The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
Samson’s Vengeance and Death
Judges 16:23–31 — Samson’s Vengeance and Death. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
23Now the lords of the Philistines gathered together to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon. They rejoiced and said, “Our god has delivered Samson our enemy into our hands.”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·sar·nê p̄ə·liš·tîm nɛ·ʾɛ̆s·p̄ū liz·bō·aḥ gā·ḏō·wl ze·ḇaḥ- ’ĕ·lō·hê·hem lə·ḏā·ḡō·wn ū·lə·śim·ḥāh way·yō·mə·rū ’ĕ·lō·hê·nū nā·ṯan šim·šō·wn ’ō·wy·ḇê·nū bə·yā·ḏê·nū ’êṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-the-lords of-Philistines were-gathered to-slaughter a-sacrifice great to-their-gods, to-Dagon, and-for-gladness; and-they-said: “Our-gods has-given into-our-hand Samson our-enemy.”
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The captivity of this dreaded hero was regarded by the Philistines as a great victory, which their princes resolved to celebrate with a great and joyous sacrificial festival in honour of their god Dagon, to whom they ascribed this victory.
The Philistines foolishly attributed to this idol what had come to pass by the will of the God of Israel, to punish Samson for his sins.Benson holds both halves at once: the Philistines are wrong about the agent and right that something was given — the giving was God's, and it was judgment on Samson.
yet this may shame us believers in the true God, who are so backward to ascribe to him the great things he does for us, when such Heathens were so forward to give glory to their false deities, without any foundation for it.
24And when the people saw him, they praised their god, saying: “Our god has delivered into our hands our enemy who destroyed our land and multiplied our dead.”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
hā·‘ām way·yir·’ū ’ō·ṯōw way·hal·lū ’eṯ- ’ĕ·lō·hê·hem kî ’ā·mə·rū ’ĕ·lō·hê·nū nā·ṯan ḇə·yā·ḏê·nū ’eṯ- ’ō·wy·ḇê·nū wə·’êṯ ma·ḥă·rîḇ ’ar·ṣê·nū wa·’ă·šer hir·bāh ’eṯ- ḥă·lā·lê·nū
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-saw him, the-people, and-they-praised their-gods, for they-said: “Our-gods has-given into-our-hand our-enemy, and the-one-laying-waste our-land, and-who multiplied our-pierced-ones.”
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The song is constructed of four lines, each ending with a rhyming suffixCambridge also argues the narrative order has been disturbed and that v. 24 belongs after v. 25 — a source-critical judgment, not a textual one; the Hebrew here is not in doubt.
This praise of Dagon is also dwelt upon to show that God, in what happened, vindicated the glory of his own great name, which was blasphemed by the servants of Dagon when they thus made him superior to Jehovah.
All the people took part in this festival, and sang songs of praise to the god who had given the enemy, who had laid waste their fields and slain many of their countrymen, into their hands.
25And while their hearts were merry, they said, “Call for Samson to entertain us.” So they called Samson out of the prison to entertain them. And they stationed him between the pillars.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·hî lib·bām kī ṭōḇ way·yō·mə·rū qir·’ū lə·šim·šō·wn wî·śa·ḥeq- lā·nū way·yiq·rə·’ū lə·šim·šō·wn mib·bêṯ h·s·rm way·ṣa·ḥêq lip̄·nê·hem way·ya·‘ă·mî·ḏū ’ō·w·ṯōw bên hā·‘am·mū·ḏîm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-it-was, when good [was] their-heart, and-they-said: “Call for-Samson and-let-him-make-sport for-us.” And-they-called for-Samson from-the-house of-the-bound-ones, and-he-made-sport before-their-faces; and-they-made-him-stand between the-pillars.
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Whether by his forced jests, or by feats of strength, or merely by being made to submit to insults, we cannot tell.
but he was the object of their sport and scorn, and he bore it patiently, their cruel mockings, buffetings, and spittings; in which he was a type of Christ.
Thus by God's just judgments they are made slaves to infidels if they neglect their calling to defend the faithful.The Geneva gloss reads Samson's humiliation as covenantal discipline on a whole vocation — a warning to Israel, not only a note about one man.
