We're starting in Judges 14. We're gonna go 14, or excuse me, verses 10 through 20. Who would like to read those verses for us? Okay, thank you, David. I'm reading out of the CSB. His father went to visit the woman, and Samson prepared a feast there, as young men were accustomed to do. When the Philistines saw him, they brought 30 men to accompany him. Let me tell you a riddle, Samson told him. He said to them, if you can explain it to me during the seven days of the feast and figure it out, I will give you 30 linen garments and 30 changes of clothes. But if you can't explain it to me, you must give me 30 linen garments and 30 changes of clothes. Tell us the riddle, they replied. Let's hear it. So he said to them, out of the eater came something to eat. And out of the strong came something sweet. After three days, they were unable to explain the riddle. On the fourth day, they said to Samson's wife, persuade your husband to explain the riddle to us, or we will burn you and your father's family to death. Did you invite us here to rob us? So Samson's wife came to him, weeping, and said, you hate me and don't love me. He told my people the riddle, but haven't explained it to me. Look, he said, I haven't even explained it to my father or mother, so why would I explain it to you? She wept the whole seven days of the feast, and at last, on the seventh day, he explained it to her, because she had nagged him so much. Then she explained it to her people. On the seventh day before sunset, the men of the city said to him, what is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lie? So he said to them, if you hadn't plowed with my young cow, you wouldn't know the riddle now. The spirit of the Lord came powerfully on him, and he went down to Ashkelon and killed 30 of their men. He stripped them and gave their clothes to those who had explained the riddle. In a rage, Samson returned to his father's house, and his wife was given to one of the men who had a company in heaven. Okay. Now we're getting into some of the good stuff on Samson started to act like what we have seen in movies and everything. We go back to, again, we are in, what area are we in? What's the town we've gone to? Timna, yeah. That's where this wedding is happening. We're in Timna. Notice what the, The father did. How does it start off? What's Samson's father? What does he do? The language literally says, at least in this translation, his father went down to the woman. His approval of, seemingly his approval is kind of, he's orchestrating it. He's going forward. And what was, how were marriages established and set up? back during this time. They were supposed to marry amongst their own. OK, they were. But what was the process of the marriage? Approval from the father. And it was usually a negotiation. Most of the time, these were arranged marriages. Remember the dowry? What's the dowry for? Anybody know what a dowry is for? See that was from, that would be from the, he said that from himself or his family, right? To the family that's losing the daughter. Now I don't know exactly what it was for. to make up for the loss of labor. Yeah. OK. You're paying for your wife. Child labor. They didn't have child labor laws then? And so the father is going down to do the negotiation. He is negotiating with the father of this Philistine woman to set up of the exchange of the dowry or whatever. And so we kind of see the father changing from what we saw in Chapter 3. What was his attitude in Chapter 3? Well, he wanted him to marry a Muslim. Oh, 13. I'm sorry. We knew it was 13. He wanted Samson to marry among some of his relatives or his own people. Stay amongst the Israelite community. And now, what is he doing? He's going along with, he's accepting Samson's decision. Yeah. So he is compliant in this. He is saying, OK, this is who you're going to marry. I'm going to facilitate it. I'll do the things I'm supposed to do. And then we get to the next section. And what does Samson do? He goes down and goes down to the woman, right? But then what happens? When he goes down to the woman, and he prepares a feast, which was common at the time, the wedding feast. You hear about that in the New Testament, celebrating this thing. But notice what they, who is the they, when it says, and as the people saw him, they brought 30 companions to be with him. Philistines. Yeah, the Philistines. Here's my question. Where are Samson's friends? Why does he have to get Philistine companions for this wedding? I mean, I had people that wanted to come to my wedding. And hopefully we have friends that want to come to our, these had to be provided, hey, you don't have anybody, we're going to give you 30 friends. Maybe it's because they disagree with what he's doing. Okay. And they refuse to be a part of it. Okay. Or maybe it was ceremonial and what was going to occur at the wedding ceremony. Go into that. I mean like they're just they're different cultural things I mean, I think for what our Western culture the most unique would probably like a Jewish wedding where they have certain things that happen at that specific wedding So I wonder if there is something to the sense of like well, here's you're not gonna know how to throw a Philistine wedding. So Here's how you have a Philistine wedding. Here's some Philistines to help. Okay. I very communal the whole community knows like this is occurring and it's probably happening in the local kind of the area where so many people congregate everyone's going to see