Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Glad to see everybody here this morning and glad to get us started back with Samson. Judges, chapter 14 is where we're going to be today. And glad to have Denver and Mississippi. Jackson, Mississippi here. And Bentonville, Arkansas. And Katie, Texas, and Pensacola, Florida. And even Taos, New Mexico. And those of you online, welcome. Glad you're here. Let me lead us in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we're grateful for the blessings of friend and family and Bible study and just pray that today those here and those online would be encouraged that we would be given some insight into this life of Samson as we continue the study. In Jesus name, amen. And we'll do more formal introductions later, but let's go ahead and get started so we don't lose our Bible study time and get right into Judges, the 14th chapter as we continue, we're now up to session five of Samson studying the biblical narrative. And we are going to approach marriage today. We're not going to get that far. And I'm even going to give you a little hint just because we won't quite get that far. In case you missed next week. I'm not so sure Samson ever married this woman, but we'll find out. We'll see if we can speculate. And we're going to go to here in the book of Judges. Nathan, I've been meaning to tell you, something happened where the little search box got like, tiny, and I can't tell what I'm doing there. But anyway, since I know the coder, how do you select everything on this keyboard? Does anybody know windows a okay, I'm not a Windows guy, and they gave me a Windows keyboard, and I don't know what to do with it. Okay. Where's the letter? A no, I got that. Okay, so we're still having a little scrolling problem with our computer there. Sorry about that. We're going to go to Judges, chapter 14, verse five. And remember last week in the lesson that verses one through four, we had Samson going to mom and dad and say, mom and dad, there is a woman down in Timnath that has caught my eye. I would like you to go get her for me and make her my wife. And dad was a little put back by that. He says, can't you find one of our good Israeli women? What's wrong with them? And he says, no, go get her for me. And that is almost universally taken as negative for understandable reasons. But verse four, you may remember or you can look at it now if you got your Bible open. Judges, chapter 14, verse four says that God was behind all this. God was doing it. God was the one cooking this up. And we did discuss a little bit that this does not break the Torah law. Marrying a philistine woman, as much as that sounds like it would break the law, it actually does not break at least the letter of the law. Maybe you could say the spirit of the law, but the letter of the law was you can't marry a canaanite. This is not a canaanite. And we talked about Ruth the Moabites who got married, and she's a hero among Judaism and even Rahab, the Harlot, who the Jews say married Joshua and became his wife. Whether or not that happened or not, we can just go by tradition. But she is another one that's respected among Judaism. So could it be that this young lady could have converted to Judaism, come in and been a wonderful wife of the judge? Maybe so. So let's not put it too negative yet. I'm trying to be nice to Samson because a guy like Samson you want to be nice to. We're going to look at this today too, as we continue and maybe not be quite as negative towards Samson as we typically are as we look at this. So Judges, chapter 14, verse five. Now that he said, okay, go get her for me, we find out the Lord's behind this. And it says in verse five that Samson went down and his father and his mother to Timnath and came to the vineyards of Timnath. And behold, a young lion roared against him. Now this is a little bit incidental to the story. They have made arrangements now. Now they're going down and they're going to visit a little more with this. A couple of things I want to say. Samson went down. Later on in another verse, it's going to talk about going down. Don't succumb to the desire to spiritualize this and know here's how the Scripture is telling that he went down. Actually, he's going down geographically from the higher ground to the lower ground, he's going down. And the Scripture is very consistent with this. Typically what we say, and I put it even in the outline, when it says down, it's going away from Jerusalem. When it's up, it's going towards Jerusalem. But really the reason for that is Jerusalem. As far as the vast majority of Israel goes, Jerusalem. And definitely in this day, Jerusalem was the highest point. And so if you were not going towards Jerusalem, you were going down. So I would not spiritualize that at all, as tempting as it would be to talk about his downhill slide. But that would be more of an evangelical sermon than a biblical sermon. And we don't want to do that, right. So here he goes down and his father and his mother, they go with him to