26Samson said to the servant who held his hand, “Lead me where I can feel the pillars supporting the temple, so I can lean against them.”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
šim·šō·wn way·yō·mer ’el- han·na·‘ar ham·ma·ḥă·zîq bə·yā·ḏōw han·nî·ḥāh ’ō·w·ṯî wə·hē·mi·šē·nī ’eṯ- hā·‘am·mu·ḏîm ’ă·šer nā·ḵō·wn hab·ba·yiṯ wə·’eš·šā·‘ên ‘ă·lê·hem ‘ă·lê·hem
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-Samson said to the-lad the-one-holding-fast his-hand: “Set-me-at-rest and-let-me-feel the-pillars on-which the-house is-established, that-I-may-lean-myself upon-them.”
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Then he said to the attendant who held his hand, "Let me loose, and let me touch the pillars upon which the house is built, that I may lean upon it.
He feigned weariness with his dancing and singing, and asked to recover himself by leaning against the pillars.
It is probable that this house, whether it were a temple or theatre, was no more than a wooden buildingBenson's timber amphitheatre is a reconstruction, not a datum; Ellicott is franker — “further than this we are unable to conjecture what was its architecture.”
27Now the temple was full of men and women; all the lords of the Philistines were there, and about three thousand men and women were on the roof watching Samson entertain them.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·hab·ba·yiṯ mā·lê hā·’ă·nā·šîm wə·han·nā·šîm kōl sar·nê p̄ə·liš·tîm wə·šām·māh kiš·lō·šeṯ ’ă·lā·p̄îm ’îš wə·’iš·šāh wə·‘al- hag·gāḡ hā·rō·’îm šim·šō·wn biś·ḥō·wq
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-the-house was-full of-the-men and-the-women, and-all the-lords of-Philistines were-there; and-upon the-roof about-three thousand man and-woman, the-ones-looking-on at Samson’s sport-making.
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The more distinguished people were with the lords in the house itself; the common people were on the flat roof.
In the middle there are two large beams, on which the whole weight of the structure lies, and these beams are supported by two pillars placed almost close to each other, so that when these are unsettled or displaced, the whole pile must tumble to the ground.JFB reconstructs the building from modern Eastern amphitheatres; it is a plausible analogy offered as explanation, not evidence from Philistine remains.
No doubt an insertion to heighten the effect; grammatically full of men and women is carried on by that beheld , shewing that the intervening words are not original. No mention of the people on the roof is made in Jdg 16:30 . The LXX. cod. B has 70 for 3000.Cambridge judges the roof-crowd a later expansion. The Septuagint variant it cites is a real datum; the verdict drawn from it is a critical inference, and the Masoretic text reads 3000.
28Then Samson called out to the LORD: “O Lord GOD, please remember me. Strengthen me, O God, just once more, so that with one vengeful blow I may pay back the Philistines for my two eyes.”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
šim·šō·wn way·yiq·rā ’el- Yah·weh way·yō·mar ’ă·ḏō·nāy Yah·weh nā zā·ḵə·rê·nî wə·ḥaz·zə·qê·nî nā hā·’ĕ·lō·hîm ’aḵ hap·pa·‘am haz·zeh ’a·ḥaṯ nə·qam- wə·’in·nā·qə·māh mip·pə·liš·tîm miš·šə·ṯê ‘ê·nay
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-Samson called unto YHWH and-said: “Lord YHWH, remember-me I-pray, and-strengthen-me I-pray only this-once, O-God, that-I-may-be-avenged — a-vengeance-of-one — upon-the-Philistines for my-two eyes.”
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This is the first mention we have of Samson praying since the memorable occasion when he gave the fountain the name of En-hakkoreh
This prayer was not an act of malice and revenge, but of faith and zeal for God, who was there publicly dishonoured
Again we see that Samson stood at a comparatively low level of spiritual enlightenment as well as of moral purity.Ellicott is the honest counterweight to Poole and Geneva: he will not baptise the prayer's motive, and the unit keeps both verdicts in view rather than choosing the flattering one.