it so they're just going to come it's probably a week long dude just kind of it's not just one night yeah yeah didn't say that yeah it's a long time so everyone sees it it's going on for a long time all kinds of if i made portings going on i don't know what type people go but Clearly there's a celebration going on. Everyone sees it. You don't have your own friends to beat, your own best men. Maybe not a good idea to go out and get some guys you don't know. Then he had to entertain him with this riddle. They already don't like me, so I'm just going to sling this riddle and try to entertain him for a few days. Well, I'm glad you brought that up, because that was my question. Why does Samson bring up a riddle and put this bet out there, this contest? And yes, in the background, we all know it's the Lord trying to, that the Lord's starting to get things up. But on the personal level. I think, I think, I mean, he viewed it as an opportunity. I don't think he viewed it as a gamble. This was airtight. Nobody was going to get it. And so he was kind of embarrassing his wife in a sense, or soon to be wife, because I mean, he thinks he's going to get 30 changes of clothes. And that's the thing. Why does he need 30 changes of clothes? So why did he put this out here? He's coming up with his own dowry. I could almost see being very much personality based. Because different personalities walk into a new classroom, a new job, a new venue, whatever it is, and there are just some personalities like, you know what? I want to go ahead and make connections with all these people here. And so as soon as we talked about it last week, he's not. He didn't walk in and everyone's like, dude, he is jacked. Probably quite the opposite. So how do I blend in? How do I make a connection with these guys? You guys like jokes? I got a joke for you. Here's a riddle. I can handle that, but then when he puts out, hey, you have to give me, all 30 of you have to give me a change of clothes. Yeah. And apparently, it seems like it was acknowledged by these Philistine individuals that it was embarrassing. this suggestion, whatever he brought up, maybe it was just the expense of all the articles of clothing. This is gonna embarrass them if they don't get this right. I'm assuming Samson knew that. This is gonna challenge you, your perceived prestige in the community or it's just gonna cost you a whole lot of money. Who actually were the 30 men? They weren't they were not the local scene stirs I'm just Well, back in at the beginning of this chapter, it says that he is seeking an opportunity against the Philistines. And that was the Lord. Yeah. And that was kind of speaking for the spirit of the Lord. Yeah. So is this going to tip? Well, that was with the marriage, not necessarily the articles of clothing, but the marriage with the or the almost marriage. Well, but also so he's like, OK, I'm going to tell you this joke if you don't get it. Well, we don't see that they necessarily agreed to that. Did they? I mean, this seems like verse 13. They're like, okay, go ahead. Put your riddle out here that we can hear. They're plowing his wife for the answer to this question. Plowing his heifer. Let's go into this. Yeah, they did plow. What did they say? This is something that I hadn't really got into until a few years ago. It's not like they just went up to her and said, hey, we're mad. Tell us the answer. What did they tell her? We're going to kill you and your family. We're going to murder you. Yeah, so. Worst kind of fashion. Do you know, I'm sure you do not know, the number of sermons that I have sat through at women's conferences about how women should not nag their spouses? Y'all giggled at that, by the way. I kind of peeked up and I heard giggling from you two. Y'all talked about that before this class, didn't you? No, it just gets me that they use the term nag on there. Well, one of the things I think is, probably obvious that this was not amicable on either side, apart from Samson and the wife. The Israelites, they didn't want this marriage. It seems that the Philistines didn't want it either. Yeah, here's the thing. If you are, because the Philistines were ruling at that time, right? Right. Do you want, as the ruling people, do you want one of your daughters, one of your women, to marry somebody you're ruling? That's sort of like stepping down in class. That's the insult, I guess. Do you not think it's just assimilation? because at this point we've not had anything phenomenal out of samson so he's just you must wonder like is that just part of the israelite assimilation into the philistine culture we may have you know because that's what joshua and moses both warned about before they go in don't intermarry and i think that's that's on the israelite side but what about on the philistine side it's like i'm sorry uh... is the conquering people understand assimilation, but is it looking at lowering your standards on marrying the people you conquered? I'm sure there's probably a lot of class cast stuff that goes in there as far as like, OK, well, she probably was the one who's getting the sucker end of the deal. Because it's like, well, your husband's never been anything important in our society. Exactly. Well, they're ruling over the Israelites, so why are they allowing this to happen, period? I think a lot of the ruling isn't necessarily in the sense of, like, every time an Israelite walked out of their house, there was a Philistine guard at the synagogue. I think