Samson Found Honey in a Dead Lion and Built a Riddle From It

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The Lion on the Road to Timnah

Samson was walking to Timnah to take a Philistine woman his parents had argued against when a young lion came roaring out of the vineyards. The spirit of God rushed on him first as a rattle in the ribs, like a bell shaking before it rings. Then the strength arrived. He tore the animal apart as if it were a kid goat. No knife. No spear. Bare hands in the wet of it.

He wiped his palms on his cloak and kept walking. He told his father nothing. He told his mother nothing. The road still led to a wedding they did not want.

Honey in the Ribs

Some time later he passed the carcass again. Bees had moved into the cavity. Comb sat in the ribs of the thing that had tried to eat him. He reached in and scooped the honey. He ate some on the road. He carried some home and put it in his parents' hands and watched them eat it without telling them where it had come from.

The marriage that began with a lion ended with a riddle. At the wedding feast in Timnah, Samson offered his thirty Philistine companions a wager. He would tell them a riddle. If they solved it within seven days, he would give them thirty linen garments and thirty festal robes. If they could not, they would give him the same. They agreed.

Then he gave them a secret they had no way into. "Out of the eater came something to eat, and out of the strong came something sweet."

A Nazirite Reached Into a Corpse

Before he was born an angel had stood in front of his mother, the wife of Manoah, and named the terms. No wine. No strong drink. Nothing that comes from the vine. Hair uncut. No contact with the dead. The boy would be a Nazirite (נזיר) from the womb, set apart, and the spirit would come when it came, not when he reached for it.

He had already put his hand into a corpse for honey. The sweetness sat on his tongue. The carcass was still a carcass. He ate from both at once and walked on, hair heavy on his back, as if the vow were a coat he could wear into a grave and come out of still clean.

Far from Timnah, in the court of the Tent, Aaron and his sons took their share from what the altar had already consumed. The fire ate first. The priests ate after. An eater became food. Samson did not know that picture. He only knew the lion's ribs and the taste in his mouth.

The Bride Sold the Riddle

The companions could not solve it. By the fourth day they had nothing. On the seventh they went to Samson's bride and told her to get the answer from her husband or they would burn her father's house down.

She wept in front of him for the remaining days of the feast. He held out. She did not stop. At last he told her about the lion and the bees and the honey. She told the thirty.

They answered him before sunset. Samson knew at once what had happened. He had told the secret to one person, and that person had told thirty. He went down to Ashkelon, struck thirty men, stripped them, and paid the bet with their clothes. The spirit had come again, and it left him holding linen that still smelled of other men's sweat.

The Spirit Came Like a Bell and Left

The rush was never a steady state. It rattled, it took him, it departed. He could not summon it. He could only be standing in the road when it arrived, or standing in a feast when it did not. Each time he put his hand where the vow had said not to, the next ringing felt a little farther off.

On the road to Timnah it came when he needed it and left him holding the torn pieces of a lion he did not know what to do with. He told no one. He found the honey on the way back and kept that secret too. His whole life ran on secrets: things he had done, things he should not have touched, things he should not have said when the woman in his house would not stop asking.

The honey was already gone. The riddle was already public. The hair was still uncut. The next time the bell failed to ring, there would be a prison, and a razor, and eyes that did not come back.