The grim humour of the words, as Moore points out, is altogether in character. The utmost vengeance would barely compensate for the loss of one eye alone.
29And Samson reached out for the two central pillars supporting the temple. Bracing himself against them with his right hand on one pillar and his left hand on the other,
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
šim·šō·wn ’eṯ- way·yil·pōṯ šə·nê hat·tā·weḵ ’ă·šer ‘am·mū·ḏê nā·ḵō·wn hab·ba·yiṯ way·yis·sā·mêḵ ‘ă·lê·hem ‘ă·lê·hem bî·mî·nōw ’e·ḥāḏ biś·mō·lōw wə·’e·ḥāḏ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-Samson grasped the-two pillars of-the-middle, on-which the-house is-established, and-he-propped-himself upon-them, with-his-right one, and-with-his-left one.
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and thus he stood with his arms stretched out, as Jesus on the cross, of whom he was a type, as often observed.Gill reports the cruciform reading as already traditional in his day. It rests on posture, not on any statement of the Hebrew text, and should be received as figure rather than as exegesis.
was not suicide, but the act of a hero, who sees that it is necessary for him to plunge into the midst of his enemies with the inevitable certainty of death, in order to effect the deliverance of his peopleK&D is here quoting O. v. Gerlach with approval; the judgment is Gerlach's, endorsed by Keil.
There may have been, say, four pillars in the front; the two middle ones standing near together, and the other two nearer the sides.
30Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines.” Then he pushed with all his might, and the temple fell on the lords and all the people in it. So in his death he killed more than he had killed in his life.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
šim·šō·wn way·yō·mer nap̄·šî tā·mō·wṯ ‘im- pə·liš·tîm way·yêṭ bə·ḵō·aḥ hab·ba·yiṯ way·yip·pōl ‘al- has·sə·rā·nîm wə·‘al- kāl- hā·‘ām bə·mō·w·ṯōw ham·mê·ṯîm ’ă·šer hê·mîṯ rab·bîm mê·’ă·šer ’ă·šer- bōw way·yih·yū hê·mîṯ bə·ḥay·yāw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-Samson said: “Let-my-soul die with the-Philistines.” And-he-bent with-strength, and-the-house fell upon the-lords and-upon all the-people who-were in-it. And-the-dead whom he-put-to-death in-his-death were more than those he-put-to-death in-his-life.
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In the O.T. the soul is not the immortal, but the mortal, element in man: it is that which breathes, the principle of life.A lexical observation about Hebrew anthropology, not a denial of resurrection hope elsewhere in Scripture; Cambridge is describing the usage of nephesh, not settling doctrine.
This is no example nor encouragement to those that wickedly murder themselves
He does not speak out of despair, but humbling himself for neglecting his office and the offence thereby given.
The effects of his death typified those of the death of Christ, who, of his own will, laid down his life among transgressors, and thus overturned the foundation of Satan's kingdom, and provided for the deliverance of his people.
31Then Samson’s brothers and his father’s family came down, carried him back, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. And he had judged Israel twenty years.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’e·ḥāw wə·ḵāl ’ā·ḇî·hū way·yiś·’ū ’ō·ṯōw bêṯ way·yê·rə·ḏū way·ya·‘ă·lū way·yiq·bə·rū ’ō·w·ṯōw bên ṣā·rə·‘āh ū·ḇên ’eš·tā·’ōl bə·qe·ḇer ’ā·ḇîw mā·nō·w·aḥ wə·hū šā·p̄aṭ ’eṯ- yiś·rā·’êl ‘eś·rîm šā·nāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-there-went-down his-brothers and-all the-house of-his-father, and-they-lifted him and-brought-him-up, and-they-buried him between Zorah and-between Eshtaol, in-the-tomb of-Manoah his-father. And-he had-judged Israel twenty year.
Where the English smooths the original
The Danites, taking advantage of the consternation of the Philistines, and of the death of their lords and chief men, went down in force to Gaza, and recovered the body of their great captain and judge, and buried him in his father's sepulchre.
Gaza lay near the sea; Samson’s home was on the slopes of the Central Range. The Philistines’ quarrel was not with the kinsmen; they were not refused the right of sepulture.
