What Does Judges 15:6 Mean?
Then the Philistines said, Who did this? And they answered, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he had taken his wife and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire.
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
Then the Philistines said, Who hath done this? And they answered, Samson, the son in law of the Timnite, because he had taken his wife, and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire.THE KEY
Retaliation makes the people it can reach pay for the person it names.
THE MEANING
A conflict blamed on Samson ends with his wife and her father burned with fire. The stated cause is his taking and transfer of her, but the violence lands on them. The verse exposes how retaliation reaches beyond the person named as responsible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that revenge reaches only the person blamed: here the fire falls on the man’s wife and her father.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׂרְפוּ
wayyisrephu
GROWS FROM
שרף
ś-r-p
Burn, consume by fire.
“burned” in this verse is wayyisrephu. The verb names literal burning: the violence is enacted against the woman and her father. Its word-family includes שְׂרֵפָה (śĕrēphāh, “burning”) and שָׂרָף (śārāph, “fiery serpent”), keeping the destructive heat audible in the root.
ALSO GROWS
śĕrēphāh: Burning, conflagration.
שְׂרֵפָה
The noun makes explicit that the verb’s action is burning.
śārāph: Fiery serpent; seraph.
שָׂרָף
This fiery being shares the burn-root, making the root’s destructive heat concrete.
וַיִּתְּנָהּ
wayyittenah
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
Give, set, place.
The form means “he gave her,” from natan: give, set, place. The root links transfer with placement, and the verse’s wording presents her as passed from Samson to his companion before the Philistines burn her and her father. “Given” preserves the transfer while the root makes its starkness harder to miss.
ALSO GROWS
nātan: Give, set, place.
נָתַן
This verb is the source of the form translated “given” and carries the sense of placing as well as giving.
mattānāh: Gift, something given.
מַתָּנָה
This noun from the same root preserves the idea of something transferred.
THE PATTERN
When power answers a perceived threat, its violence can spill onto people beyond the person it names.
And Nob, the city of the priests, he struck down with the mouth of the sword, men and women, little ones and nursing infants, oxen and donkeys and sheep, with the mouth of the sword.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.THE THREAD
And it came to be, after about three months, that it was told to Judah, saying, Tamar, your daughter-in-law, has played the harlot, and see, she is also with child from harlotry. And Judah said, Bring her out, and let her be burned.The same root, שָׂרַף (śāraph, “burn”), appears in Judah’s order to burn Tamar after she is accused. The echo shows a woman made the site of male judgment or reprisal; here, the fire is carried out.
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