1. Judges 14:3 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

What is significant about the term “uncircumcised”?

Judges 14:3 (ESV)

3 But his father and mother said to him, “Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives, or among all our people, that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?” But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes.”

The reference to the woman as from the uncircumcised Philistines is intentionally critical, even pejorative. In the Old Testament, the expression uncircumcised X is used only of the Philistines (Judges 15:18; 1 Samuel 14:6; 1 Samuel 17:26, 1 Samuel 17:36; 1 Samuel 31:4; 2 Samuel 1:20).