We may observe upon the whole of Samson’s character, of what little value great bodily strength, and even great mental ability is, if not under the direction of a prudent and pious mindBenson's closing verdict is severe and should be read beside his own note on v. 28, where he calls Samson “a very singular type of the Messiah.” He holds both without reconciling them; so does the text.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The unit opens with a liturgy. The סַרְנֵי פְלִשְׁתִּים — the axles of Philistia, a title Scripture gives almost nowhere else — assemble for two stated purposes joined by one preposition: to slaughter a great slaughter, and for gladness. Pulpit is right that the second word is not a verb at all: “The Hebrew is for a festivity , or merry-making , or feast.” Poole notices the delay that made it possible, and dates it by a detail the narrator planted two verses earlier: they waited “some considerable time after, as appears by the growth of Samson’s hair in the mean time.”
Then they sing, and the song is the theological centre of the passage. נָתַן … בְּיָדֵנוּ — “gave into our hand” — is the standing covenant formula of the book of Judges for what the LORD does with nations, and here it is put in Dagon’s mouth verbatim. The verb the people use of that giving is וַיְהַלְלוּ, the Piel of hâlal: they hallelujah a fish. Cambridge shows how tightly the song is built — “The song is constructed of four lines, each ending with a rhyming suffix -çnu = our .” Every line ends in the word ours. Benson supplies the correction the narrator withholds: “The Philistines foolishly attributed to this idol what had come to pass by the will of the God of Israel, to punish Samson for his sins.” Pulpit names the stake exactly: God’s “own great name, which was blasphemed by the servants of Dagon when they thus made him superior to Jehovah.” ⚙ Every remaining verse of the unit is the answer to a verb — hâlal — and not to an insult against Samson.
One heart, singular in Hebrew, goes good with wine, and the hall sends for its entertainment. Two different roots do the work English calls “entertain” — śâchaq in the request, tsâchaq in the performance — and Pulpit concedes the overlap without dissolving it: “The two verbs are not the same in Hebrew, but they have much the same meaning.” What actually happened is not recoverable and the commentators divide honestly. Barnes reads dancing and music; Gill reads a beating — “one perhaps giving him a box of the ear… another spitting in his face”; Ellicott declines to decide: “Whether by his forced jests, or by feats of strength, or merely by being made to submit to insults, we cannot tell.” Geneva reads the humiliation as covenantal, not merely personal: “Thus by God’s just judgments they are made slaves to infidels if they neglect their calling to defend the faithful.”
He is fetched from בֵּית הָאֲסִירִים, the house of the bound ones — the first of six houses in seven verses — and then comes the sentence the Hebrew turns on: וַיַּעֲמִידוּ … בֵּין הָעַמּוּדִים. They made him stand among the standers: the verb ʻâmad and the noun ʻammûwd are the same root, and the pun is invisible in every English Bible. Gill sees providence in the staging — “that he might be the better seen, and in which there was the direction of Providence.” The census that follows is doing structural work, not decoration: Ellicott notes that the Hebrew even sorts the crowd by vocabulary, “The more distinguished people were with the lords in the house itself; the common people were on the flat roof.” K&D catches the appetite in the last phrase, where râʼâh takes the preposition bᵉ-: they “feasted their eyes with Samson’s sports.”
The strongest man in Israel is on the end of a child’s arm, and the participle used of the child is הַמַּחֲזִיק — from châzaq, to make strong. Two verses later he asks God for the same root: וְחַזְּקֵנִי. That is the grammar of the whole chapter compressed into one word repeated. Gill draws the conclusion the narrative has been building toward since the razor: the answered prayer “shows that his strength did not come with his hair, but was owing to the immediate communication of it from the Lord.”
