Judges 15:18 - Meaning and Application

Here is the distress Samson was in after this great victory (Judges 15:18). He was very thirsty. This was a natural result of the heat he had faced and the hard work he had done. His zeal, that is, his intense energy for the task, had carried him so far that he almost forgot himself. Then, when he had time to stop, he found himself at the point of collapse because he had no water.

It may also have been a special act of God, as the whole event likely was. God could use this to keep Samson from becoming proud of his great strength and success, and to remind him that he was only a man, exposed to the same hardships as everyone else. Josephus says it was meant to correct him for leaving God out of his song of victory and taking the praise to himself, saying, “I have killed a thousand men.” Now, as he is about to die of thirst, he learns that his own arm could not have saved him without God's power. Samson had tasted the blood of the Philistines, but blood will never satisfy a man's thirst.

God arranged it so there was no water nearby, and Samson was too tired to go far to find any. The men of Judah should have met their deliverer with bread and wine, as Melchizedek met Abram, to make up for the wrong they had done him. Instead, they paid so little attention to him that he was almost dying for want of a drink. In this way, great servants are often treated with great neglect. Even Christ on the cross said, “I thirst.”

Samson's prayer to God in this distress is a good lesson. Those who fail to thank God when they succeed may be brought to pray when they are in trouble. Trouble often comes to bring unthankful people back to God. In this prayer, Samson pleads two things with God.

First, he pleads God's power and goodness that he had already seen in his recent success: “You have given this great deliverance into the hand of your servant.” He calls himself God's servant in what he had done. In effect, he says, “Lord, will you not care for a poor servant of yours who has spent himself in your service? I belong to you, save me.” He also calls his victory a great deliverance, because without God's help he would not only have failed to defeat the Philistines, he would have been destroyed by them. He now admits that the victory came from God and corrects his earlier mistake of claiming too much for himself.

This gives us a strong pattern for prayer. Past experiences of God's power and kindness are excellent reasons to ask for more help. “Lord, you have delivered me before, will you not deliver me still?” “You have begun, will you not finish?” “You have done the greater thing, will you not do the lesser?” He also pleads that he is now exposed to his enemies: “Lest I fall into the hands of the uncircumcised.” If that happened, they would boast about it, tell it everywhere, and God would be dishonored because his champion had become an easy prey to them. The strongest pleas in prayer are those that point to God's glory.

God gave Samson timely relief. He heard his prayer and sent him water, either from the jawbone or from the ground through the jawbone, according to Judges 15:19. The bone that Samson had used as an instrument of God's service, God used as the means of his supply. I am more inclined to the marginal reading, which says that God split open the hollow place that was in Lehi. The place where this happened had already been called Lehi, from the jawbone, even before the battle.

There, in that field or hill or plain, God caused a spring to open suddenly right beside Samson. Water came up in abundance, and it later remained as a well. Samson drank from it, and his spirits returned. We should be more thankful for the gift of water if we remembered how helpless we are without it. This example should encourage us to trust God and seek him, because when he chooses, he can open rivers in dry places (Isaiah 41:17, Isaiah 41:18).

Samson also left a memorial of this mercy in the name he gave the spring, Enhakkore, meaning “the well of him who cried.” That name would remind people both of his distress, which made him cry out, and of God's kindness in answering him. God often opens wells of comfort for his people that may well be called this, the well of the one who cried. Samson had already given the place a name that showed strength and triumph, Ramath-lehi, meaning “the lifting up of the jawbone.” Now he gives it another name that shows need and dependence.

Samson's rule continued after these events (Judges 15:20). At last, Israel submitted to the man they had betrayed. It was now clear that God was with him, so they all accepted him and followed him as their judge. The stone the builders rejected became the cornerstone.

This also shows how low Israel had fallen, since their government was dated by the days of the Philistines. Still, it was a mercy that even though they were under a foreign enemy, they had a judge who kept order and stopped them from destroying one another. His rule lasted twenty years, according to the usual length of the judges' rule. We are not told the details of those years, except for the beginning of his rule in this chapter and the end of it in the next.