Judges 15: A Godly Example -
01-12-2007, 03:44 PM
Judges 15:1 But it came to pass within a while after, in the time of wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid; and he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber. But her father would not suffer him to go in.
2 And her father said, I verily thought that thou hadst utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to thy companion: is not her younger sister fairer than she? take her, I pray thee, instead of her.
3 And Samson said concerning them, Now shall I be more blameless than the Philistines, though I do them a displeasure.
4 And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails.
5 And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives.
6 Then the Philistines said, Who hath done this? And they answered, Samson, the son in law of the Timnite, because he had taken his wife, and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire.
7 And Samson said unto them, Though ye have done this, yet will I be avenged of you, and after that I will cease.
8 And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and dwelt in the top of the rock Etam.
So, Samson goes to visit his wife (who has no name, as far as I can tell), but his father-in-law won't let him go into her, because he has somehow got the impression that Samson hated her, so he gave her to one of Samson's friends and asks if he wouldn't prefer to do her younger sister. Then Samson, logically enough, takes three hundred foxes, ties their tails together, sets them on fire, and releases them into the Philistines' fields. So in revenge, they burn Samson's nameless wife and father-in-law to death. I am not entirely sure what became of the hot sister. Then Samson smites the Philistines with great slaughter, and goes and dwells in the top of a rock, which seems reasonable enough.
This may just seem like an interesting story of the actions of a Godly hero, but it does offer some valuable lessons for today's world. The Iranians will no doubt be expecting an air strike on their uranium enrichment centres, and will have based most of their military planning around preventing such an occurrence. I imagine they would be caught utterly off guard if their nuclear equipment was attacked by hundreds of burning foxes.
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it--for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
God being truth, justice, goodness, beauty, power, and life, man is falsehood, iniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence, and death. God being master, man is the slave. Incapable of finding justice, truth, and eternal life by his own effort, he can attain them only through a divine revelation... he who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter, but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.
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