What Does Judges 14:15 Mean?
And on the seventh day they said to Samson's wife, Coax your husband, that he may tell us the riddle, lest we burn you and your father's house with fire. Did you call us to take hold of what is ours? Is it not so?
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
And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they said unto Samson’s wife, Entice thy husband, that he may declare unto us the riddle, lest we burn thee and thy father’s house with fire: have ye called us to take that we have? is it not so?THE KEY
The threat makes Samson’s wife the instrument of pressure, turning intimacy into a lever to pry a hidden answer into speech.
THE MEANING
Here, the hidden answer is treated as something owed: pressure goes through Samson’s wife, while the threat lands on her and her father’s household. The demand makes another person bear the danger of Samson’s silence so that what is hidden will be spoken.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that pressure becomes persuasion when it is delivered through someone close: a threat against her and her household remains coercion, even when she is told to obtain the answer.
THE ROOT
פַּתִּי
pattî
GROWS FROM
פתה
p-t-h
To persuade or allure; related forms describe being easily persuaded or deceived.
“coax” in this verse is pattî. This root family includes both the act of alluring and the simple or easily persuaded person, bringing vulnerability into the word’s range. Here, the requested persuasion sits beside a direct threat to burn her and her father’s household, exposing the coercion behind the tactic.
ALSO GROWS
pethî: A simple or easily persuaded person.
פֶּתִי
This related word places susceptibility to persuasion in the same family as the command to entice.
mephatteh: One who persuades or entices.
מְפַתֶּה
This form names the person doing the enticing, showing it as an intentional means of influencing someone.
יַגִּיד
yaggîd
GROWS FROM
נגד
n-g-d
To be conspicuous or made known; in causative forms, to show, declare, or report.
“Declare” in this verse is yaggîd. The verb belongs to a family of making something conspicuous or known. The demand is for what Samson keeps hidden to be brought before them, with the threat of fire attached to refusal.
ALSO GROWS
nāgîd: A leader, ruler, or prominent person.
נָגִיד
This related noun describes prominence, echoing the verb’s sense of making something known or conspicuous.
maggîd: A teller or announcer.
מַגִּיד
This related form names one who reports or makes something known, like the disclosure being demanded here.
THE PATTERN
Power uses threatened bodily harm to compel what another person will do, say, or disclose.
And whoever does not fall down and bow down shall, that same hour, be thrown into the midst of the furnace of blazing fire.Then Herod, when he perceived that he had been mocked by the wise men, burned with rage, and sent forth and killed all the children who were in Bethlehem and in all its borders, from two years old and under, according to the time he had carefully learned from the wise men.And they were persuaded by him, and when they had called the sent ones to them and flayed them, they charged them not to speak in the nature of Jesus, and released them.THE THREAD
And the rulers of the Philistines came up to her, and said to her, Coax him, and see where his great strength lies, and with what we may overpower him, that we may bind him to bend him low. And we will give you, each of us, eleven hundred pieces of silver.The same root, פתה (pathah: entice, persuade), appears in the command to Delilah. Again, Samson’s hidden strength is pursued through a close relationship; the repeated verb makes the manipulation itself the through-line.
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