Timnath. That's the place where the young woman lives, came to the vineyards of Timnath. I'm quite certain that just about any town would have had vineyards. We're probably talking the outside of the town. So then we get this little surprise. A young lion roared against him. I'm going to take this literally, almost literally. How's that? There is the possibility that much of a possibility that it's not a lion. And here's the reason. Later in the next verse we're going to get to the word kid. Remember that we have said before actually the Hebrew word for kid. And really, I suppose the English word too is much more broad than our word for kid. We would think of it as a lamb or a goat. There's the kid. But the Hebrew word for kid is just a small animal. This is the word for a big beast. Now, Hebrew doesn't have as specific names as we have for animals today. So I would say really more tradition than anything says this is a lion, but it was a big ferocious animal. How's that? We're going to go with lion. There is plenty of archaeological evidence even, or I guess archaeology would be the word that lions used to roam in Israel in that day, they do not roam in Israel today. But scientifically you would not have any problem at all saying, yeah, this could have been a young lion and probably was a young lion and we're going to go with it, but let's always leave open the possibility. I remember for some reason I remember this story as a kid in Sunday school class. I can remember where the classroom was, who the teacher was, and hearing about this lesson, I think it was because the teacher used a flannel graph. And when they put the Samson up there and then they put the lion up there, it was so shock and awe that I remember the lesson to this day. So here he comes and he meets the young lion, or the young lion meets him and go down to verse six. Nathan the spirit of the lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him. Samson rent the lion as he would have rent a kid. And he had nothing in his hand, but he told not his father or his mother what he had done. Now once again, I want to try to take this and I try to do this consistently through scripture. I want to try to take this without reading any kind of emotion into it. Just what do the words tell us? Here's a newspaper article, here's the facts of the story. And the facts of the story are samson's on his way to negotiate for a bride with his mom and dad. They get close to the city. He obviously is off by himself because he's not going to tell his parents. So he maybe runs ahead, whatever. He's off in the vineyard, he meets the young lion. The spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him. The last verse of the last chapter talked about how as Samson grew, the spirit of the Lord began to come upon him from time to time. This is one of those times. The spirit of the Lord came upon him. I want to watch as we go through. We understand Samson in all of our might. Go back to the picture. Nathan, the graphic. We understand Samson to be this guy here. He is physically powerful, and maybe he is, but I want us to keep an eye out. Maybe also he's just a normal guy, but every now and then the spirit of the Lord comes upon him and he performs these feats of strength that are beyond what his physical strength could provide. Wouldn't it be funny if we get to heaven and find out samson is a 98 pound weekly and that what is so amazing is not his work of strength, but when he needed to be strong, the spirit of the Lord came upon him. So we're going to watch as we go through this. I haven't followed this line of thinking all the way through the story. We're just going to watch. Does the Bible ever tell us he was a physically imposing figure? That's what we want to know. Go back to the scripture. And so we see here that the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him and he rent him. That seems to be a key bit of the story, that the spirit of the Lord came upon him and he rent him. Now he rent him, that is, I don't know, tore him up, killed him, slaughtered him. Let's go with rent him as he would have rent a kid. Now, I am going to take this as a comparison that let's use the word slaughter. It's a little better for us. Slaughtering a little lamb. I suspect I've never done any. The only thing I ever slaughtered was a chicken. Okay, I did the chicken once, but as a matter of fact, when I was in the 10th grade was about the time I killed chickens because I was raising chickens and I said goodbye to the roosters. And shortly after that I had to give a speech in Spanish class. And so I gave a speech in Spanish about how to slaughter a chicken. I don't know what I said, but the whole class was rolling in laughter. I do remember that part. I don't know if it was my Spanish or mix it my Spanglish or the subject matter, but it was quite entertaining. Anyway, I do remember that part. Now, maybe I was a showman even back then, I don't know. But nonetheless, I think the comparison is here. Hey, he handled this as easily