By Larry Barnes in Judges —

Judges 15

12/02/2025

Judges 15 NKJV: OK, so it looks like after a time of cooling down and reflection, Samson decides to return to his wife and try to make amends, only to find that her father has already given her to someone else, his best man. Of course, he is enraged... again. Samson ties torches to foxes tails and sets them loose in the wheat fields and burns them down, along with vineyards and olive groves. Samson does nothing small. When the locals find out the story, they take it out on Samson's wife and her family, burning them and their property.

You're absolutely right, Judges 15 is a wild and brutal chapter, even by Old Testament standards. Here's a quick walkthrough of the key events in the NKJV to confirm and expand on what you summarized:

  • Samson, after his riddle-fueled wedding fallout (ch. 14), cools off and decides to reconcile with his Philistine wife, bringing a young goat as a gift (v. 1).
  • Her father blocks him, saying, “I really thought that you thoroughly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion” (v. 2), the “best man” from the wedding feast. He even offers Samson the younger, more beautiful sister instead. Samson is… not receptive.
  • Samson’s response is pure disproportionate vengeance: he catches 300 foxes (or jackals), ties them in pairs by the tail with a torch between them, lights the torches, and releases them into the Philistines’ standing grain crops right at harvest time (v. 4–5). The fire spreads to stacked grain, vineyards, and olive groves. Total economic devastation.
  • When the Philistines learn the reason (“because [her father] had taken his wife and given her to his companion”), they retaliate by burning the wife and her father to death (v. 6). Irony: the very act that was meant to permanently separate Samson from the woman ends up killing her anyway.
  • Samson’s reaction to hearing this? “Though you have done this, yet I will be avenged of you, and after that I will cease” (v. 7). He then “attacked them hip and thigh with a great slaughter” (v. 8, one of the more vivid phrases in Scripture).

The rest of the chapter has the Philistines marching into Judah to seize Samson, the men of Judah binding him and handing him over (to keep peace), and then the famous “ropes became like flax burned in fire” moment where Samson grabs a donkey’s jawbone and kills a thousand men (vv. 9–17).

It’s a spiraling cycle of betrayal, revenge, counter-revenge, and ever-escalating violence, and Samson is both victim and terrifying force of nature in the middle of it. The Philistines never really “win”; they just keep poking the bear and paying for it in increasingly horrific ways. Classic Judges-era chaos: everyone acting faithlessly or wickedly, and God still using the whole mess to judge Israel’s oppressors.

"...attacked them hip and thigh..." Is that similar to our current phrase, "going toe to toe" with someone?

Not quite. “Hip and thigh” is actually much more violent and one-sided than “going toe-to-toe.”

  • “Going toe-to-toe” means a close, competitive, fairly even fight (two boxers squaring up face-to-face, trading punches on roughly equal terms).
  • “Attacked them hip and thigh” (or the classic KJV rendering “smote them hip and thigh”) is an old English idiom for a total, crushing, slaughtering defeat. It literally evokes breaking or smashing the strongest parts of the body (the hip and thigh are the big, powerful muscles and bones), and it implies a massacre rather than a contest.

The Hebrew underneath is even more graphic:וַיַּךְ אוֹתָם שׁוֹק עַל־יָרֵךְ מַכָּה גְדוֹלָה (literally “he struck them leg upon thigh with a great striking”). Jewish and Christian commentators from antiquity onward understood it as “he piled legs on thighs in heaps,” i.e., he slaughtered them so thoroughly that the dead bodies were stacked up with legs lying across thighs, or he literally broke their hips and thighs as he cut them down.

So in modern terms, “hip and thigh” is closer to “he wiped the floor with them,” “he beat them within an inch of their lives,” or “he absolutely massacred them” than to a fair, stand-up fight.

Toe-to-toe = competitive duel.
Hip and thigh = one-sided carnage.

Samson wasn’t sparring; he was annihilating.

I do find it sad that Judah had given in and accepted the fact that the Philistines ruled over them, even to the point of turning over the one willing to fight for them. Of course, God used it for His own purposes, to issue another defeat to the Philistines.

It really is one of the most heartbreaking moments in Judges.

You can almost feel the exhaustion and spiritual numbness in the men of Judah when they say:

“We have come down to arrest you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines.”

And Samson answers, “Swear to me that you will not kill me yourselves.”

Their reply is chilling: “No, we will tie you securely and deliver you into their hand; but we will surely not kill you.” (Judges 15:12–13 NKJV)

They’re not even angry at the Philistines anymore. They just want peace at any price, even if it means handing over the one man in Israel who is actually doing something about the oppression. It’s the same spirit you see later when Gideon’s father Joash has to protect him from the men of Ophrah who want to kill him for tearing down the Baal altar (Judges 6), or when the northern tribes threaten to burn down Jephthah’s house for daring to fight the Ammonites without their permission (Judges 12).

By the time of Samson, Israel has lived under Philistine domination for 40 years (Judges 13:1) and has apparently stopped crying out to the Lord altogether (contrast with the earlier cycles where at least they eventually groan under the oppression and God raises a deliverer). Samson is the only one still burning with zeal, and even his own people see him as a dangerous troublemaker who’s going to get them all killed.

Yet, as you said, God still uses the whole ugly situation. The cowardice of Judah becomes the very occasion for another spectacular defeat of the Philistines, because once the Spirit rushes upon Samson, the ropes melt off and a thousand Philistines die with a donkey’s jawbone. God doesn’t need a willing or righteous Israel to accomplish His judgment on their enemies; He can do it with a flawed, impulsive Samson and a spineless Judah who literally ties him up and hands him over.

