“Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet.”
{I remember reading this story to my grandchildren when I was in a wheelchair. I remembering later I cried cause I wanted to be out of the wheelchair. So I was able to move around with my oxygen tank on my wheelchair. When I had free time, I would travel to church on Tuesday eve’s and travel to Kroger’s in my wheelchair. I traveled to church on A Sunday and got in trouble. But my prayers was answered wanting my husband to go to church with me. God gave me the strength of answered prayers. Just saying. Look at me now. God is so good!!! He is still answering my prayers He will answer yours. “But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the LORD. James 1:6-7} {Judges Chapter 14}
When Samson was grown, he went to a city called Timnath’ where he fell in love with a Philistine girl. She was not a Jewess, but when he returned home he told his father and mother about her and asked them to get her as his wife. His father and mother told Samson he should marry and Israeli girl, not a Philistine girl, for the Philistines were enemies of the Israelites. Besides, God had told His people not to marry non-Jews.
But Samson was not willing to give her up. He said to his father, “I want her, so get her for me.”
His father and mother went back with him to Timnath. On the way there, a young lion came roaring out at Samson, and the Lord gave him strength to kill the lion with his hands as easily as if it had been a young goat.
When Samson finally met the girl and talked with her, he wanted all the more to marry her. A wedding date was set, and he and his parents went back home. When he returned to marry her, he came to a place where he killed the lion and went over to look at it. Its body was dried up, and a swarm of bee’s was living in it, storing honey there. He took some of the honey in his hands and ate it as he walked. Afterwards he gave some to his father and mother, but he didn’t tell them he had taken it out of the dead body of the lion.
Samson gave a big party for the young men of the town, for that was one of the marriage customs of those days. Thirty Philistine youths came, and the party lasted seven days. During the party Samson decided to tell them a riddle. He promised to give each of the young men a suit if they found out what his riddle meant before the seven days of the party ended. But if they couldn’t find the answer to his riddle, then each of them must give him a suit! The Philistines boys agreed to this bet.
“Go ahead,” they said, “Tell us the riddle.”
“All right,” Samson replied, “Here it is: ‘Food came out of the eater, and sweetness came out of the strong!
{He meant that he had taken honey from the lion, and eaten it. But of course he didn’t tell the Philistines the answer because then he would lose the bet!}
For three days they tried to find the answer, but couldn’t. Finally the young men went to his bride and told her they would kill her and her whole family unless she found out the from Samson the answer to the riddle.
She knew they would kill her, so she asked Samson to tell her, but he wouldn’t. Then she started crying and saying he didn’t love her or he would tell her.
“I haven’t told my father or my mother.” Samson answered; why should I tell you?”
But she kept on begging and crying, and he finally told her just to keep her quiet. Then of course she went and told the Philistine boys.
They came to Samson on the seventh day, just before the end of the feast, and pretended they had thought up the answer by themselves.
“What is sweeter than honey?” they asked. And what is stronger than a lion? But Samson knew his wife had told them.
The Lord’s time came for Samson to begin punishing the Philistines for their cruelty to the people of Israel. The Lord had told Samson’s parents that their son would begin to free the Israelis from their slavery. That was why the Lord had made Samson strong enough to kill the young lion as easily as it it was a baby goat.
Samson went to a Philistine city called Ashkelon and killed thirty men there. He took their clothes and gave them to the men at the wedding, to fulfill his promise of a suit to each of them if they found the answer to his riddle.
Then he left his wife and returned to his own home, while she stayed with her father in Timnath.
A few months later Samson went to visit her and to take her a present. But her father wouldn’t let him in, because he had let another man marry her. Her father thought that Samson had gone away because he had decided he didn’t want her. This was why he gave her to someone else.
Samson was very angry and went out and caught three hundred foxes. He tied burning torches to their tails and let them loose in the fields and vineyards of the Philistines, setting fire to their grain, grape vines and olive trees.
“Who has done this?” the Philistines demanded. When they knew it was Samson, they killed his wife and her father.
Then Samson took revenge by fighting against the Philistines and killing several of them. Afterward he camped on the top of a high rock in the land of Israel. The Philistines went there with an army of several thousand men to capture and kill Samson. When the men of Israel saw the Philistines coming, they asked what the trouble was and why they had come.
“To get Samson,” they answered “so that we can do to him as he has done to us.”
Then three thousand men of Israel climbed on the top of the rock where Samson was to talk to him and to get him to surrender. “Don’t you know that we are slaves to the Philistines?” they asked. “Why are you acting like this?”
“I only paid them back for what they did to me.” Samson replied.
Then the men of Israel told him they had come to get him, and to give him to the Philistines. Samson let them bind him with two new ropes and they took him to the Philistines, camp.
As he came near them, the Philistines saw him and let out a great shout of joy. But at that moment the Lord gave him such strength that he broke the ropes! Samson picked up the jawbone of a donkey lying by the road and killed a thousand Philistines with it.
Afterward he was so tired he could hardly stand up. He prayed to the Lord, and the Lord opened a spring with water bubbling out; after Samson drank from it, his strength returned to him again.
He went to the city of Gaza and spent the night sleeping with a girl he had met. But this was wrong, for she was not his wife. This was a Philistine city and when the Philistines heard that Samson was there, they shut the city gates and watched all night to capture him when he found he couldn’t leave because the gates was closed, he simply pulled the gate posts out of the ground, picked up the gates, put them on his shoulders, and carried them to the top of a nearby hill!
Questions:
What animal did Samson kill with his hands?
What riddle did Samson tell the boys at his wedding party?
How did they find out the answer to the riddle?
How did Samson light the Philistines’ fields on fire?
Why?
"Only Life Changes" 