The prayer itself is short, dense and disputed. Ellicott counts the names — “Three names of God—Adonai, Jehovah, Elohim” — and Pulpit reads the stacking as strain: “The threefold name by which he addresses the Almighty implies great tension of spirit.” Pulpit also dates the moment: this is “the first mention we have of Samson praying since the memorable occasion when he gave the fountain the name of En-hakkoreh.” Over its motive the sources split, and the split should be preserved rather than resolved. Poole: “This prayer was not an act of malice and revenge, but of faith and zeal for God, who was there publicly dishonoured.” Geneva grounds it in office: “According to my calling which is to execute God’s judgments on the wicked.” Barnes will not: these words “do not breathe the spirit of the Gospel.” Ellicott is blunter still — Samson “stood at a comparatively low level of spiritual enlightenment as well as of moral purity.” The last clause is ambiguous in Hebrew too: Pulpit renders “a vengeance of one stroke,” K&D “for the loss of only one of my two eyes,” and Cambridge hears gallows humour in it — “The utmost vengeance would barely compensate for the loss of one eye alone.”
Then וַיִּלְפֹּת, a verb the Verifier finds in only three verses of the canon: he clasps the two pillars of the midst, and וַיִּסָּמֵךְ — lets himself be propped by them. K&D, quoting Gerlach, refuses the charge of suicide: the deed “was not suicide, but the act of a hero, who sees that it is necessary for him to plunge into the midst of his enemies with the inevitable certainty of death, in order to effect the deliverance of his people.”
תָּמוֹת נַפְשִׁי עִם־פְּלִשְׁתִּים — “let my nephesh die with the Philistines.” Cambridge presses the word: in the Old Testament the soul “is not the immortal, but the mortal, element in man: it is that which breathes, the principle of life.” He does not push; the verb is nâṭâh, he bends, and he does it בְּכֹחַ — with the kôach that had left him and has been given back. Henry insists on the source: “The house was pulled down, not by the natural strength of Samson, but by the almighty power of God.” Poole guards the ethics: “This is no example nor encouragement to those that wickedly murder themselves.” Geneva guards the heart: “He does not speak out of despair, but humbling himself for neglecting his office.” Gill counts the dead and then, for once, counts honestly against his own case, reporting that “Philo Byblius says 40,000, which is not probable.”
The obituary is the quietest thing in the unit and the most deliberate. They carry him up from the plain and bury him בֵּין צָרְעָה וּבֵין אֶשְׁתָּאֹל — the exact corridor where, in Judges 13:25, the Spirit of the LORD first began to stir him. The Verifier confirms the shared place-names. He is put in the tomb of Mānôwaḥ, whose name is built on nûwach, rest — the very thing he asked the boy for in verse 26. And then the book's own verb, שָׁפַט: twenty years, repeated from Judges 15:20. Benson's closing verdict is severe and earned: great strength and great ability are “of what little value… if not under the direction of a prudent and pious mind.” Gill's is quieter and just as honest: “though he did not complete their deliverance out of their hands, yet no doubt their oppressions were fewer.”
⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested against the text and against the named voices above. The passage is not primarily about a strong man. It is about two liturgies competing for one verb. In v. 24 the people hallel their god for a giving they did not perform; by v. 30 the house in which they did it is a slaughter-heap, and the only prayer anyone in the chapter actually prayed was answered. Scripture makes the point without comment, and it makes it through a man who is at that moment blind, shackled, disgraced, and by his own history entirely at fault. That is the hard part. Samson has no moral standing left. He asks for nothing but strength and to be remembered — zâkar, the covenant verb, the thing God does for people who have no claim — and he asks it with three divine names stacked on top of each other, as a man does when he is not sure he will be heard. He is heard. Not because his motive is clean; Ellicott and Barnes are right that it is not, and the text never says it is. He is heard because the honour at stake in that building was never his. ⚙ Notice also what the Hebrew does with resting: he asks the child to set him at rest (nûwach) among the pillars, and he is laid at last in the tomb of Rest, his father Manoah. The chapter grants both requests, and in the same breath. The text never draws the connection; the roots simply stand there, and a reader is free to find it accidental. What is not a matter of inference is the ending: Judges gives its strongest deliverer a burial notice, an unfinished deliverance and no successor, and then goes on to get worse. Samson is the best the era of the judges can do, and he dies under a roof he had to pull down on himself. The book is asking for a king, and it is asking for something more than a king.
