SAMPSON & THE FOXES
Priscilla Van Sutphin
12.12.16
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We start just after Sampson was betrayed by his wife giving the answer to his riddle about the honey in the lion to her philistine friends.
Judges 15 Amplified Bible, Classic Edition (AMPC)
15 But some days later, in the time of wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, taking along a kid [as a token of reconciliation]; and he said, I will go unto my wife in the inner chamber. But her father would not allow him to go in. 2 And her father said, I truly thought you utterly hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Is her younger sister not fairer than she? Take her, I pray you, instead.
Wow, can you imagine how Sampson felt? To be told by her father that he'd given his wife to another, and so just take her younger sister!?? Things were weird in pagan cultures, so this was a real affrontery to the way he'd been raised, though he was being rebellious in the eyes of his own parents, God had said He had purposed to use Sampson against the Philistines through his relationship with the philistine woman. Also feel the giving of the wife to another man relates to The wicked pagans turning God's people to adultery thru trickery, Sampson being a type of Christ in this example bringing punishment to those wicked Men & women.
3 And Samson said of them, This time shall I be blameless as regards the Philistines, though I do them evil. 4 So Samson went and caught 300 foxes or jackals and took torches and turning the foxes tail to tail, he put a torch between each pair of tails.
Ok, it's hard enough to gather 300 foxes or jackals if that's what they were. There is a golden jackal that lives in that region of the world, but they travel in packs of 6-8 an article said. The word for FOX here could also mean jackal. Either way they are both clever animals. Imagine what it took to get them, then tie a torch between their tails with a rope no doubt.
There had to be some supernatural help as whether foxes or jackals that many are not easy to come by.
5 And when he had set the torches ablaze, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and he burned up the shocks and the standing grain, along with the olive orchards.
The thing God revealed to me I felt, last week while coming home, not even thinking about this, suddenly it came to mind, and I asked God about the foxes. 300 is the same number as Gideon's army in previous chapters of Judges. God once told me that the end times army would be like Gideons in His hands. So here is that number again. They are loosed 2X2 with the fire to burn up the enemy's provision. So felt He was saying these foxes/jackals are symbolic of his end times army, carrying the fire of God, and burning up the enemies strongholds. When the Lord released the apostles into the world, HE sent them also 2 by 2. One can set a thousand to flight 2 can set 10,000 to flight the Word says.
“To burn the crops of an Arab is to this day the deadliest of all injuries (Burckhardt). This was the method adopted by Absalom, in 2 Samuel 14:30, to gain an interview with Joab. It is needless to point out that the adoption of these rough, coarse, and cruel expedients must be as little judged by a later and better standard as his thirst for the revenge of personal wrongs. There can be no ground to question the literal truth of the narrative. It is in entire accordance with the custom of the East, and it finds curious confirmation from the story in Ovid’s Fasti, that every year, at the Cerealia, torches were tied to the tails of foxes, and they were let loose in the Roman circus, to commemorate the incident that on one occasion a young man at Carseoli, to punish a fox for depredations on his hen-coops, had wrapped it up in straw, and set it on fire, and that the creature had escaped into the corn-fields and burnt down the standing crops (Ovid, Fasti, iv. 681-711). The attempt of Bochart to establish any connection between this custom and the revenge of Samson is quite untenable, but the incident itself throws light on the possibility of the narrative. Ewald refers to Mêghadûta, liv. 4; Babrius,Fab., 11” quote From Ellicott's commentary at Biblehub
Also the shocks are heaps of grain, and the standing grain is what's standing in the field, so present grain and future grain. But what does grain represent? Grain H6872 tsrowr - comes (from 6887) a parcel as packed up, also a kernel or particle [as if a package], bad, bundle least grain, small stone. 6887 tsarar - means ADVERSARY!!, to be in affliction, besiege, bind up, distress, enemy, narrower, oppress, vex, stress, be in trouble.
Grain is large part of the harvest also.
The olive orchard stands for the source of the anointing, in this case of the wicked as olive oil usually represents symbolically Holy Spirit anointing, but the witchcraft has grown as Jesus indicated it would in this hour. And the foxes are burning up the grain and olive trees that produce olives from where the oil is produced. So roots of the enemy perhaps in people's lives?
As destroying the enemy doesn't mean destroying people although sometimes it does that, when we pray in unity. It means destroying the destroyers, the enemy forces of satan.
6 Then the Philistines said, Who has done this? And they were told, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he [the Timnite] has taken his [Samson’s] wife and has given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. 7 And Samson said to them, If this is the way you act, surely I will take revenge on you, and after that I will quit.
No kidding! That they would kill her and her father is awful. So again Sampson takes revenge.
8 And he smote them hip and thigh [unsparingly], a great slaughter; and he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock of Etam. 9 Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah and spread themselves in Lehi.
10 And the men of Judah said, Why have you come up against us? And they answered, We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he has done to us. [ Smiting them hip and thigh means very thoroughly! A great slaughter for sure.]
11 Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock Etam and said to Samson, Have you not known that the Philistines are rulers over us? What is this that you have done to us? He said to them, As they did to me, so have I done to them. 12 And they said to him, We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hands of the Philistines. And Samson said to them, Swear to me that you will not fall upon me yourselves.
13 And they said to him, No, we will bind you fast and give you into their hand; but surely we will not kill you. So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.
Now Sampson is turned over by his own people [ Just as we will be turned over by the religious to the beast system ] 3000 is a multiple of 300 again. 300 X 10 – 10 is the number of government. Just like Joseph's brothers, they don't kill him themselves, they turn him over to the pagan system of the time.
14 And when he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon [Samson], and the ropes on his arms became as flax that had caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. 15 And he found a still moist jawbone of a donkey and reached out and took it and slew 1,000 men with it. 16 And Samson said, With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey I have slain 1,000 men!
One can set a thousand to flight indeed! Note how the ropes were miraculously loosened and the bonds on his hands!, and then he slays the thousand! Incredible grace of God. Sampson was NOT ALONE!
17 And when he stopped speaking, he cast the jawbone from his hand; and that place was called Ramath-lehi [the hill of the jawbone]. 18 Samson was very thirsty, and he prayed to the Lord and said, You have given this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant, and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised? 19 And God split open the hollow place that was at Lehi, and water came out of it. And when he drank, his spirit returned and he revived. Therefore the name of it was called En-hakkore [the spring of him who prayed], which is at Lehi to this day.
20 And [Samson] judged (defended) Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.
Not only does God help him again to slay more philistines, but he opens the hollow place at Lehi so he can drink fresh water and revive himself after the battle, and So God will also do for His other beloveds in this hour to refresh us in the midst of battles.
