14:15 On the fourth 6 day they said to Samson’s bride, “Trick your husband into giving the solution to the riddle. 7 If you refuse, 8 we will burn up 9 you and your father’s family. 10 Did you invite us here 11 to make us poor?” 12
“What is sweeter than honey?
What is stronger than a lion?”
He said to them,
“If you had not plowed with my heifer, 13
you would not have solved my riddle!”
19:16 But then an old man passed by, returning at the end of the day from his work in the field. 18 The man was from the Ephraimite hill country; he was living temporarily in Gibeah. (The residents of the town were Benjaminites.) 19
1 sn The inability of the Ephraimites to pronounce the word shibboleth the way the Gileadites did served as an identifying test. It illustrates that during this period there were differences in pronunciation between the tribes. The Hebrew word shibboleth itself means “stream” or “flood,” and was apparently chosen simply as a test case without regard to its meaning.
2 tn Heb “and could not prepare to speak.” The precise meaning of יָכִין (yakhin) is unclear. Some understand it to mean “was not careful [to say it correctly]”; others emend to יָכֹל (yakhol, “was not able [to say it correctly]”) or יָבִין (yavin, “did not understand [that he should say it correctly]”), which is read by a few Hebrew
3 tn See the note on the word “son” in 13:5, where this same statement occurs.
4 tn Heb “eat anything unclean.” Certain foods were regarded as ritually “unclean” (see Lev 11). Eating such food made one ritually “contaminated.”
5 tn Traditionally “a Nazirite.”
6 tc The MT reads “seventh.” In Hebrew there is a difference of only one letter between the words רְבִיעִי (rÿvi’i, “fourth”) and שְׁבִיעִי (shÿvi’i, “seventh”). Some ancient textual witnesses (e.g., LXX and the Syriac Peshitta) read “fourth,” here, which certainly harmonizes better with the preceding verse (cf. “for three days”) and with v. 17. Another option is to change שְׁלֹשֶׁת (shÿloshet, “three”) at the end of v. 14 to שֵׁשֶׁת (sheshet, “six”), but the resulting scenario does not account as well for v. 17, which implies the bride had been hounding Samson for more than one day.
7 tn Heb “Entice your husband so that he might tell us the riddle.”
8 tn Heb “lest.”
9 tn The Hebrew text expands the statement: “burn up with fire.” The words “with fire” are redundant in English and have been omitted from the translation for stylistic reasons.
10 tn Heb “house.”
11 tc The translation assumes the Hebrew form הֲלֹם (halom, “here,” attested in five Hebrew
12 tn For discussion of this difficult form, see C. F. Burney, Judges, 364.
13 sn Plowed with my heifer. This statement emphasizes that the Philistines had utilized a source of information which should have been off-limits to them. Heifers were used in plowing (Hos 10:11), but one typically used one’s own farm animals, not another man’s.
14 tn The word translated “basin” refers to a circular-shaped depression in the land’s surface.
15 tn Heb “spirit.”
16 tn Heb “named it”; the referent (the spring) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
17 sn The name En Hakkore means “Spring of the one who cries out.”
18 tn Heb “And look, an old man was coming from his work, from the field in the evening.”
19 tn Heb “And the men of the place were Benjaminites.”