⚙ A synthesis line, not Scripture: he had no claim left to make, so he asked to be remembered — and remembering is what God does for people with no claim.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The verb of Samson's last act, וַיִּלְפֹּת (lâphath, H3943), is one of the rarest in the unit: the Verifier finds it in only three verses of the entire Hebrew Bible. Its two companions carry no violence whatever — Ruth 3:8, of a man who wakes in the night and turns, and Job 6:18, of watercourses that twist aside and vanish. Strong's gives the root sense as “properly, to bend.” Gill preserves Kimchi's reading along the same line: “the word signifies to incline or bend, as if Samson made the pillars to bend or bow.” ⚙ The lexical point is worth holding: nothing in the word itself supplies force. It describes an embrace, a turning-toward. The force in Judges 16:29 is entirely the answer to the prayer in v. 28, and the Hebrew declines to put any of it in the verb.
Ruth 3:8 · Job 6:18
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H3943 lâphath, which occurs in only 3 verses of the canon (Judges 16:29, Ruth 3:8, Job 6:18) — a rare-lexeme verbal link, not a quotation or an allusion claim
Judges 13:25 places the first stirring of the Spirit of the LORD upon Samson “between Zorah and Eshtaol”; Judges 16:31 buries him in the same words. The Verifier confirms the shared lexemes: צָרְעָה (H6881, 10 verses in the canon) and the preposition בֵּין (H996), with אֶשְׁתָּאֹל (H847, 7 verses) joining the same corridor to Joshua 19:41 and to the Danite migration of Judges 18. Cambridge notes the geography that makes the last journey a real one — “Gaza lay near the sea; Samson's home was on the slopes of the Central Range” — and K&D simply cross-references Judges 13:25 at this verse. ⚙ This is an inclusio, not a quotation: the same place-names bracket the life. It is worth adding that the same corridor is where Judges 18 stages the Danites' abandonment of their allotment, so that the tribe leaves the ground its strongest son is buried in.
Judges 13:25 · Joshua 19:41 · Judges 18:11
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H6881 Tsorʻâh (in 10 vv), H847 ʼEshtâʼôl (in 7 vv), H996 bêyn (in 247 vv) across Judges 13:25, Joshua 19:41 and Judges 18:11 — a genuine verbal overlap of place-names serving an inclusio; no quotation is claimed
Six of this unit's eleven named commentators send the reader to 1 Samuel 5 at verse 23, and they are right to. There the ark of the LORD is set beside Dagon in his own house at Ashdod and Dagon is found fallen on his face, then fallen and broken. Here the house is the one that falls, on the worshippers, in the middle of the hymn. Ellicott, Barnes, Gill, Cambridge, Pulpit and K&D all identify the deity across the two passages — K&D: “Dagon, one of the principal deities of the Philistines, was worshipped at Gaza and Ashdod.” ⚙ The pattern is one narrative motif told twice over, with the direction of the fall reversed: at Gaza the roof comes down on the god's people, at Ashdod the god comes down before the ark.
1 Samuel 5:2-4
basis: Shared proper noun Dagon (H1712) and a shared motif of Dagon's house collapsing; identified across the two passages by Ellicott, Barnes, Gill, Cambridge, Pulpit and K&D in this brief. NOT computed by the Verifier for this unit — 1 Samuel 5 does not appear in the candidate list, so the lexeme overlap here is stated from the named commentary, not from a machine count
Hebrews 11:32 names Samson in its roll of those who acted by faith, and it does so without narrating a single episode of his life. Three of this unit's voices reach for it: JFB (“he is ranked among the ancient worthies who maintained a firm faith in God”), Gill (Samson is “reckoned among the heroes for faith in Hebrews 11:32”), and Benson, who is unwilling to let it cover the whole life — the ranking “must chiefly refer to those particular acts of faith in God whereby he attacked the Philistines with his own single arm against thousands, and not to the general tenor of his life.” ⚙ Note the limit of this link precisely: Hebrews names Samson, it does not quote Judges. Because the connection runs Greek to Hebrew, no shared Strong's lexeme can exist between them and no verbal tier is available. What the New Testament supplies is a verdict on the man, not a citation of the text.