as if it was just a little lamb, like a sheep unto the slaughter. This was no problem for him, is the idea that comes about. So he rent him as he would have rent a kid. And then it says, and he had nothing in his hands. This is to say that the spirit of the Lord was so mightily upon him that this was a piece of cake. This was very simple. He didn't need a knife, he didn't need a weapon. He didn't need it. He just handled this and he took care of that, but he told not his father or mother what he had done. Now I think probably back in the flannel graph story and every other time we tell this story, we, ah, see here, samson has broken his Nazarite Vow and he does not want his parents to know that he has broken his Nazarite vow. Now we say he broke his Nazarite vow because you're not supposed to be with a carcass, a dead thing if you're a Nazarite. I want to go ahead and question the assumptions. That's what we do around here. And I want to say now wait a minute, it appears that Samson understood how to slaughter a kid. What would be the difference between slaughtering a lamb and slaughtering a lion? One's big, one's small, that would be the difference. But both of them would be dead animals. And when he went to slaughter the lamb or the fatted calf or whatever it was, did that break his Nazarite vow? I suspect that he did this like all of his friends and neighbors probably did this to put supper on the table. And this was part of his life even as a Nazarite. When you read in Numbers, chapter six, which is where the instruction for a Nazarite is, it does say that he is not supposed to come or have contact with a dead body. Now we here interpret that to be any dead animal, not supposed to have contact with any dead animal. In Numbers, chapter six, it says don't have contact with a dead body. Chapter six, verse six, verse seven says even if it's his mother, his father, a family member, it gives the implication that he's not to have contact with a dead human body. Now that's going to come into play later on in this story because there's going to be some dead human bodies before we're done with Samson's life. But nonetheless, I am going to go ahead and propose here that even in killing this lion and later eating the honey out of it, he is not breaking his Nazarite vow. So I'm going to be consistent with what I said last week. He's not breaking the Torah to go down and want to marry this woman. He's not breaking his Nazarite vow to kill this lion. In fact, as a matter of fact, it seems like kind of a good thing to do to me. If you're being attacked by a lion, at least fight back, right? Try to do something. And this is what he's doing. And he happens with the spirit of the Lord. And both of these, that is the choosing of the wife and the killing of the lion. We almost always take this as a negative thing. He shouldn't have chose that woman. He shouldn't have killed that lion because he was a Nazarite. He's supposed to live a holy life. Don't have that woman, don't kill that lion. And yet also in both of these stories. If we just read the actual text, it says, the Lord was upon this thing, god was in it. God actually had him choose this woman. God actually sent the spirit of the Lord upon him to give him the ability to kill this lion. So I want to try to take this in as positive, as light as we can. As I said at the beginning, I want to be Samson's friend. I want to like the guy. I don't want to see him as going down. Maybe we've got the story wrong. So he kills a lion like he would kill a kid. Oh, by the way, if a Nazarite could not have any contact with a dead animal, he would have to be a vegetarian, right? Because we don't eat live meat. The leg of lamb on there would be contact with a dead thing if you can't do this. So I think the rabbinical interpretation is always with a dead human, not with a dead lion or a dead goat or whatever it may be. So here he comes. He has no problem at all. Killing this ferocious lion again, I think had nothing in his hand. I think the picture is God has given him for this instance, an unbelievable amount of strength. Okay? He told not his father or his mother what he had done. Once again, we almost always interpret this as well, it's because he broke his vow and he didn't want them to know. He didn't want to break his good Godly parents heart to say, I'm not a Nazarite anymore, I have touched a dead thing. I think there are plenty of other motives why you would do this. One, all of us who have been young men know that sometimes you have to be judicious in what you tell your mother, that maybe now is not the time as we're going to negotiate the dowry with a family that my mom doesn't even want us to go. And I say, mom, guess what happened? I just killed a lion. Mom doesn't want to hear this. Maybe he knows that and says, maybe this is on the outside because I think his parents are Godly, not superstitious people. But maybe they would see this as some sort of sign from the Lord or omen, you're not supposed to go there, turn it around. He