“The Spirit of Adonai came powerfully upon Shimshon, and barehanded he tore the lion to pieces as easily as if it had been a young goat. But he didn’t tell his father or mother what he had done. Then he went down and talked with the woman and found he still liked her.”-Judges 14:6-7
Since Samson and his parents split and took two different routes at the vineyard, mommy and daddy had no idea about the crazy encounter their son had had with the lion.
And apparently Samson didn’t see the need to bring it up.
This is all going to prove instrumental later on.
So the family arrives at Timnah, Samson strikes up a conversation with the unnamed Philistine woman and finds he’s still attracted to her.
Although we’re not given the specific details, we know that according to the customs of the day Samson’s parents met with the girl’s parents, marriage terms were agreed to and then the engagement period kicked off.
We don’t know how long the engagement period was but it was probably some compromise between the Hebrew and Philistine customs of the day.
Either way this mixing between Hebrew and Gentile was an abomination.
Again, this gives us a picture perfect portrait of just how far Israel had fallen after Y’shua (Joshua) passed way.
And just how much the second Y’shua is going to fix things when he returns.
In total, Samson is going to be involved with three women.
The first one is the one we’re talking about here.
The second woman will be a prostitute from the Gaza area.
And the third woman will be Delilah whom Samson will fall in love with.
In the Midrash (an ancient Jewish commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures), the rabbis have debated over when exactly Samson’s sinning began.
Some say he started sinning right here when he was betrothed to marry this girl from Timnah.
One interesting way they substantiate this is to point to verse 1 where it says Samson went DOWN to Timnah.
The Rabbis say that this “going down” also refers to decline in morals.
Others say his sin didn’t start until he actually began having physical sex with a prostitute.
This makes more sense for obvious reasons.
Either way, the rabbis have always used Samson’s involvement with gentile women as way to denounce attraction to foreign women and intermarriage.
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