Hebrews 11:32
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew), so no shared Strong's lexeme is possible and no verbal tier is available. The basis is an explicit NT naming of Samson without quotation of Judges, cited here by JFB, Gill and Benson
Samson's petition reduces to two imperatives with a suffix: זָכְרֵנִי, remember me, and חַזְּקֵנִי, strengthen me. Gill reads the first as an appeal to office and covenant: “remember thy lovingkindness, formerly expressed to me, the gracious promises made unto me.” ⚙ The tool offers this next step as its own figural reading, not as anything the sources here assert: the only other place in Scripture where a condemned man, fixed between two pieces of timber and mocked by a crowd, has nothing left to ask but that he be remembered, is Luke 23:42. The parallel is of posture and petition, not of merit — Samson asks to be remembered so that he may destroy, the thief asks to be remembered so that he may be received. The distance between the two requests is as much the point as the resemblance.
Luke 23:42
basis: Novel figural reading by this tool, not asserted by any voice in this brief. Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew), so no shared Strong's lexeme is possible; the basis is a shared motif — a dying man's sole petition to be remembered — and the tier is deliberately kept below any verbal claim
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
The closing clause of v. 30 is the oldest christological handle on this passage, and the brief's voices reach for it independently. Henry: “The effects of his death typified those of the death of Christ, who, of his own will, laid down his life among transgressors, and thus overturned the foundation of Satan's kingdom, and provided for the deliverance of his people.” Poole says the same thing in the same breath as his defence against the charge of suicide: Samson did this “that he might be a type of Christ, who by voluntarily undergoing death destroyed the enemies of God, and of his people.” Gill calls the ruin “an emblem this of the destruction of Satan, and his principalities and powers, by the death of Christ.” Benson, quoting Dodd, presses it into a whole list — called and sanctified from the womb, delivering alone and almost without weapons, “and in his death evidently doing more than in his life, thereby destroying the power of the devil,” with Hebrews 2:14 attached. ⚙ The reading is honest only if the disanalogy is kept in view: Samson dies for two eyes, and by his own confession for vengeance; Christ dies for enemies, and prays for them. The type is in the shape of the victory, not in the character of the man.
Hebrews 2:14 · Hebrews 11:32
Israel's judge is brought out of confinement, set before a festival crowd, and made the entertainment. Benson names the correspondence directly at v. 25: “Thus Christ was made the subject of the sport and derision of the chief priests and elders, Matthew 26:67-68 , and of the Roman soldiers, Matthew 27:29 .” Gill, taking the verb passively, ends at the same place: Samson “was the object of their sport and scorn, and he bore it patiently, their cruel mockings, buffetings, and spittings; in which he was a type of Christ.” ⚙ What makes the figure more than sentiment is the theological frame the narrator has already set in v. 24: the mockery is liturgical. It is hâlal, praise, offered to a rival god at the expense of the LORD's servant. That is exactly the structure of the mockery at the cross, where the taunt is aimed through the man at the God who is supposed to deliver him. Note the limit honestly: Samson is suffering for his own sin as well as for his office, and Henry, Benson and Geneva all say so.
Matthew 26:67-68 · Matthew 27:29
Gill records a reading already traditional by 1746: “thus he stood with his arms stretched out, as Jesus on the cross, of whom he was a type, as often observed.” ⚙ This one should be received with its weight clearly marked. It rests entirely on posture — בִּימִינוֹ… בִּשְׂמֹאלוֹ, one hand right, one hand left — and on nothing the Hebrew says. The text's own emphasis in v. 29 is on lâphath, clasping, and çâmak, leaning weight; it is a grip, not a spread. The figure is old and it is not nothing, but it is a devotional resemblance and not an exegetical argument, and the unit says so rather than letting Gill's confidence carry it further than the words allow.
