Samson shows that in seeking revenge you dig two graves: one for your enemy, one for yourself.
Is it true that “time heals all wounds”? In Samson’s case, he seems to have recovered from his wife’s betrayal, and, taking a young goat as a present, he makes his way to Timnath. There he discovers that his wife has been given to his best man since, her father argued, “I really thought that you thoroughly hated her” (Jdg 15:2). In retaliation, “Samson went and caught three hundred foxes; and he took torches, turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails. When he had set the torches on fire, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up both the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and olive groves” (vv 4-5). He takes “The little foxes that spoil the vines” (Song 2:15) to a whole new level, doesn’t he! Now, do you recall what the Philistines promised the woman if she didn’t share the riddle’s secret? Ah, yes. So what happens when the Philistines discover that Samson has destroyed their crops? “The Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire” (Jdg 15:6). The old adage about fighting fire with fire seems to leave everything in ashes. Samson, feeling obligated to even the score, says, “Since you would do a thing like this, I will surely take revenge on you, and after that I will cease. So he attacked them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; then he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock of Etam” (vv 7-8). But now the Philistines felt it was their turn again. They invaded Judah near Lehi, causing Judah to ask what was going on. “We have come up to arrest Samson, to do to him as he has done to us” (v 10), they said. And what did Samson say when they asked him? “As they did to me, so I have done to them” (v 11). The big lesson: You never get ahead by trying to get even.