A Jawbone Of An Ass

Judges Chapter 15

Samson finds out that his wife has been given to Samson’s companion, and now he’s out for vengeance. His father-in-law tried to give him his younger daughter, but Samson has other ideas. He burned down the Philistines’ grain fields, vineyards, and olive groves. How he did it involves three hundred foxes and a bunch of torches, and lighting them and letting them loose.

The Philistines killed Samson’s wife and her father when they found out what he did. He swore revenge on them and then, apparently killed the men that burned his father-in-law and wife. He then went and hid.

Samson basically stirs up a hornet’s nest. The Philistines came to the people of Judah and say that they are going to capture Samson and do to him what he did to them. The men of Judah went to him, tied him up, and took him back to Lehi where the people of Judah were staying. All of this was done with Samson’s knowledge.

I love learning where certain phrases come from. This chapter, it turns out, is where the phrase “Jawbone of an ass,” comes from. When the Philistines came to meet him, Samson broke free of his ropes thanks to God and we have this famous scene.

¹⁵Then he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached down and took it, and with it he killed a thousand men. ¹⁶And Samson said,

“With the jawbone of a donkey,
heaps upon heaps,
with the jawbone of a donkey  
I have slain a thousand men.”

Brettler, Marc; Newsom, Carol; Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (pp. 386-387). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

When he was done bludgeoning Philistines with the jawbone, he was quite thisty and so God broke open the hollow spot under Lehi and gave him a drink. He judged Israel for twenty years.