1. Judges 15:4–5 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

How is Samson’s aggression pointed up in Judges 15:4–5?

Judges 15:4–5 (ESV)

4 So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches. And he turned them tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails.

These verses contain a barrage of verbs in the same tense in the Hebrew (grammatically, they are waw consecutive verbs). Their presence helps illustrate Samson’s wrathful aggression against the Philistines: And Samson went and caught…and took…. And he turned…and put…. And he set fire…and he sent…and he burned… The rapid succession of verbs gives the impression that this took little to no effort at all for Samson: he caught three hundred foxes, prepared a hundred and fifty torches, tied together the foxes’ tails, fastened the torches to their tails, ignited the torches, released the foxes, and burned the fields. And he did all of this without any help. This presentation of the events points to a well planned and well conducted undertaking intended to desolate the Philistines.1,2