It’s a stark picture of grace and sovereignty in the middle of total moral collapse. Israel has forgotten who they are, but God has not forgotten who He is.

Also, unlike chapter 10 where God told them he would not help them when they cried out to Him, it seems that God bestowed His mercy, even though, or maybe because, Israel had given up and felt defeated. I also wonder if it was mercy to Israel, or just Judgment on the Philistines which Israel reaped the overflow.

That’s a really perceptive question, and it cuts to the heart of how the Samson story is different from every other judge-cycle in the book.

You’re absolutely right about Judges 10:11–14. There God basically says, “You’ve abandoned Me for other gods over and over; go cry out to those gods now. I’m done rescuing you.” It’s the closest the Old Testament ever comes to God saying, “Fine, have it your way.” And yet, only three chapters later, He raises up Samson without Israel ever repenting or crying out at all.

So what changed?

The text never explicitly says Israel repented in Judges 13–16. In fact, the silence is deafening. The usual pattern is:

  1. Israel does evil
  2. God gives them into the hand of X
  3. Israel cries out
  4. God raises a deliverer

With Samson the cycle is broken at step 3. They don’t cry out. They’ve apparently settled into a numb, compromised coexistence with the Philistines (circumcision mixed with idolatry, intermarriage, paying tribute, etc.). They’re not even asking for deliverance anymore.

That leaves two main ways to read what happens:

  1. Pure judgment on the Philistines, with Israel as incidental beneficiaries This is probably the dominant note in the Samson story. From 13:5 onward the angel tells Manoah’s wife: “He shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines,” but the emphasis is always on what God is doing to the Philistines through Samson, not on Israel’s restoration. Samson never leads an army of Israelites, never calls the nation to repentance, never drives the Philistines out of the land. He just keeps picking fights and killing large numbers of them. The 20 years he “judged Israel” (15:20; 16:31) seem to be 20 years of one-man guerrilla warfare rather than national liberation. So yes, the primary thing happening is judgment on Philistia; any relief Israel gets is spillover.
  2. An act of sheer, unasked-for mercy (which makes it even more astonishing) Even though Israel has stopped crying out, God has not stopped being the God who “raises up a horn of salvation” (to borrow Luke’s later language). The very fact that He sends Samson at all, without being asked, is an act of grace that goes beyond what Israel deserves or even wants at that point. It’s almost as if God is saying, “You’ve given up on being My people, but I have not given up on My covenant with you.” The deliverance is partial and strange (Samson never finishes the job; the Philistines are still dominant when he dies), but the fact that it happens at all is mercy Israel never sought.

I think the story holds both truths in tension:

  • Primarily, God is judging the arrogant, idol-worshiping, Israel-oppressing Philistines (see 14:4: “it was of the Lord, that He sought an occasion against the Philistines”).
  • Secondarily, and almost in spite of themselves, God is still keeping faith with a broken, compromised, silent Israel.

So Israel reaps the overflow of judgment on their enemies, and yet that overflow itself is an unmerited gift. It’s one of the most lopsided pictures of grace in the entire Old Testament: God acts faithfully even when His people have stopped acting like His people at all.

It also echos the future occurrence of Jesus as deliverer. Israel wasn't asking for Him when he arrived, and they were still under Rome's yoke when He ascended.

Exactly. The parallel is striking and, I believe, deliberate in the way the canon is shaped.

  • Israel under Philistine domination for 40 years, spiritually numb, not crying out → God sends a Nazirite deliverer no one asked for.
  • Israel under Roman domination for centuries, religiously compromised, not (as a nation) crying out in repentance → God sends the ultimate Nazirite (Jesus, set apart to God from the womb, filled with the Spirit without measure) whom the leadership largely rejects.

Both times the deliverer comes “to begin to deliver Israel,” not to finish the job in the way people expected:

  • Samson begins to deliver Israel from the Philistines (Judges 13:5), but the Philistines are still there when he dies.
  • Jesus begins to deliver Israel (and the world) from sin and Satan, but the Romans are still in power when He ascends, and Israel’s full national restoration is still future.

Both times the people who should have welcomed the deliverer hand Him over to the Gentiles:

  • Judah binds Samson and delivers him to the Philistines (15:12–13).
  • The Jewish leadership binds Jesus and delivers Him to the Romans.

Both deliverers are betrayed by someone close, fall into Gentile hands, appear to be defeated, and then, in the moment of greatest humiliation and death, destroy more of the enemy than in all their previous victories:

  • Samson kills more Philistines when the temple falls on him than in his whole life (16:30).
  • Jesus, by dying and rising, “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in [the cross]” (Col 2:15), destroying the ultimate strong man (Mark 3:27).

And in both stories, the deliverance is real, but partial and provisional. Samson weakens Philistine power for a season; Jesus crushes the serpent’s head but leaves the full consummation for His return. The people who should rejoice often don’t; the ones who benefit most are sometimes the outsiders (the Philistine woman in ch. 14, the Gentile centurion at the cross).

So yes, the Samson narrative is almost a dark, violent foreshadowing of the gospel: a rejected deliverer, handed over by his own people, who wins the greatest victory precisely when he looks most defeated. The book of Judges ends with “everyone did what was right in his own eyes,” and centuries later Israel is still doing what is right in its own eyes when the true Judge arrives, still unwanted by many, still triumphant in weakness.