What is the Message of Judges 15?: One Man's Vengeance, God's Deliverance.

Samson's Escalating War of Vengeance

Picking up from the betrayal at his wedding, Judges 15 dives headfirst into a brutal cycle of revenge. The narrative follows Samson as his personal anger unleashes widespread destruction on the Philistines. This conflict quickly spirals out of his control, drawing in his own countrymen who, instead of helping, decide to hand him over to the enemy. It is at this point of utter abandonment that God's power intervenes in a spectacular way.

The Foxes and the Fire  (Judges 15:1-8)

¹ After some days, at the time of wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife with a young goat. And he said, "I will go in to my wife in the chamber." But her father would not allow him to go in.
² And her father said, "I really thought that you utterly hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her instead."
³ And Samson said to them, “This time I shall be innocent in regard to the Philistines, when I do them harm.”
⁴ So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches. And he turned them tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails.
⁵ And he set the torches on fire and let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines and set fire to the stacked grain and the standing grain, as well as the olive orchards.
⁶ Then the Philistines said, "Who has done this?" And they said, "Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion." And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire.
⁷ And Samson said to them, “If this is what you do, I swear I will be avenged on you, and after that I will quit.”
⁸ And he struck them hip and thigh with a great blow, and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

Handed Over by His Brothers  (Judges 15:9-13)

⁹ Then the Philistines went up and encamped in Judah and made a raid on Lehi.
¹⁰ And the men of Judah said, "Why have you come up against us?" They said, "We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he did to us."
¹¹ Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, "Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?" And he said to them, "As they did to me, so have I done to them."
¹² And they said to him, “We have come down to bind you, that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines.”
¹³ And they said to him, “No; we will bind you fast and give you into their hand, but we will surely not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.

Victory with a Jawbone  (Judges 15:14-17)

¹⁴ When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. Then the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands.
¹⁵ And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, and with it he struck 1,000 men.
¹⁶ Then Samson said, "With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey have I struck down a thousand men."
¹⁷ And when he had finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone out of his hand. And that place was called Ramath-lehi.

A Desperate Cry for Water  (Judges 15:18-20)

¹⁸ And he was very thirsty, and he called upon the Lord and said, "You have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant, and shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?"
¹⁹ And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it. And when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore the name of it was called En-hakkore; it is at Lehi to this day.
²⁰ And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.