Judges 15:16

And Samson said,.... In a kind of triumphant song: with the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps; that is, with such an instrument he had slain heaps of men, who lay dead in heaps upon one another; in

And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men. With the Jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps.

This, though it might seem difficult, yet is not at all impossible or incredible; especially seeing the learned affirm of the asses of Syria, that they were larger and stronger than ours, and so consequently were their bones. And withal, it must be acknowledged that there was something extraordinary and miraculous in this, as there was unquestionably in Samson’ s strength, and so all the difficulty vanisheth.

Judges 15:16 And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.Ver. 16. With the jaw bone of an ass, heaps upon heaps.] Heb., A heap, two heaps. Here is an elegancy (antanaclasis) in the original; for the same word Chamor signifieth both an ass and a heap. And this was Samson’ s epinicion, or song of thanksgiving to God; not a vain vaunt of his own strength and achievements, as Josephus and Ambrose will have it, for which cause also God punished him afterwards with so great thirst, say they.

(16) And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass.—Here we once more find ourselves in very primitive regions of poetry and paronomasia. Samson’s exultation over his extraordinary achievement finds vent in a sort of punning couplet, which turns entirely on the identity of sound between chamor, a heap, and chamor, an ass, and the play of meaning between aleph, a thousand, and aleph, an ox. In the Hebrew the couplet runs:— “Bi-lechi ha-chamor chamor chamorathaim. Bi-lechi ha-chamor hicceythî eleph eesh.” Literally, with some attempt, however clumsy, to keep up the play of words, “With jaw of the ass, a (m)ass two (m) asses, With jaw of the ass I smote an ox-load of men.” The versions are, of course, unable to preserve these rough paronomasias, which are characteristic of the age. It would be quite a mistake to infer that they show any levity of spirit in Samson. On the contrary, such peculiarities of expression often arise out of deep emotion. When John of Gaunt begins his dying speech to Richard II. with— “Old Gaunt, indeed! and gaunt in being old,” &c., the king asks:— “Can sick men play so nicely with their names?” and the dying prince makes the striking answer:— “No; misery makes sport to mock herself.” I have fully examined the whole subject in Chapters on Language, pp. 227-238. These sallies of playful fancy tended no less than the flashes of military prowess to prepare the nation for better times by keeping up their buoyant mood. “The nation felt unsubdued in mind and body, while its sons could flow out in such health and vivacity;” and thus Samson began to deliver them, though his actual deeds were casual—“a sort of teasing, reiterated mark of mortifying humiliation” (Ewald).

16. heaps upon heaps] See marg., and cf. Exodus 8:14 [Hebrews 10, lit. heaps, heaps]. But a verb is wanted to complete the parallelism with clause b; and, simply pronouncing the words differently, we may render heaping I have heaped them, i. e. I have heaped them high. The verb ḥ ?amar was chosen for its similarity to ḥ ?amôr = ‘ass.’ The Verss. give a verb, LXX, Vulgate delevi, Peshitto ‘I have heaped heaps of them.’

There is a play upon the word, three times repeated, which means both “an ass” and also “a heap.” The spirit of riddle-making Judges 14:12, Judges 14:18 is apparent in this song of triumph (compare

16. Samson said — Samson’s words form a short poetical distich, and contain, in the Hebrew, a noticeable paronomasia, which may be thus presented in English:With a jawbone of the ass, a mass, two