Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Judges 14:14
And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days expound the riddle.
14. The riddle is cast into poetical form; the verse consists of two members with three beats in each. The structure of the retort in Jdg 14:18 is the same.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Three days … on the seventh day – Proposed alterations, such as six days … on the fourth day, are unnecessary if it be remembered that the narrator passes on first to the seventh day (at Jdg 14:15), and then goes back at Jdg 14:16 and beginning of Jdg 14:17 to what happened on the 4th, 5th, and 6th days.
To take that we have – See the margin. They affirm that they were only invited to the wedding for the sake of plundering them by means of this riddle, and if Samsons wife was a party to plundering her own countrymen, she should suffer for it.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 14. And he said unto there] Thus he states or proposes his riddle: –
Out of the eater came forth meat,
And out of the strong came forth sweetness.
Instead of strong, the Syriac and Arabic have bitter. I have no doubt that the riddle was in poetry; and perhaps the two hemistichs above preserve its order. This was scarcely a fair riddle; for unless the fact to which it refers were known, there is no rule of interpretation by which it could be found out. We learn from the Scholiast, on Aristophanes, Vesp. v. 20, that It was a custom among the ancient Greeks to propose at their festivals, what were called , griphoi, riddles, enigmas, or very obscure sayings, both curious and difficult, and to give a recompense to those who found them out, which generally consisted in either a festive crown, or a goblet full of wine. Those who failed to solve them were condemned to drink a large portion of fresh water, or of wine mingled with a sea-water, which they were compelled to take down at one draught, without drawing their breath, their hands being tied behind their backs. Sometimes they gave the crown to the deity in honour of whom the festival was made: and if none could solve the riddle, the reward was given to him who proposed it.
Of these enigmas proposed at entertainments c., we have numerous examples in ATHENAEUS, Deipnosoph, lib. x., c. 15, p. 142, edit. Argentorat., and some of them very like this of Samson for example: –
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“Who gives, and does not give?
Who has not, and yet has?”
This may be spoken of an enigma and its proposer: he gives it, but he does not give the sense the other has it, but has not the meaning.
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“There is a feminine Nature, fostering her children in her bosom; who, although they are dumb, send forth a distinct voice over every nation of the earth, and every sea, to whom soever they please. It is possible for those who are absent to hear, and for those who are deaf to hear also.”
The relator brings in Sappho interpreting it thus: –
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uu903? ‘
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“The Nature, which is feminine, signifies an epistle; and her children whom she bears are alphabetical characters: and these, being dumb, speak and give counsel to any, even at a distance; though he who stands nigh to him who is silently reading, hears no voice.”
Here is another, attributed by the same author to Theodectes: –
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.
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,
.
“Neither does the nourishing earth so bear by nature, nor the sea, nor is there among mortals a like increase of parts; for at the period of its birth it is greatest, but in its middle age it is small, and in its old age it is again greater in form and size than all.”
This is spoken of a shadow. At the rising of the sun in the east, the shadow of an object is projected illimitably across the earth towards the west; at noon, if the sun be vertical to that place, the shadow of the object is entirely lost; at sunsetting, the shadow is projected towards the east, as it was in the morning towards the west.
Here is another, from the same author: –
,
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“There are two sisters, the one of whom begets the other, and she who is begotten produces her who begat her.”
Day and night solve this enigma.
The following I have taken from Theognis: –
,
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THEOGN. Gnom., in fine.
“A dead seaman calls me to his house;
And, although he be dead, he speaks with a living mouth.”
This dead seaman is a conch or large shellfish, of which the poet was about to eat. The mouth by which it spoke signifies its being used as a horn; as it is well known to produce, when opened at the spiral end and blown, a very powerful sound.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
i.e. Out of that strong and devouring creature, the lion, came forth sweet meat, to wit, honey; withal it is covertly implied, that the Philistines, though now they had strength on their side, and dominion over Israel, whom they did devour upon all occasions, yet at last they should become meat to the Israelites.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And he said unto them, out of the eater came forth meat,…. Out of a devouring eater, such as the lion is, came forth honey, or that was taken out of it, which Samson, and his father and mother, ate of, and which was the common food of some persons, as of John the Baptist:
and out of the strong came forth sweetness: not only out of that which was strong in body while alive, but of a strong and ill scent, as the carcass of a dead lion is, and out of that came forth honey, than which nothing is sweeter. Josephus m expresses it,
“that which devours all things furnishes out pleasant food, when that itself is altogether unpleasant:”
and they could not in three days expound the riddle; so long they laboured to find it out, but then began to despair of it.
m Antiqu. l. 5. c. 8. sect. 6.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(14) Out of the strong came forth sweetness.The antithesis is not perfect, but we cannot strain the word strong to mean bitter, as the LXX. and Syriac do. Josephus gives the riddle in the form,the all-devouring having generated sweet food from itself, though itself far from sweet (Antt. v. 8, 6). The whole of Samsons life has been described by Ewald as a charming poetic picture, in which the interspersed verses gleam forth like the brightest pearls in a circlet. It must be confessed that the riddle was hardly a fair one, for the event to which it alluded was most unusual, and no one could have guessed such a riddle without some clue; for
Tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb
In the dead carrion.
