called on YHVH. This sounds kind of like what the Israelites said to YHVH in the wilderness, doesn’t it? “Did you bring us out here to kill us”? But it is not. Don’t be so quick to criticize Samson. What he said was not at all disrespectful of YHVH and shows us that Samson had a personal relationship with Him. He thanked YHVH for giving him the victory and then asked if it was time for him to die of thirst and be given over to the Philistines.

Why did he say it this way to YHVH? Samson understood his mission. He knew a time would come when he would be turned over to the Philistines. Remember, the Spirit began to move in him in Mahaneh Dan when he was a younger man. Yeshua also knew He would be turned over to his enemies. Samson was wondering if now was his time. It was not.

Judges 15:19  But 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. 

Samson’s body was worn out from YHVH’s Holy Spirit using him to fight the Philistines. Samson’s own spirit had to come back to him. He was completely spent! This is why he may not have even known the tribe of Judah was watching this whole incident. If Samson had known they were there, he might have asked them for water. But he did not know they were there when he was speaking about the great slaughter YHVH had done through him. He had been completely devoid of his own spirit to the point of dying of thirst.

Judges 15:20  He judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines. 

This next chapter begins to illustrate more of the fallen spiritual condition of Israel than it does of the Messiah. I hope, though, you can now see how Samson paralleled Yeshua while simultaneously embodying the sins of Israel but that these were not happening at the same time. In other words, when Samson was doing YHVH’s work, there was no sin in him in the doing. YHVH does not mix the Messianic parallels with Samson’s own sins. Understanding of this is lacking in Christian commentaries.

It pains me how Christian commentators so harshly criticize Samson by mixing into the stories that Samson was sinning when he was under the influence of YHVH. YHVH kept the Messianic parallels of Samson separate from his sins. And we will now see this in stark contrast as both Samson and Israel are shown to be in a fallen state. But that is for next time. Samson was, after all, an Israelite who carried the nation’s full sinful weaknesses in his own body just as Yeshua did on the cross. Had it not been for Samson’s calling and how YHVH used him mightily, we would not have this account.