Foxes, Fire, and the Fury of God
Introduction: God's Crooked Instruments
The book of Judges is not a comfortable book. It is not a collection of flannelgraph heroes suitable for a sanitized Sunday School curriculum. It is a book of chaos, compromise, and carnage. It shows us what happens when every man does what is right in his own eyes. And in the middle of this swirling vortex of apostasy and rebellion, we find Samson. Samson is not a role model. He is a wrecking ball. He is a Nazirite who touches dead bodies, drinks with the enemy, and is driven by his appetites. He is a one man disaster movie.
And so we come to this passage, and our modern, therapeutic sensibilities are immediately offended. We see a cycle of escalating, brutal, tit for tat vengeance that seems to have no moral high ground whatsoever. We see a man who claims innocence while plotting a massive act of economic terrorism. We see a people who respond to this by burning two people alive. And we are tempted to ask, where is God in all this? The answer is that God is sovereignly and invisibly orchestrating the entire bloody affair. God uses crooked sticks to draw straight lines. He uses the sinful, selfish, vengeful actions of men to accomplish His righteous and holy purposes. Samson is not fighting for Yahweh; he is fighting for his own wounded pride. But God is using Samson's wounded pride to judge the Philistines and to deliver Israel, just as He promised.
This is a hard truth, but a necessary one. God's providence is not tame. He is not a celestial butler, waiting to be summoned. He is the sovereign Lord of history, and He yokes the rebellious passions of men to His chariot and drives them toward His intended destination. Samson thinks this is about his wife. The Philistines think this is about their crops. God knows this is about His covenant. Understanding this is the key to understanding not just the book of Judges, but the entire world.
The Text
Now it happened that after a while, in the time of the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat and said, "I will go in to my wife in her room." But her father did not let him enter. And her father said, "I really thought that you hated her intensely; so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister better than she? Please let her be yours instead." Samson then said to them, "This time I shall be innocent in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm." So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches and turned the foxes tail to tail and put one torch in the middle between two tails. Then he set fire to the torches and sent the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines. So he caused both the shocks and the standing grain, along with the vineyards and groves, to burn. Then the Philistines said, "Who did this?" And they said, "Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion." So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. Then Samson said to them, "If you act like this, then I will surely take revenge on you, but after that I will cease." And he struck them ruthlessly with a great slaughter; and he went down and lived in the cleft of the rock of Etam.
(Judges 15:1-8 LSB)
The Spark of the Vendetta (v. 1-2)
The conflict begins with a domestic dispute, which is so often where the great conflagrations of history begin.
"Now it happened that after a while, in the time of the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat and said, 'I will go in to my wife in her room.' But her father did not let him enter. And her father said, 'I really thought that you hated her intensely; so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister better than she? Please let her be yours instead.'" (Judges 15:1-2)
Samson, after storming off in a huff, decides to reclaim his wife. His motive does not appear to be reconciliation or affection, but rather the satisfaction of his conjugal rights. He comes with a young goat, a traditional gift, but it is an attempt to smooth over a deep insult with a surface level gesture. He wants what is his.
The father-in-law's response is a masterpiece of pagan pragmatism. He has a problem. He has an enraged, supernaturally strong son-in-law on the one hand, and the Philistine custom of giving the bride to the best man on the other. So he cuts his losses. He assumes Samson's anger meant the marriage was over, so he gave the girl away. His solution is not repentance, but a transaction. "Is not her younger sister better than she? Please let her be yours instead." He treats his daughters like livestock to be traded. This is the worldview of the Philistines. It is utilitarian, godless, and treats people as objects. He completely misreads the situation. He thinks Samson is angry about losing a woman. He fails to understand that Samson is enraged at the public dishonor. The insult is the issue, not the girl.
A Self-Declared Righteousness (v. 3)
Samson's response reveals his entire ethical framework.
"Samson then said to them, 'This time I shall be innocent in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm.'" (Judges 15:3 LSB)
This is a crucial verse. Samson is not claiming to be sinless before God. He is not appealing to the law of Moses. He is operating according to the ancient code of honor and vengeance. He is declaring himself "blameless" or "quit" of any obligation to keep the peace. In his mind, the Philistines broke the covenant of marriage and honor first. They cheated. Therefore, any retaliation from him, no matter how disproportionate, is justified. He is making a legal declaration in the court of public opinion. "You started this. I am now free to finish it." This is the logic of every blood feud, every gang war, and every international conflict. It is the logic of fallen man. We are experts at manufacturing a righteousness for ourselves that gives us permission to indulge our rage. Samson is a master of it. And yet, God will use this very self-justifying fury as the authorized instrument of His judgment.
