Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 15:2

"And her father said, I verily thought that thou hadst utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to thy companion: is not her younger sister fairer than she? take her, I pray thee, instead of her." — Judges 15:2 (ASV)

Verily thought ... utterly hated. —In the emphatic simplicity of the Hebrew style it is, Saying I said that hating, you hate her. As Samson had left his wife in anger immediately after the wedding feast, the father might have reasonably supposed that he meant finally to desert her.

I gave her. —This must mean I have betrothed her, for otherwise she would not have still been living in her father’s house. But if the father had been an honourable man, he could not under these circumstances have done less than restore the dowry which Manoah had given for her.

To your companion. —See on Judges 14:20.

Her younger sister. —The father sought in this way to repair the wrong he had inflicted, and to offer some equivalent for the dowry which he had wrongly appropriated.