At face value the men are saying, “Have you invited us to clean out our bank accounts?” There is obvious frustration and anger in their question, where they accuse her of inviting them to the wedding with the sole purpose of ruining them. Yet there is more to the question, whether they say it or not. Their word “impoverish” can also be translated “dispossess.” The word is often used in the book of Joshua to speak of the Israelites’ conquest of the Promised Land, and it is used extensively in Judges 1 to indicate the Israelites’ “driving out” (or not doing so) the inhabitants of Canaan (see Judges 1:19–33; see also Judges 2:6, Judges 2:21, Judges 2:23). This is what the Israelites were supposed to be doing with the Philistines—except they were not! And so we see here another hint of God’s secret, mysterious agenda in all this: a confrontation with the Philistines, to dispossess them of their land.
15 On the fourth day they said to Samson’s wife, “Entice your husband to tell us what the riddle is, lest we burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you invited us here to impoverish us?”