doesn't want that to happen. And so he just keeps it quiet. Maybe, we don't know. I mean, maybe mom said we can't go down to Timnath. This is lion season. We'll get attacked and killed and Sam's, ah, no mom, that's just stories on the news. You need to forget it. And then he's like, oh mom, I killed a lion. So whatever the reasons are, he didn't tell his parents again. Could it be taken in a non negative light? I started to say, could it be taken in a positive light? We'll just go ahead and let's just take it in a matter of fact light he didn't tell mom and dad for whatever reason. He didn't tell his mother or father what he had done. Now we scroll on down to verse seven and it says he went down and talked to the woman and she pleased. Samson well, again, this is kind of matter of fact. He went down and talked to the woman. I suspect we can assume that they are talking about marriage. Are we compatible? Do you like to cook breakfast? Do you make biscuits and gravy? Whatever the conversation there might be, if you're negotiating for a wife that this has taken place. It almost appears that he only knew this woman by sight, that they didn't have social interactions. She had the reputation as the beauty in town, whatever it was. So now they go to meet. I think we can also probably safely assume, though the text doesn't say it, that mom and dad were also talking to her mom and dad, that there were these negotiations and things that all were taking place. Now, we do have to understand again that this is a different culture than modern Western culture. And I suspect that down through the history of man, only modern Western culture has had the kind of situation we have in which a young man and a young woman give googly eyes at each other and fall in love and they date for 15 years and then they're engaged for seven. And this kind of arrangements that mostly in Western culture, the romantic kind of falling in love and getting married is probably fairly rare in human society. Honestly, marriage was much more, I think, a contractual kind of thing that was taken. The families took care of it. And I would even say that it worked. Obviously, both kinds can work. Both kinds, I'm sure, could be disastrous, too, but both kinds can work. And yet I would say I'm not advocating arranged marriages, but if you're going to have an arranged marriage, let me say that you ought to both live in a society. The reason they work is because culturally they understand this is the role of the mother, this is the role of the father, this is the role of the children. This is what everybody does. And so contractually, you just kind of negotiate and say, is she going to fulfill her obligations well? Is he going to fulfill his obligations well? And you come and you have this contractual arrangement. Now, if you would like an example of that, once again, I refer you to Fiddler on the Roof and what is it? Tevia. And what's his wife's name? Golda. I don't know. It's a good Jewish name. I remember that. Anyway, you remember the main song tradition. And in that song tradition, it talks about who does this? The papa does. Who does that? The mama does. Who does this? The son does. Who does this? The daughter does. They have these very strict roles of this is what happens. Why tradition, culturally, it's taken care. Now, if you have that kind of society, I would say if you have that kind of society, even the romantic fall in love with each other. Marriage is so much easier because everybody understands their roles. We live in a society today in which marriage is infinitely harder because there are no roles. In fact, we've gotten to the place. There are no genders and everything else. There's no authority structure. There's nothing in society. And so it's kind of katie barred the door, right free for all, trying to figure all this out. Now he's possibly about to go into a negotiated marriage. This is what's happening, and everything's going good in the conversation. She pleased. Samson well, I suppose the family as well. And after a time, he returned to take her. So they probably negotiated the dowry, said, this is what you're going to have to pay to marry our boy. And they said, well, that's going to take four months for us to come up with that, and so come back in four months. So after a time, he returned to take her and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion. And behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion. Now, I don't know exactly how much time passed here, but here's what you've got to have. I did my research. It's going to take probably six weeks, if it's the summertime, to get down to a carcass of a lion. And that's assuming you got some vultures nearby and all that, to clean all the meat off and get the bones dry, because bees only attach their hive where it's dry. So you got to have a dry bone here up in the hollow of the lion. And that's going to take several weeks, if not several months, depending on the conditions. And then for there to be honey, that's going to