Judges 16:29
⚙ The most load-bearing christological fact in this unit may be the one that reads as failure. Gill states it without flinching: “though he did not complete their deliverance out of their hands, yet no doubt their oppressions were fewer.” Twenty years of judging end with the Philistines still in place, the deliverer in a grave, and no successor named. Benson's severe closing verdict — great strength is of little value “if not under the direction of a prudent and pious mind” — is the epitaph of the whole era. The book will run on from here to a Levite's concubine and the sentence that there was no king in Israel. ⚙ The reading offered here, and offered as fallible: Judges does not end by celebrating its strongman but by exhausting the category. The one who saves by dying and leaves the work unfinished is, precisely at that point, not the fulfilment but the demand for one. This is a redemptive-historical reading of the book's shape rather than a typological identification, and it is the tool's own.
Judges 16:31 · Judges 21:25
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
Text. The Hebrew of this unit is stable, but it carries visible scribal work at three points. In v. 25 the interlinear preserves the consonantal form האסירים (“the bound ones”) with its read-form; in v. 26 the hapax וְהֵימִשֵׁנִי is marked by the Masoretes with a marginal substitution — K&D: “the imperative Hiphil of the radical verb ימשׁ, which only occurs here; and the Keri substitutes the ordinary form המישׁ from מוּשׁ”; and in v. 28 K&D notes mishshᵉtê standing “without Dagesh lene in the ת.” The interlinear supplied for vv. 26, 29 and 30 also shows duplicated or out-of-sequence entries (the repeated ‘ălêhem at 16:26 and 16:29; the “vvv” placeholders and shuffled word order in the long final clause of 16:30). These are artifacts of the interlinear alignment, not variants in the Hebrew; the note indices used here follow the interlinear as given.
Disputed rendering. The last clause of v. 28 has no settled translation. Pulpit: “that I may be avenged with a vengeance of one stroke.” K&D and Cambridge: vengeance “for one of my two eyes.” Ellicott reports the LXX as “ one revenge for my two eyes.” BSB chooses “one vengeful blow.” The unit presents both and settles neither.
Disputed figure. Cambridge judges the crowd of v. 27 “an insertion to heighten the effect” and records that “The LXX. cod. B has 70 for 3000.” The Septuagint variant is a real datum; the source-critical verdict built on it is an inference. The Masoretic text reads three thousand, and the Hebrew itself already hedges with kᵉ-, “about.” Cambridge likewise proposes that v. 24 originally stood after v. 25; Gill reaches the same reordering by a different route (“what is before said… is said by anticipation”). Neither claim rests on a manuscript.
Reconstruction, not evidence. Every account of the building's architecture in this brief is conjecture and the better commentators say so. Ellicott: “further than this we are unable to conjecture what was its architecture.” Benson's timber amphitheatre, JFB's Eastern amphitheatre, and the Turkish-kiosk model K&D takes from Faber are analogies offered to make the collapse intelligible, not descriptions of any excavated Philistine temple. Poole's long defence of the passage's plausibility, and Gill's appeal to Westminster Hall, belong to the same category of argument.
Sources and their limits. Eleven public-domain commentators are quoted verbatim by anchor: Ellicott, Benson, Henry, Barnes, JFB, Poole, Gill, Geneva, Cambridge, Pulpit and K&D. They do not agree — on whether Samson performed or was beaten (Barnes vs. Gill), on whether his prayer was zeal or revenge (Poole and Geneva vs. Barnes and Ellicott), or on whether Hebrews 11 vindicates his life or only certain acts of it (JFB vs. Benson). Those disagreements are preserved rather than harmonised. Gill's numeric speculation about the death toll, and his citation of “Philo Byblius says 40,000,” are reported in the brief with his own caveat that it “is not probable”; no figure beyond the text's own has been asserted here.
Thread bases. Four of the five threads carry a stated basis. The lâphath link (Ruth 3:8, Job 6:18) and the Zorah/Eshtaol inclusio (Judges 13:25, Joshua 19:41, Judges 18:11) are Verifier-computed shared lexemes. The Dagon link to 1 Samuel 5 is NOT in this unit's Verifier candidate list and is flagged as commentary-derived in its badge. The Hebrews 11:32 and Luke 23:42 links are cross-Testament and therefore cannot carry any verbal tier; the Luke thread is the tool's own figural reading and is marked novel.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)