Judges 14 Honey in the Carcass

seekeroftruth

Well-Known Member
Judges 14:5 Samson went down to Timnah together with his father and mother. As they approached the vineyards of Timnah, suddenly a young lion came roaring toward him. 6 The Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him so that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat. But he told neither his father nor his mother what he had done. 7 Then he went down and talked with the woman, and he liked her.

8 Some time later, when he went back to marry her, he turned aside to look at the lion’s carcass, and in it he saw a swarm of bees and some honey. 9 He scooped out the honey with his hands and ate as he went along. When he rejoined his parents, he gave them some, and they too ate it. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the lion’s carcass.​

What's the issue most would say.....

It's a big deal that Samson tore that lion apart with just his two hands. I've torn a lowly chicken in two while cleaning it up to fry... that's not easy peasy..... but a lion carcass would be a whole lot harder.....

It's also a big deal that Samson killed the lion, then touched it and then went on about his way.....

Bible.org has a better explanation.

For some reason, Samson’s parents are traveling with him to Timnah, but they don’t seem to be “together” as closely as we might assume. They seem to be separated by some distance and time. As he is approaching the vineyards of Timnah, a young lion rushes toward Samson, determined to kill him. The Spirit of the Lord likewise rushes upon Samson, empowering him to tear this beast limb from limb. When he rejoined his mother and father, he did not bother to mention this lion attack to them. No wonder, the now-dead lion apparently defiled him.8 If so, he should have immediately returned home and undergone the prescribed purification rites, but Samson was too intent upon reaching Timnah and accelerating the process whereby he could be (physically) united with the woman he was so attracted to. And so we are told that Samson continued on to Timnah with his parents. Once there, he talked with the woman (for the first time?), and he liked her (literally, “she was right in Samson’s eyes”).

Samson and his parents make yet another trip to Timnah sometime later. For whatever reason, Samson went out of his way to view the lion’s carcass. Regardless, this would not have been the sort of thing a Nazirite would do. The carcass was defiling. Nevertheless, Samson comes upon the carcass, only to find that a swarm of bees had possessed it, and thus there was a honeycomb and honey that would have been “off limits” to Samson or his parents. That didn’t stop Samson. He scooped up some of the honey and proceeded back to his parents, eating some of it as he went. When he reached them he gave them some of the honey, not bothering to mention the source of this honey, thereby causing them to unknowingly defile themselves.

It's a big deal because a dead carcass was not to be touched.

Now after all the care Samson's mom had taken during the pregnancy, Samson had defiled himself, and his parents, and he wants to marry a Philistine woman.... oh this boy is so not what they expected, I bet....


:coffee;
 
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