be at least a six week kind of thing to start and get from nectar to honey. Get all that out. I found out that nectar is I don't know, it's the sweetness of the flowers and the saliva of the bees. And then it dehydrates and makes honey. There you go. So this takes a while to go through that dehydration process and get to all that. So, I don't know, we're probably talking at least three months, if not 6810. Twelve months. It doesn't look like we're talking 17 years later or anything like this, but there's a time period that passes here. And he comes and he finds the carcass, the lion and the swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion. And so, moving on then to verse nine, we see that he took thereof in his hands, that is, of the honey, and went on eating and came to his father and his mother and gave to them. And they did eat. But he told them not that he had taken the honey out of the carcass of the lion. Once again, we've taken an assumption touching a dead thing is bad for a Nazarite. That's why he didn't tell his parents. Now he doesn't tell his parents. Again, this thing came from a carcass and we're sort of loading it on Samson. But we're doing it all based upon an assumption, right? What if our assumption is wrong? This is why I say question the assumptions. What if there's nothing wrong with killing a lion, touching a dead lion, all that? I think you can again build a decent case to say there's nothing wrong with him killing the lion and everything is well and good there. So he comes and they eat the honey. Certainly in Jewish life, there is nothing wrong with eating honey for a Nazarite or any Jew. It's the land flowing with milk and honey. And so they come and they eat the honey. By the way, I should say that in several hotels in Israel that you'll find out when we go. You are going, aren't you? There are depending on the season. But they take the honeycomb at the breakfast buffet and they just set it out there, and you just go and dip right out of the comb itself and eat that fresh honey. It's pretty good, isn't it? So this is what they're doing. Let's take a little honey and eat it on our dry, stale bread that we brought along with us and enjoy it. And so this is what they're doing, okay? He doesn't tell them where he got it. Probably, again, put this in a positive light. If I go too far into this story, mom's going to start asking questions. And I didn't tell her then, I'm not telling her now, so let's just leave it. It was honey over there in the vineyard. Good enough. And so he doesn't tell his parents about it, and yet they're eating the honey out of the carcass of the lion. And again, I couldn't find anything in the Nazarite vow or really even in the Torah that prohibited this creation of a carcass or eating out of eating the honey out of. I don't think he's breaking any laws. I think we can still say he's Nazarite. Maybe we can even still say he's a Nazarite who wants to serve God, who wants to do well. And God is leading him and guiding him and directing him, and he's following the will of God here, and he's carrying all this out and he gives them honey and he doesn't tell mom and dad, maybe because it's going to scare her or whatever it may be. And then we come into verse ten, verses ten through 14. I'm calling this the bachelor party. Every marriage needs to have a bachelor party, right? And here's the bachelor party, verse ten. His father went down unto the woman and Samson made there a feast for so used the young men to do. Okay, father goes down to the woman again, maybe he's going to get the dowry price. I don't think there's been a marriage yet. And whatever the continuation of the negotiations culturally are taking place here, samson made there a feast So used to young men to do. This little phrase right here, so used to young men to do, tells me that here is a tradition that is at least waning or dying out. By the time the writer of the Book of Judges is putting this down, he feels the need to say, hey, this is what people used to do. Tradition. This is what used to happen. And the tradition was that Samson would make a feast, that maybe the young men made the feast is what it says. But as we read this, it looks to me like it was tradition prior to the wedding that the young men would get together and they would have a feast likely for several days. And so I'm going to call it a bachelor party, for lack of a better term. That this is not the wedding. This is not the wedding feast. This is the young men gathered together and they are having a feast. Verse eleven. It came to pass when they saw him that they brought 30 companions to be with him. Now you know that I am persnickety. I keep this sign here to remind me to keep being persnickety. Be ye persnickety. I'm persnickety about pronouns especially. And here we come to they when they saw him, that they brought 30 companions to him. But I don't know who they are. And there is no description in the text. I think the only logical conclusion could be wrong on this, but the only