Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 14:14

"And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth food, And out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days declare the riddle." — Judges 14:14 (ASV)

Out of the strong came forth sweetness. —The antithesis is not perfect, but we cannot strain the word “strong” to mean “bitter,” as the Septuagint and Syriac do. Josephus gives the riddle in the form, “the all-devouring having generated sweet food from itself, though itself far from sweet” (Antt. v. 8, § 6). The whole of Samson’s life has been described by Ewald as “a charming poetic picture, in which the interspersed verses gleam forth like the brightest pearls in a circlet.” It must be confessed that the riddle was hardly a fair one, for the event to which it alluded was most unusual, and no one could have guessed such a riddle without some clue; for—

“It is seldom when the bee does leave her comb
In the dead carrion.”

Shakespeare: Henry V., ii. 4.

Cassel quotes a curious parallel from the legends of North Germany. The judges offer a woman her husband’s life if she can make a riddle which they cannot guess. On her way to the court she had found the carcass of a horse in which a bird had built its nest and hatched six young ones, which she took away. Her riddle was (I venture rudely to translate the rude old lines):—

“As on my way here I sped,
I took the living out of the dead,
Six were thus from the seventh freed:
To solve my riddle, my lords, it is fitting.”

The judges failed, and the husband was spared (Mullen-hof, Sagen, p. 506).

In three days. —It is hard to see why this is mentioned if it was only on the seventh day (Judges 14:15) that they tried the unfair means of inducing Samson’s wife to reveal the secret. Bishop Hervey conjectures, with much probability, that we should read shesheth “six,” for shelsheth, “four.” The Septuagint and Syriac read “on the fourth day,” and ד (7) may easily have been confused with ד (4).