Keep reading. It gets better: “Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey …” That word for fresh really means moist. It means a donkey that hasn’t been dead very long. Samson found it, stripped off the skin, picked it up and waded into the Philistines. Donkeys have narrow chins so picking up a jawbone is like squeezing a boomerang. Verse 15 says that he took the fresh jawbone and with it he struck down one thousand men. You say, how did he do it? Well, I don’t know. But I discovered an intriguing suggestion in one book. Maybe he took a rope and tied it on to the end of the jawbone and tied the other end around his wrist and swung it over his head. You could do some serious damage that way. The Bible says he killed one thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey.
Jawbone Hill
Eventually it’s all over. The Philistines have fled, leaving the battlefield littered with corpses. Then Samson, as he surveys the carnage, composes a little poem. That’s Samson again. He’s into gloating. Verse 16 records his poetry:
With a donkey’s jawbone I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey’s jawbone I have killed a thousand men.
Actually the Hebrew word for donkey (HAMOR) and the Hebrew word for heap (HAMAR) sound alike. They are spelled alike because Hebrew has no vowels. That’s why some of the translations will say, “With a donkey’s jawbone, heaps upon heaps.” This little bit of poetry tells us what happened. Samson would take the jawbone and kill a few men and then make a heap of dead bodies and then kill a few more and make another heap and kill a few more and make another heap. Or if you want to use the King James terminology it’s something like this: “With the jawbone of a jackass I have made jackasses out of them. With a donkey’s jawbone I have killed one thousand men." When he had finished speaking he threw away the jawbone and the place was called Ramath Lehi. Ramath means hill and Lehi means jawbone. Ramath Lehi means Jawbone Hill. Just a reminder of the great victory he had won.
The Greatest Prayer Samson Ever Prayed
Now our story is almost over but there is one more part: Samson’s humble prayer to the LORD. Because he was very thirsty (Killing one thousand men really works up a thirst) he cried out to the LORD, “You have given your servant this great victory. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” (15:18) This is the greatest prayer Samson ever prayed. He’s saying, “Lord I know that this victory did not come by my power.” It’s the one place where he really acknowledged God’s presence in his life.
And the LORD God opened up a hollow place in Lehi, and water came out of it. When Samson drank, his strength returned and he revived. So the spring was called En Hakkore (which means the spring of one who cries out to God). And it is still there in Ramath Lehi. (15:19)
That last little phrase is interesting. The writer of Judges is telling us that, even though many years have passed, there was still water coming out of that spring. The flow of water was a present reminder of the LORD God’s past provision for his people.
"SAMSON" Means "Little Sun" (Compare the Mesopotamian Sun god SHAMASH).
What does the Hebrew word khamor (
) mean? DONKEY
The Hebrew words for “heap” KHAMAR/HAMAR and “donkey” KHAMOR/HAMOR are the same (well, nearly the same). How are the words connected?
What does the Hebrew word Lehi (
) mean? JAWBONE What came upon Samson after he killed the 3,000 Philistines? A great thirst.
What is the thirst about (see John 7:38)?
What came from “Jawbone Hill,” A spring of fresh water...
and how does that relate to Samson’s riddle? "Out of the strong came something sweet." The jawbone thrown by strong Samson brought forth sweet fresh water (agua dulce, sötvatten) to quench his great thirst
How did Samson talk — with words or with his life? With his life
How does speak to us?
Samson's line after dispatching all those one thousand Philistines qualifies as both a Badass Boast and a Bond One-Liner (which means the trope predates 007 himself):
Oftentimes, when the hero (or in some cases the villain) has just killed someone, often in a gruesome manner, they do a Bond One-Liner.
The classic Bond One-Liner is typically a bad Pun or Obligatory Joke on the manner in which the victim was dispatched. It can be a snarky response to the now-dead enemy's attempted Pre-Mortem One-Liner, an Ironic Echo of something they said to the hero earlier, or a casual response set up by having the hero interact with a character who wonders aloud why the victim is not present. It often works on the basis that it Crosses the Line Twice, but it may also be a sign that the character who says it has sociopathic tendencies.
The Trope Namer is James Bond, who does this in every single one of his films. (The early films were done under the onus of the Hays Code, with these quips being used to downplay the violence; later films simply carried on the tradition.) Ditto Arnold Schwarzenegger, but Bond's have more pun.
- The Bible, Book of Judges: 15:16- Then Samson said, "With a donkey's jawbone I have made donkeys out of them. With a donkey's jawbone I have killed a thousand men." (He had just used the jawbone of a donkey / wild ass as a weapon). One possible translation made to preserve the pun is something like "With the jawbone of an ass, I have heaped them in a mass." In the original Hebrew, the word for "donkey" (hamor) sounds like the word for "heap" (hamar) making a better pun.
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