Revenge Is A Dish Best Served by Whoopin’ Ass
Samson’s
Revenge by fox doesn’t go unnoticed by the Philistines. So they kill him!
No, sorry
(it might have been better that way).
Instead
they burn his wife (ex? It’s kind of unclear given Samson’s reaction) and her
father.
Samson
takes this as a slight against him, promising “will I be avenged of you” which
is about as B movie villain as you get.
Oh, right,
he’s supposed to be the hero. Sorry, my bad.
So he
started slaughtering them. And the Philistines went up against Judah,
slaughtering them. At which point the tribe of Judah wants a time out. The
logic of all of this is that the Philistines don’t believe they can take down
Samson, so they’ll just continue hurting other people to get to him, and it
works as Judah “will bind [Samson] fast, and deliver [him] into [Philistine]
hand[s].”
When the
Philistines got him, though, he broke through his bindings picked up a trusty
jawbone, and “slew a thousand men.”
Samson is
good at killing people. We already knew that, but he’s definitely kicked it up
a few notches since losing his wager. He’s graduate to outright murder, and has
even brought more misery to his own people by provoking the Philistines into an
attack. Yes, he is killing Philistines, but it’s not really deterring them
much. There’s no talk of any kind of withdrawal or lessening of the occupation
of Israel. If anything, the Philistines are more intent on making the lives of
the Israelites miserable as punishment for Samson’s actions.
It should
also be noted that Samson is just killing Philistines, and not necessarily
Philistine soldiers. We’re not told it’s a Philistine army, and the place where
Samson sets about killing is not remarked in any way except by the name Samson
gives it: Ramath-Lehi or “Jawbone Hill.” Was this a Philistine outpost? Was it
a rest stop in the wilderness? We don’t know, but it became a mass graveyard
thanks to Samson.