Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 15:5

"And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the oliveyards." — Judges 15:5 (ASV)

Into the standing corn of the Philistines. — He probably did this at night, when his actions would be unobserved, and no one would be nearby to quench the flames. We may imagine him watching the trails of fire from his rocky stronghold, and exulting as the conflagration reddened the night. The heat of a tropical country makes everything so dry that his plan would be certain to succeed.

To burn the crops of an Arab is to this day the deadliest of all injuries (Burckhardt). This was the method adopted by Absalom in 2 Samuel 14:30 to gain an interview with Joab. It is needless to point out that these rough, coarse, and cruel measures should no more be judged by a later and better standard than his thirst for personal revenge. There can be no ground to question the literal truth of the narrative.

This is entirely in accordance with Eastern custom. It also finds curious confirmation in a story from Ovid’s Fasti (iv. 681-711): every year, at the Cerealia, torches were tied to the tails of foxes and let loose in the Roman circus. This commemorated an incident where a young man at Carseoli, to punish a fox for raiding his hen-coops, wrapped it in straw, set it on fire, and the creature escaped into the cornfields, burning down the standing crops. The attempt of Bochart to establish any connection between this custom and Samson’s revenge is quite untenable, but the incident itself sheds light on the plausibility of the narrative. Ewald refers to Mêghadûta, liv. 4; and Babrius, Fab., 11.

Both the shocks, and also the standing corn. — Literally, from the heap, even up to the standing. The extent of the vengeance and its terrible future consequences would be fully, and we fear ruthlessly, assessed by Samson as he saw the rivers of fire running and spreading through that vast plain of corn-land in harvest-time. (Compare to Exodus 22:6.)

With the vineyards and olives. — Literally, and to vineyard, to olive. There may be some slight corruption in the text, or it may be an abbreviation of “from vineyard to vineyard, and from olive to olive.” (Compare to Micah 7:12.) The low vines festooning the trees and trellis-work, and the olives with their dry trunks, would be sure to suffer injury.