Shakespeare: Henry V., ii. 4.
Cassel quotes a curious parallel from the legends of North Germany. The judges offer a woman her husbands life if she can make a riddle which they cannot guess. On her way to the court she had found the carcase of a horse in which a bird had built its nest and hatched six young ones, which she took away. Her riddle was (I venture rudely to translate the rude old lines):
As hitherwards on my way I sped,
I took the living out of the dead,
Six were thus of the seventh made quit:
To rede my riddle, my lords, tis fit.
The judges failed, and the husband was spared (Mullen-hof, Sagen, p. 506).
In three days.It is hard to see why this is mentioned if it was only on the seventh day (Jdg. 14:15) that they tried the unfair means of inducing Samsons wife to reveal the secret. Bishop Hervey conjectures, with much probability, that we should read shesheth six, for shelsheth, four. The LXX. and Syriac read on the fourth day, and (7) may easily have been confused with (4).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
14. Out of the eater came forth meat, And out of the strong came forth sweetness.
Riddles were generally put in a poetical form, and so here the two parts of the riddle are made to form a distich. Out of the carcass of a lion, a ravenous and devouring beast, Samson had taken food which both he and his parents had eaten; and out of the strong beast, for the lion is a symbol of strength, had he taken the sweet honey. One would not look into the body of the strong lion to find sweetness. This was a riddle which surpassed the ordinary powers of man to solve, for the facts on which it was built were unknown to any one but Samson. To solve it would be like interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s dream when the dream itself was not made known.
Could not in three days expound Probably the three remaining days of the feast, for very possibly the riddle was not proposed till the third or fourth day of the feast. Keil thinks they occupied themselves three days in trying to find the solution, and after that let the matter rest till the seventh day.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘ And he said to them, “From the eater came food, from the strong came sweet.” And they could not propound the riddle in three days.’
They at first, in their merry state, probably thought that it would soon be solved, but after a few days they became alarmed. No solution that they propounded was correct. ‘In three days’ signifies a standard short period of time, ‘in a few days’.
The riddle was not only a riddle. Samson probably intended by it amusing mockery. He was thinking that from the ‘devouring’ Philistines he would gain both a marriage feast and wealth, and from the ‘strong’ Philistines he would obtain the sweetest of all, a wife.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Jdg 14:14. Out of the eater, &c. We do not perceive in this version, the opposition which there ought to be between the two latter terms, as there is between the two first; for what opposition is there between strength and sweetness? But, as Bochart has judiciously observed, there is this opposition in the original; for, in the Arabic language the word mirra, which implies strength, comes from marra, which signifies to be bitter; and therefore, the antithesis of the words is this, “Food came from the devourer, and sweetness from that which is eager or sharp, i.e. violent or fierce.” And Bp. Patrick well observes, that the word acer, which signifies as well sharp, as a valiant man, is usually applied to lions.
Genus ACER LEONUM. Ovid.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Jdg 14:14 And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days expound the riddle.
Ver. 14. Out of the eater came forth meat. ] Vorator cibat, et crudelis delectat. This was the problem or riddle, made up of contraries, as many of God’s ways are. An express figure, saith Diodate, of the mystery of the sweet and saving food of the soul, brought forth by Christ’s death, by which he destroyed death and the devil. See Joh 6:5 Heb 2:14 . Others apply it to affliction sanctified, where, as in honey, the sweetest lieth in the bottom, and all things co-operate for good. God loveth to store up comforts for his people, where they would least expect to find them.
And they could not in three days.
a Much study cere-diminuit-brum, saith Ennius.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Out of the eater: Gen 3:15, Deu 8:15, Deu 8:16, 1Ki 17:6, 2Ch 20:2, 2Ch 20:25, Isa 53:10-12, Rom 5:3-5, Rom 8:37, 2Co 4:17, 2Co 12:9, 2Co 12:10, Phi 1:12-20, Heb 2:14, Heb 2:15, Heb 12:10, Heb 12:11, Jam 1:2-4, 1Pe 2:24
they could: Pro 24:7, Mat 13:11, Act 8:31