What Does Judges 14:13 Mean?
But if you cannot tell it to me, then you shall give me thirty linen cloths and thirty changes of garments. And they said to him, Set your riddle before us, that we may hear it.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
But if ye cannot declare it me, then shall ye give me thirty sheets and thirty change of garments. And they said unto him, Put forth thy riddle, that we may hear it.THE KEY
The verse turns a riddle into a wager: can hidden speech be made known, and what changes hands if it can?
THE MEANING
The verse places hidden meaning between hearing and exchange. You can hear the words while their sense remains concealed; the challenge is whether that sense can be made known. The wager gives understanding a concrete consequence: thirty sheets and thirty changes of clothing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that hearing words means you already understand their meaning.
THE ROOT
חִידָה
ḥîḏāh
GROWS FROM
חוד
To pose a riddle or speak in an enigmatic way.
“Set your riddle before us” in this verse is ḥîḏāh. The noun names speech whose meaning is not immediately visible. The related plural appears in Proverbs as “dark sayings,” joining Samson’s wager to Scripture’s language of concealed meaning that calls for interpretation.
ALSO GROWS
ḥûḏāh: Pose a riddle.
חוּדָה
The men repeat the root as a command in their reply, accepting the challenge to work out the concealed meaning.
ḥîḏōt: Riddles; dark sayings.
חִידוֹת
Proverbs 1:6 uses this plural for enigmatic sayings, showing that the riddle belongs to a wider language of speech that must be understood.
הַגִּידָהּ
haggîḏāh
GROWS FROM
נגד
To be in front or conspicuous; in a causative form, to make known or declare.
“tell” in this verse is haggîḏāh. The verb asks the hearers to bring the answer into view for Samson. The verse moves from a hidden saying to something declared plainly enough to settle the wager.
ALSO GROWS
higgîḏ: Tell; declare; make known.
הִגִּיד
This is the verb behind “declare it me”: the answer must be made known to Samson.
nāgîḏ: Leader; chief, one at the front.
נָגִיד
The related noun carries the sense of being in front, echoing how declaring an answer brings what was concealed before another person.
THE PATTERN
A veiled saying makes hearing the beginning of interpretation, not its completion.
I bend my ear to a proverb, and I open my wrapped saying upon the lyre.Son of man, put forth a riddle, and speak a likeness to the house of Israel.Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables, and he spoke nothing to them without a parable.THE THREAD
To discern a proverb and its turned saying, the words of the wise and their enfolded riddles.“Dark sayings” translates חִידוֹת (ḥîḏōt), the same word family as the “riddle” in Judges. Proverbs names understanding these concealed sayings as an act of interpretation, opening the wager in Samson’s challenge further.
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