The reader may be left to ponder what the riddle means, but Samson discerns the meaning immediately: though he has proven himself stronger than a lion, the allure and sweetness of a woman’s love and beauty was even more powerful. And he recognizes straightaway that he has become the butt of public ridicule as a man betrayed by his wife.
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18 And the men of the city said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down, “What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?”And he said to them, “If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle.”