For five or six days the young men tried as hard as possible to guess the answer, but without success. Then they urged Sam'son's wife to find out the answer, threatening to set fire to her house if she failed. They also accused her of marrying a foreigner in order to rob her own people. Under the pressure of these threats, she begged and cried to her husband until he told her the answer to the riddle. Then she told the young men, and they waited until the close of the seventh day before they said to Sam'son, "We have the answer. What is sweeter than honey? And what is stronger than a lion?"
Sam'son was not slow in detecting the treachery of the young Phi-lis'tines, so he charged them at once with underhanded plottings with his wife. Their scheme had been so unfair that he would have been justified in refusing to pay the things which had been promised. Rather than be charged with failure to keep his word, however, Sam'son took advantage of the occasion to begin his mission of smiting the Phi-lis'tines. He went to the Phi-lis'tine stronghold of Ash'ke-lon, slew thirty prominent men, and brought the shirt and fine outer garment of each one back to the men of Tim'nath in payment of his wager. Thus the schemers received their ill-gotten gains through the death of their own countrymen.
Moved to anger by the deceit of his bride, and by the apparent plot of her family and friends to bring contempt upon the Is'ra-el-ites, Sam'son returnt to his home without his wife. Her father then gave her in marriage to the leader of the spies who had sought to outwit Sam'son by treachery, and thus a strange Providence put an end to a marriage which was forbidden by the LORD.
Although the LORD had been merciful in breaking Sam'son's marriage with an idolatrous woman, the mighty man of Is'ra-el tried to win her back. With a special gift in hand, he went to her father's house in the hope of meeting her once again. His father-in-law then showed the lack of respect for marriage which prevailed among the Phi-lis'tines by admitting that he had given Sam'son's wife to another man, and by suggesting that he console himself with a younger daughter who was more attractive.
Knowing that the Phi-lis'tine people of the community agreed with his father-in-law, and feeling a new impulse to carry out his mission against the oppressors of Is'ra-el, Sam'son performed a daring feat of destruction upon the crops and vineyards of the entire neighborhood.
He went into the forest and caught three hundred foxes, tied their tails together in pairs, placed burning firebrands upon them, and turnt the foxes loose in the fields of ripened grain. Frightened by the fiery torches, maddened by the painful burns, these animals swept like streaks of lightning through the fields and vineyards, setting fire to the grain, and completely ruining the vineyards.
When the owners of these fields and vineyards were told that Sam'son was responsible for the destruction of their crops and fruits, and that he had done this because his father-in-law had given his wife to another man. They took vengeance upon their neighbor by burning his house down upon him and his daughter.
Sam'son then turnt upon the murderers of his faithless bride, and single-handed slew vast numbers of the Phi-lis'tines in Tim'nath and its surroundings.
Aroused by the depredations of the giant Is'ra-el-ite, yet fearing to attack him, the Phi-lis'tines raised a huge army to force the people of Ju'dah to surrender Sam'son to them. Three thousand of the men of Ju'dah went out to meet the army of the Phi-lis'tines, not to engage in battle with them, but to make a disgraceful surrender. With unspeakable cowardice they yielded to the demands of their oppressors, failing to rally around the champion of their liberties in a battle which might have freed them forever from tyranny.
The pages of history contain no act more cowardly than that which is here recorded of the Ju'de-ans. Three thousand of them approached the lone Sam'son in his mountain retreat, and denounced him for arousing the Phi-lis'tines to acts of violence against Is'ra-el. They were willing to give up their Divinely appointed deliverer in exchange for peace with their cruelest enemies.
