Judges 14 - Introduction

The wedding at Timnah

Samson asks his parents to arrange a marriage for him in the usual way; but finding them unwilling, he takes the matter into his own hands. There was another way of gaining the bride, and this he determines to adopt. Among the Hebrews, as the present story shews, and among the Arabs in early days, it was considered lawful for a man to contract a union for a limited time; no intervention of the parents was necessary; the woman remained in her own home (cf. Judges 8:31), and was visited at intervals by her husband. An alliance of this kind, for which the Arabic term mot-a(or ṣadâḳa) marriage 1 [54] is used, was condemned by Islam as -the sister of harlotry," and it received no sanction from later Jewish custom or opinion. Accordingly the original tradition of Samson's marriage has been modified in order to bring it into conformity with prevailing usages, chiefly by the addition of and his father and his motherin Judges 14:5 and by corresponding changes in Judges 14:6. These insertions have introduced confusion into the text, which, however, becomes perfectly intelligible when once they are recognized. See Rob. Smith, Kinship and Marriage in earlyArabia, 67 ff., 76; S. A. Cook, Laws of Moses and Code of Ḫammurabi, 76 f.

[54] Mot-a marriage is defined in Arabic law as -marriage for a period," Jus Safiticum, ed. Juynboll, p. 195. It was allowed by Mohammed as a temporary concession, and then abrogated; the tradition may be found in Muslim(Cairo, a.h. 1290), vol. i. p. 395. Cf. Jacob, Altarab. Beduinenleben(1897), p. 54. These references are due to Prof. Margoliouth.