Samson and the Philistines were involved in an ever-escalating game of vengeance. One acted, the other re-acted, to which came another reaction and another, and so on. That’s how vengeance works, until everyone is either dead or someone steps in to end the cycle.

I. The Spread (Judg 15:9-10). The Philistines sought to end the cycle of violence by killing Samson’s wife and father-in-law, but Samson retaliated by killing an army, dismembering their bodies, and scattering the parts (Judg 15:8). The Philistines had to respond or appear weak. As gruesome as this is, God caused these events to deliver His compromised and complacent people from their oppressors. They’d forgotten that God is faithful to His promises to love Israel and thus deliver her from her enemies. Samson, against his desire, was God’s tool of deliverance (Judg 13:5, 25; 14:4). God expanded the conflict beyond Samson and a woman, her family, and a village to consume the whole nation of the Philistines.

II. The Sacrifice (Judg 15:11-13). The Judahites didn’t like Samson for upsetting their miserable but acceptable order of life. They were content being oppressed in the land God gave them, even though they were slaves to their enemy. Israel forgot God’s faithfulness and promise of deliverance (Judg 1:1-4, 17-19). The desire to “go along to get along” was more important than God’s favor. They left Samson to himself, but in the words of John Knox, A man with God is always in the majority.
Judah mustered 3,000 men, the only time in Samson’s ministry Israel raised an army, but it wasn’t to fight the enemy but rid themselves of their savior! It was easier to deliver their deliverer to their oppressors than be right with God. It was his life or theirs. It was easier to deliver their deliverer to the enemy. That’s what sin does!
Sin blinded their minds to the true enemy and God’s witness and work in the conflict; Israel accused Samson of being against them. We are much the same, accusing God of working against us or abandoning us. But Jesus came to destroy the works of Satan (1 Jn 3:8) and that makes His work of salvation destructive as well as healing; disciplining while delivering. As our Saviour, Jesus heals us while destroying the world and its work. We must be on the Deliverer’s side, hating both the evil in the world and within us (Ps 87:10; 139:19-22).
Samson was innocent of their charges, but he’d ratcheted up God’s promised deliverance. Both Judah and Philistia were working against God’s savior. They’d deliver their deliverer over to certain death to keep themselves safe (they thought), from the enemy. Samson willingly surrendered himself to become a sacrifice for peace. He’d be given over to death to deliver the nation.
In the same way, the Jews of Jesus’ day betrayed Him to the Romans in order to maintain their false sense of peace and control (Mt 26:47, 59; 27:1-2, 18-25; Jn 11:47-52). But in doing so, He became the sacrifice for sin, delivering His people!

III. The Surprise (Judg 9:14-15). Samson was bound with two new ropes and led to the enemy. The Philistines ran at him with a war cry until the Holy Spirit came mightily upon him and the ropes miraculously broke (literally, melted like wax) and he was free. He took the fresh jawbone of a donkey, breaking his Nazirite vow, and slaughtered 1,000 Philistines, heaping their bodies in a great pile. He did this while his countrymen watched, yet they didn’t join his effort.
In his victory, Samson composed a poem using the identical Hebrew words for donkey and heap, gloating that he’d made donkeys out of the Philistines. Yet he ignored God’s work in and through him. Samson named the place, the hill of an ass, ridiculing the heap of Philistine bodies he’d left behind (Col 2:13-15)!