Asymmetrical Warfare (v. 4-5)
Samson's retaliation is creative, bizarre, and devastatingly effective.
"So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches and turned the foxes tail to tail and put one torch in the middle between two tails. Then he set fire to the torches and sent the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines." (Judges 15:4-5 LSB)
This is not a fit of blind rage; this is calculated, strategic destruction. Catching 300 foxes, or more likely jackals which roamed in packs, would have been a monumental task, requiring immense patience and strength. Tying them tail to tail with a torch in between is a stroke of malicious genius. The animals, panicked and in pain, would run erratically, not in a straight line, ensuring the fire spread as widely as possible. And the target is precise. He attacks them "in the time of the wheat harvest." He burns not just the standing grain, but the harvested shocks, the vineyards, and the olive groves. This is an attack on their entire livelihood for the year. It is total economic warfare, designed to inflict maximum pain.
This is a picture of God's judgment. It can be strange, unexpected, and carried out by the most unlikely of instruments, even panicked animals. The fire of God's wrath, once kindled, spreads uncontrollably through the dry fields of a rebellious culture. Samson is the agent, but the fire is the Lord's.
The Cycle of Brutality (v. 6-8)
The Philistine response demonstrates that they are just as wicked as Samson is vengeful.
"Then the Philistines said, 'Who did this?'... So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. Then Samson said to them, 'If you act like this, then I will surely take revenge on you, but after that I will cease.' And he struck them ruthlessly with a great slaughter..." (Judges 15:6-8 LSB)
The Philistines correctly identify Samson as the culprit. But their form of "justice" is horrific. They do not confront Samson directly. Instead, they go after the ones who provoked him. They burn the woman and her father alive. This is not justice; it is cowardly, brutal retaliation against the weakest link in the chain. They punish the victims of their own cultural customs. In doing so, they prove that they are a people worthy of God's judgment. They are lawless and cruel.
Samson, of course, sees this not as a resolution but as a further provocation. "If you act like this..." he says. He essentially argues that his initial vengeance was righteous, but their counter-vengeance was wicked, and therefore he must avenge their wicked vengeance. This is how the cycle of sin works. Each side feels completely justified in its own brutality. Samson's promise to "cease" after this next round is laughable. Vengeance is a fire that is never satisfied.
So he strikes them "ruthlessly with a great slaughter." The Hebrew idiom is "he smote them hip and thigh," a phrase indicating a total and overwhelming defeat. He is God's appointed scourge, a blunt instrument of wrath. After the slaughter, he retreats alone to a cleft in a rock. He is not a king, not a general leading an army. He is a solitary, isolated force of nature, a holy terror unleashed by God upon a wicked people. He is a deliverer, but he is not a shepherd.
Christ, the True Deliverer
Samson is a judge. He is a deliverer. In this, he is a type of Christ. He fights the enemies of God's people alone. He wins impossible victories. He is betrayed by those he came to save. But the contrasts are far more instructive than the comparisons.
Samson fought out of wounded pride and for personal vindication. Christ fought out of perfect love and for the glory of His Father. Samson demanded satisfaction for the wrongs done to him. Christ became satisfaction for the wrongs we had done to God.
Samson declared, "This time I shall be innocent when I do them harm." He constructed a righteousness for himself to justify his violence. Christ, who was truly innocent, took our guilt upon Himself so that He could be justly harmed in our place. Samson burned the Philistines' harvest with fire. Christ, the true grain, was struck down and consumed by the fire of God's wrath on the cross so that we could be gathered into the Father's barn.
Samson struck the Philistines "hip and thigh" in a great slaughter. On the cross, Jesus was struck hip and thigh for us. He absorbed the great slaughter that we deserved. Samson's vengeance led to an escalating cycle of death. Christ's death on the cross broke the cycle, absorbing the full measure of God's righteous vengeance and offering forgiveness and reconciliation in its place. He is the true deliverer, the perfect judge, who does not operate out of selfish passion but out of holy love. He is the one who truly puts an end to the cycle of violence, not by winning the final battle in the feud, but by surrendering Himself to the ultimate blow.