The Riddler

Judges 14:12–17 ESV

And Samson said to them, “Let me now put a riddle to you. If you can tell me what it is, within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothes, but if you cannot tell me what it is, then you shall give me thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothes.” And they said to him, “Put your riddle, that we may hear it.” And he said to them, “Out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet.” And in three days they could not solve the riddle. On the fourth day they said to Samson’s wife, “Entice your husband to tell us what the riddle is, lest we burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you invited us here to impoverish us?” And Samson’s wife wept over him and said, “You only hate me; you do not love me. You have put a riddle to my people, and you have not told me what it is.” And he said to her, “Behold, I have not told my father nor my mother, and shall I tell you?” She wept before him the seven days that their feast lasted, and on the seventh day he told her, because she pressed him hard. Then she told the riddle to her people.

Biblical Context

Faithlife Study Bible Chapter 14

14:1–20 Samson, now a grown man, asks his parents to arrange for him to marry a Philistine girl he saw in the nearby town of Timnah. This passage records Samson’s feat of slaying a lion with his bare hands and the riddle he devised after seeing bees had made a hive in the lion’s carcass. The narrative then turns to Samson’s wedding celebration.

Judges, Ruth (4) God’s Gift of [Partial] Deliverance (13:25–16:31a)

14:12–13 But the appointment of thirty Philistines to guard him does not seem to worry Samson. On the contrary, he makes sport of the situation and proposes a riddle for his guards.326 But before he presents the riddle, he must determine if the Philistines want to play with him. He wins their approval by proposing a contest that appears to be stacked overwhelmingly in their favor: If they can solve his riddle within the seven days of the feast, he will provide each of them with a complete suit of clothes, consisting of long garments and shorter tunics.328 If they fail, then they must provide him with thirty capes and thirty suits of clothing. Eager to play the game, the guards invite Samson to propound the riddle for them.

Judges, Ruth (4) God’s Gift of [Partial] Deliverance (13:25–16:31a)

14:15 But Samson’s guards are frustrated. For three days they pursue every possible lead, but they are stumped. The reader understands why. Of course they could not solve this riddle. They were not in the vineyard when Samson killed the lion or when he drew honey out of its body. Not even his parents could have solved this enigma. Realizing they cannot solve it on their own, on the fourth day they blackmail Samson’s wife334 to extract the answer from her husband. If she refuses or fails to do so, they will burn her and her father’s family (lit. “house”). The threat sets the reader up for the ultimate irony: the woman draws the solution to the riddle out of Samson to prevent her and her family being burned, but in the end she succumbs to the very catastrophe she tried to avoid precisely because she got the answer from him (15:6). Not satisfied with the pressure of this blackmail, the men accuse the woman of complicity with Samson in tricking them into this hopeless circumstance so that they might be impoverished. The narrator’s use of the verb yāraš, “to possess, dispossess” (NIV, “rob”), suggests a veiled reference to the divine agenda. This is the most common expression for Israel’s possession of the land of Canaan. Are the Philistines fearing an extension of the conquest to their territory?

Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary Samson

Samson is portrayed as a headstrong young man with little or no self-control. None of his exploits show him as a religious enthusiast. In fact, every major crisis in his life resulting in clashes against the Philistines was brought on by his relationships with Philistine women.

The Lexham Bible Dictionary Biblical Account

Samson appears in the Old Testament only in Judg 13–16. The account opens by noting that in response to the Israelites’ apostasy, God raised up the formerly seafaring Philistines to oppress Israel for 40 years (Judg 13:1; compare Judg 2:11; 3:7, 12; 4:1; 6:1; 10:6). The account then introduces the solution to the Philistine oppression with the announcement of a birth. The divine messenger appears to a childless couple and declares that they will give birth to a son who will be crucial to the divine scheme to deliver the Israelites from the Philistines (Williams, “Beautiful and the Barren,” 107–19). The angel of Yahweh also assigns the child a permanent Nazirite status, declaring that he should not drink wine, eat unclean foods, or cut his hair. The child’s Nazirite status serves as a crucial literary element as the plot advances (Wong, Compositional Strategy, 89–96).

The narrative concerning Samson revolves around his interaction with three women:

1. a Philistine woman in Timnah, whom Samson marries;

2. a prostitute at Gaza; and

3. the Philistine agent Delilah.