logical conclusion that I can see is that the residents of Timnath, the community there, they know, hey, there's going to be a wedding. This is what you do at a wedding. And it's a tradition that the young men are going to get together and hoop and holler and arm wrestle and all that kind of stuff. And so they bring him 30 companions to be with him. I am going to assume, and I think this is a pretty safe assumption, but again, it's not explicit in the text that these are 30 young men from Timnath. These are friends of the bride. Whatnot the fellows out there and all of the towns in that region, especially in that day, none of them were cities, none of them had thousands of people. They were towns of dozens or hundreds, maybe 1000 people at the most. Probably not even that. And so even today, if you went to a town that the population said 1001, you would expect, depending on what part of the country you were, you would say probably about 30 young men in this town. So here they bring the 30 companions out to be with him. Again, I kind of think this is such a cultural norm that everybody knows what to do. Everybody knows the role to play in that incidentally. Let me just stop right there. I think there's value in cultural norms and traditions and exercises and things that we do that I think is harming our society not to do those anymore. We get away from various traditions where everybody knows at this point. Here's what you have. Again, I was reminded of it yesterday. Somebody actually mentioned it to me. Bruce did. But I was reminded yesterday of the story I've told you a number of times, and you're about to get again, and that is when I was a young preacher in Monday, Texas, between Sunday and Tuesday, and I was 27 years old and doing funerals, and no 27 year old knows how to do a funeral. And so I was so grateful that the funeral director, a guy named Richie Smith, had been doing funerals forever. The joke about Richie Smith is he's the last man that have anything to do with you. You get it? Okay, good. So I think he might still be doing funerals today, by the way. But anyway, he would come in my office at every funeral in my study at First Baptist Church. He would come in before every funeral, and he would say, Now, Brother Randy, and he would tell me exactly what I was supposed to do. Every time we're going to go in here, you're going to stand here. You're going to say the at the end, when you say Amen, you're going to say as the family remains seated, would the congregation please rise? And then you are going to stand right here. You are going to put your hands behind your back. That was so helpful to me, because I realized if you put your hands in front of you, they start shaking your hand, and you've got a receiving line right there, and they're supposed to be like, honoring the dead. And you're like, oh, thank you. They're all like, oh, that was a very good sermon, Pastor. Thank you. Thank you. And so you put your hands behind your back. He told me every little thing. We're going to go to the cemetery. You're going to stand at the back of the hearse every time. I had a funeral one time, believe it or not, in Monday, Texas, I had three funerals in the same day. And three times he told me, this is what you're going to do. He went through it every time. Now, all that to say the whole community knew what to do. They knew when you're supposed to be there, where you're supposed to dress, where you're supposed to sit, when you're supposed to walk, how you're supposed to, every little thing about it. And in that ritual, there is something that I think is encouraging to humanity. And we as a society, I think, have lost out that we're giving up all those kind of the traditions that you used to do. Anyway, I think this is honestly, even though it's the Philistine enemy camp here, there's a frame of reference because they do the same thing. And so they've got these 30 companions. Samson said to them, I will now put forth a riddle unto you. If you can certainly declare it with me within the seven days of the feast and find it out, then I will give you 30 sheets and 30 changes of garments. Okay? So here's the 30 guys, and they're having a camp out in the woods for a few days, and it is the rite of passage or whatever custom it is. I think it would help our young men, too, if we had some more of these things where you get out with the guys. So here they're out with the guys, and when you're out with the guys, somebody is going to be challenged to something. And here he challenges them all and he challenges them again to this riddle. This tells me also, by the way, that maybe he was physically strong, but this goes a lot further than physical strength to mental strength, because you can only do riddles if you have mental strength. And so he had some mental strength, the men around him had some mental strength, and he's going to put forth a riddle. And yet it's got a little wager in on it. If you can figure out this riddle, I'm going to give you 30 sheets. Now, the word