Judges 15: Samson defeats the Philistines.

At the beginning of this chapter, we learn that the one who gave Samson’s wife to another man was his father-in-law, who thought that Samson truly hated her. He then offered Samson her younger sister instead, saying, “Is she not better? Take her.”

Samson, enraged, took three-hundred foxes and tied them tail-to-tail in pairs, with a lit torch between them. He then released them in the Philistines’ standing grain, vineyards and olive groves to burn up their crops, as revenge for the loss of his wife. In retaliation, the Philistines went and burned her and her father. In a final act of vengeance, Samson killed very many of the Philistines, then went to dwell in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

The Philistines went to Judah, stating their intent to arrest Samson, and the men of Judah passed on the message to him. Samson made the Judeans promise not to kill him themselves, but only to bind him with two new ropes before giving him to the Philistines as a prisoner.

When the Philistines came, Samson broke apart the ropes, and killed a thousand of them with the jawbone of a donkey. Then he threw the jawbone away, and complained to the Lord that he was thirsty. The Lord answered his cry for help by splitting the ground where the jawbone fell, so that Samson could drink the water that flowed from it.

The final verse of this chapter tells us that Samson judged Israel twenty years.

*****

Samson’s marriage to a Philistine woman speaks to the appealing, or even enticing, nature of ‘faith alone’ spirituality, represented by the Philistines. We must stay on our guard, to ensure that we are not caught up in thinking that faith alone will save us. The father offers Samson his wife’s younger sister, saying she is even better, but Samson had already learned to be wary by that point.

The foxes, tied together with their tails lit on fire, vividly describes the twisted and destructive nature of faith alone, and the way it consumes our potential to lead a fruitful life. The Word often depicts the state of a nation or religion through a story illustrating its true nature (True Christian Religion 130)

The cycle of revenge between Samson and the Philistines represents our personal struggles during temptation and our wish to regenerate. Our whole effort during regeneration is to resist sins that might lure us in, and to maintain our intention to live the Word (see Swedenborg’s work, Divine Providence 83[6]). The men of Judah who bind Samson represent our love for the Lord and for everything of the Lord, although this seems contradictory on a surface level. In this case, being ‘bound up’ means to be bound in our commitment to the Lord, so that we are restrained from doing evil (see Swedenborg’s work, Heaven and Hell 577[4]).

Samson stands for the power of the Word acting in our lives to assert what is true, to protect what must be upheld, and to defend against evils. He uses the jawbone of a donkey because a jawbone allows us to eat food (spiritually, nourishment from the Word), and also to proclaim the Lord’s truths. This gives us the power to expose and reject the belief that spirituality consists of faith alone (see Swedenborg’s work, Arcana Caelestia 9049[6]).

4805. There are also communities of interior friendship which remove from another and channel to themselves not his external delight but his internal delight, that is, the bliss which his affection for spiritual things gives him. The position of those spirits is out in front, on the right immediately above the lower earth, though some of them are positioned somewhat higher up than the rest. I have spoken on several occasions to those in the lower position, and whenever I did so a general influx from those above took place. During their lifetime they were the kind of people who had a heartfelt love for others in their common fellowship and with brotherly feelings embraced one another. They had believed that they alone were living and in the light, and that compared with themselves those outside their community were neither living nor in the light. Being of this frame of mind they also imagined that the Lord's heaven was made up of their own few.

[2] But I was allowed to tell them that the Lord's heaven is boundless and that it consisted of those from every people and language, and that all are in heaven in whom the good of love and faith has existed. I also showed them that those in heaven correlate with all the provinces of the body, both its exterior and its interior parts. But if their minds were set on anything beyond and out of keeping with their life, in particular if they were to condemn others outside their community, they could not receive heaven. For in this case their community is a community of interior friendship which, as has been stated, is such that when they get near others they dispossess them of the bliss which their spiritual affection gives them. They see these people as the ones who are not the elect and as those who are not living; and this thought, when it is communicated, leads to sadness. But in keeping with the law of order in the next life this sadness comes back to themselves.