Samson and the Foxes
Judges 13:3 to 16:1
13:1 Again the children of Israel were being bad little children from the Lord's point of view. So he had the Philistines conquer and rule over them for forty years. Meanwhile a childless couple of the tribe of Dan was visited by one of the Lord’s many angels. The angel told them that they would have a son and to make the son a Nazerite which means he would be special and could never shave, or have a haircut, or drink wine, or touch dead people. The couple was suspicious whether this angel guy was really an angel at all because he even refused to reveal his name. He said his name was a secret. But then after spouting a bunch of angelic mumbo jumbo he rose up into the sky with the flames and the smoke of a sacrificial fire, and didn't he kill them or anything so they figured what the hell, might as well go with it. The child was born and they called him Samson.
14:1 When Samson grew up he fell in love and wanted to marry a beautiful Philistine girl. His parents objected sternly on bigoted ethnic grounds, but it was actually just part of the Lord's increasingly mysterious plan.
One day while on the way to visit his Philistine girlfriend’s father to arrange forcing her to marry him, Samson was attacked by a random lion that happened to be wandering through the area. Suddenly Samson had super strength and he gripped and ripped the beast apart with his bare hands. The Lord occasionally gave Samson special powers like that. Later on, Samson came back to the scene and discovered that some bees had made a hive inside of the lion's dead carcass. So Samson scooped out some of the honey with his hand and ate it. Killing a five hundred pound lion with your bare hands and eating carcass honey may seem rather remarkable but Samson told no one at all about it.
Shortly after eating the stinky dead carcass honey, Samson went to his bachelor party and he asked the thirty bro’s attending the party a riddle, promising to buy them all new wardrobes if they could solve it. The riddle was this; "Out of the eater came forth meat and out of the strong came forth sweetness." The partiers were stumped of course because; well it’s kind of a stupid riddle because you had to be there to have any hope of figuring it out.
After the wedding, Samson's new wife was approached by the thirty men from the party. They threatened to burn her to death and burn down her father's house if she didn't find out the answer to the riddle for them. They must have desperately wanted Samson to buy them new wardrobes. Samson's wife finally weaseled out the answer from Samson and told it to the men. They came to Samson and said "What is sweeter than honey and what is stronger than a lion?" Samson was pissed. He said "If you had not plowed with my heifer you would not have found out my riddle!"
The Lord made Samson real strong again and he killed the thirty men and then bought them the new wardrobes he had bet them on the riddle deal. Meanwhile Samson's heifer, er… wife was given in marriage to a friend of his by her father. Her dad said “I figured you probably hated her after she ruined your silly riddle, you know, the way she told the answer so you had to buy thirty new outfits for those dead guys you killed. So I pulled a switch and gave her to a friend of yours. Oh well, here, I have another daughter and she’s pretty cute too, even cuter really. Here look, totally cute, take her.”
Samson was sorely pissed about the switcheroo. He didn’t want a substitute wife no matter how cute. He swore revenge. So here’s what he did to get revenge. This was his brilliant plan for revenge against his wife’s father for giving her away. He went out in the woods and captured three hundred live foxes. Then he tied the foxes’ tails together in pairs, so he had one hundred fifty pairs of foxes with tails tied together. Then he attached a torch to each pair of tails somehow, and then lit all the torches on fire. He released the terrified animals into the farmlands of the Philistines. He put some in the grain fields, some in the orchards, and so on. Of course this caused serious economic damage. He interrupted an entire community’s income and food source. That was bound to draw the attention of the cops. The foxes were none too pleased either.
15:3 The innocent farmers and villagers found out it was Samson who did it, and found out why he did it, so they killed Samson's ex-wife and father-in-law. Samson then killed all the farmers of course, and then he fled to the hills to hide in a cave. The cops put out an all-points-bulletin for his arrest and went looking for him.
15:11 Some men from the Israelite tribe of Judah, the tribe with a lion on their flag, came to Samson and said "Don't you realize the Philistines are our rulers? Why are you getting them all stirred up?” Samson answered that he only did to the Philistines what they had done to him, except with lots more crop damage and mass murder. Also killing all the foxes could possibly lead to a surge in rodent infestation but everyone seemed willing to let that one slide. So the Judeans said “Let us tie you up and turn you over to the cops, seriously, before this gets any more out of hand." Samson said "Ok, you can tie me up and turn me in if you promise not to kill me." They promised not to kill Samson and tied him up with brand new ropes and they all started walking towards town.
On the way to town the group met up with the sheriff and a posse of a thousand angry Philistines who were out hunting for Samson. Suddenly the Lord made the ropes tying Samson turn all brittle and they broke apart. Samson looked down and noticed an old dry jawbone of a dead donkey just lying there on the ground in front of him. So he picked up that jawbone and he swung it over his head, and used it to kill a thousand well-armed cops. All this killing made him thirsty so the Lord made some water come out of the ground right where Samson had thrown away the bloody jawbone.
16:1 Ob la di ob la da, Samson decided that after having killed thousands and destroying all the crops, this would be a fine time to head downtown and hire the services of a prostitute. While he was inside the whorehouse his enemies locked the city gates and waited for morning, hoping to kill him after he had finished receiving said services. But Samson got up and left the whorehouse at midnight. He picked up that huge city gate, including the posts, and carried it up to the top of a hill. He left it up there where everyone could see it. Oh boy were his enemies ever humiliated that next morning.