that's used there, sheets, because that would be kind of an odd thing. If I was out with the guys and made a bet with them, I probably would not bet sheets, but this is actually the word that is used here. And sheets in 1611 worked perfectly for this. It's the word for linen, first of all. And linen, of course, is very expensive cloth that comes from flax woven together. It's a lot harder to do than say, cotton or wool or any of that. This is rich man's cloth here, and it would be something that the rich guy to have a linen toga. That's a nice thing. So I'll give you 30 of these and 30 change of garments. Maybe that's more like some everyday clothes, whatever it is. But whatever it is, it's expensive in that day. It would be expensive today if I said, hey, I'm going to buy all 30 of you a new shirt. If I do ever say that, by the way, I am headed to Walmart. But this is high dollar stuff. He's going to dillard here. This is the good stuff. And so he makes this bet. Okay? Verse 13. If you cannot declare it to me, then ye shall give me 30 sheets and 30 changes of garments. And they said unto him, put forth thy riddle that we may hear it. Well, they are ready for the bargain, ready for the change. And now my screen changer has left me. And so let me get down here to Judges 1414. Let me open my Bible. Would be a much better way anyway, wouldn't it? And in Judges the 14th chapter and the 14th verse, we conclude what we're going to finish today. Verse 14. So put thy riddle that we may have it. And he said unto them, out of the eater came forth meat, out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days expound on the riddle. I don't know if it was a three day riddle. The next verse is going to mention seven days. Almost appears it doesn't have a real strong time limit on it. But he gives this riddle put it on verse 14. Nathan. He gives this riddle that is there out of the eater came forth meat, out of the strong came forth sweetness. What I wish we could look at and we're out of time, spend time with is this tells me Samson had a really good brain that he's thinking this way. It tells me he had some brawn and some brain. I am willing to bet 30 linen sheets and 30 changes of clothing all on my intellectual ability. Here we go. And so he gives this I kind of wish we could read in the Hebrew because the riddle here out of the eater came forth meat, out of the strong came forth sweetness. There is in Hebrew I doubt you could even get it into English. There is really strong linguistic excellence in this poetry. Balance everything else. I gave another way to look at it. From the devourer a delicacy arose, from the fierce sweetness flowed. It's just a different way of putting it there's that play on words at the beginning. Out of the eater came forth meat. You got that a little bit there. In Hebrew, it's the same root. And so we just don't have it in English to be able to get it over there. But it's very poetic anyway in Hebrew. So from devourer to delicacy is the idea out of the devourer a delicacy arose and from the fierce a sweetness flowed. In the second part in Hebrew, there is that not the same route, but there's a phonetic poetry to it. So we went with fierce and flowed. He really put together a good riddle. Now, I don't know if he had been thinking of this for a long time or if this just sort of came to him and he shares it, but this might be we were talking about why didn't he tell his parents earlier? It may be just happenstance he didn't tell his parents. But the text needed us to needed to tell us he didn't tell his parents so that we wouldn't blame them if the young men knew about it. Because whoever knows about the lion and the honey, yeah, they're going to put this together and say, oh, I know what he's talking about. The lion. So it can't be the parents, they don't know about this. And later on we're going to find out again what happens. And we're going to talk about Samson's wife and we're going to talk about whether or not she is his wife as we understand it. But for that, you have to come back in one week to finish the rest of the story. So now we have just had the bachelor party and the challenge has been given, and may the best man win. With that, I lead us in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thanks for the journey through Samson's life and that time and that culture and even the indirect insights we can get for our own lives and times and cultures and pray that what we say and do would strengthen our families, our communities, our culture through this understanding and our understanding of the word of God as a whole. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Okay, we'll come back in a little bit and I'm going to talk about we'll take about a ten minute break here and I'm going to talk in the sermon about questioning something we typically miss when it comes to biblical interpretation and we need to know wasn't exactly a riddle. But come on back, take a little break online. We'll be on a new broadcast in just a moment. All.