it's more in the sense of they pay tribute to them regularly and are subjected to them as the reigning authority. So much like what we see in the New Testament. I mean, there's a lot of Jewish things happening underneath Roman leadership, but Rome isn't in charge. There's probably a stigma there, though. Like, Israel doesn't want to become the Philistines, the Philistines don't want to become like the Israelites. You'd think that, right? I mean, you'd think that. I wouldn't think that. There's a stigma there. There's some tension there. They don't like each other kind of thing. I almost wonder if they view it as a conquering, in the sense of, you were the people that had come in, and now look at you marrying our women. Like, you've thrown in the towel on this, that you weren't our women. Oh, yeah. But now we have this upstart, gives a riddle, and we're going to have to give him 30 pieces, 30 changes of clothes. That ain't happening. And now they threaten the wife, or soon to be wife, and the whole family. Anybody here, if your family is threatened, you and your whole family, aren't you gonna do anything you can to save them? So I think it's very, I don't know the proper term, but poor to get on this woman for doing anything she can to get the answer from Samson. Because it's not just her, it's her whole family. Go ahead. Although I do think it's kind of odd that she never said anything to Samson, like at all. Like it wasn't even, I mean there seems to be no trust between the families because she never consulted him, she didn't inform him, they didn't brainstorm together. It was just like I'm going to take it upon myself to solve this issue and I'm not going to even tell my future husband. But how much agency did she really have? I mean, this wedding is being arranged by the parents. And so women didn't really have a lot of standing, anyway. And we don't know how much. She may have only been 16 or 15. I don't know. Yeah, we don't know how much they had interacted among themselves. It says, go get her for me because she's hot, and I like her. But did she equally like him? And was she a willing participant in this relationship? Were they even communicating? I mean, she pulls out the whole, you hate me, you don't love me. I didn't know you that way. I'm just kidding. I didn't know you that way. I hate you. I think there's probably some deal that has happened, but it seems like there's at least some sort of relationship that's already existing between the two. Not a good one, but it existed. It does kind of make you think about like, this is like the playing out of why you get the warning of not to intermarry with such extreme cultures in the Old Testament and the New Testament. You get a warning against this in both under both covenants. So it's kind of like, here's why the case in point right here. Because you might go out and have Samson that would have been a fantastic like let me a fly on the wall watching Samson make that move Because it seems like he's just angry and then all of a sudden it's like I think I'm going to go kill them. But it's the spirit of the Lord doing it. Sometimes reality is just stranger than fiction. So she doesn't tell him. And then in order to uphold his end of the bargain, he goes and murders people? Why didn't he just murder the people Future wife like is it honorable to go murder 30 people such that you can keep your word or what? Why didn't he just say? No, I just changed my mind wouldn't it have been better for him to not hold his word then to go You know, it's just it's just so very convoluted in Western civilization. It would have been better. I don't know Yeah, and one of those guys that was in the the group now gets his wife. Yeah, it's like One of the very people that sat in the room saying, we're going to kill you and your family if you don't tell us the riddle, marries her. I'll read a little bit about that. So apparently this, him retrieving these 60 garments of clothing was an extended period of time, and there had been like a cultural law, norm, or rule that he abandoned his wife. He was gone so long, it was determined he abandoned her, so she was given to another wedding companion. I know it sounds so weird, but... Well, I think that even within our culture, that's the tradition, at least, behind the whole best man concept. Rather than a leper at marriage idea that it would be hey, you know Now we do it is like hey, can you just spend a lot of money to stand in a couple pictures? Yeah But it is still interesting that one of the companions, like you said, ends up being her husband. And there's an interesting dynamic between Samson. Samson has this human, you know, verse 19, he has this hot anger, but the verse starts with the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him. Yes. Like you said, truth is stranger than fiction. So which one is it? Is it the Spirit of the Lord killing these people or are you just ticked off right now? The answer is yes. I was about to say, it's that tension. Yeah. Which is to be expected in the book of Judges. Yeah, this is not the norm. This is just not, none of this is the norm. We don't refer to it as such. It's just not. So another case in point, even though there are movies made about him, and he's held up here by society, We're beginning to see even more that Samson is not the lifestyle that you want to follow in your life. But God can use anybody for his work. Next week, I'll let you guys thumb wrestle. But we'll be starting on Judges 15.