Samson’s feat escalates in a dramatic way the conflict with the Philistines. It is in effect a declaration of war. There is no more turning back now; Samson must fight the enemy to death. It becomes evident as well that this remarkable devastation of the Philistines can ultimately be attributed only to God, whose purpose for Samson remains that he be used to begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines (Judges 13:5; Judges 14:4). This is the case even though there is no explicit reference to the Lord here.1
But the humiliating of the Philistines is ultimately something of the Lord’s doing. Each time the Philistines strike at Samson, he hits back twice as hard. At the wedding they threatened his wife in order to get the solution to the riddle; he responds by killing thirty of their own people. The wedding ends, they think they’ve seen the last of him, the father-in-law gives his wife away; but Samson returns, and in his rage he torches their harvest. They respond by burning his wife and father-in-law. He retaliates by slaughtering a whole bunch of them. Every move they make proves disastrous due to Samson, and often in a humiliating way. This is intentional. They are made to look foolish. These events are a reminder from the Lord that all who stand as his enemies are fools and will be shown as such. Think of Psalm 2:1–12, which says that the kings of the earth set themselves against the Lord and his Anointed. Yet he who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. It’s an awful thing to make oneself a fool, the object of divine laughter.
5 And when he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines and set fire to the stacked grain and the standing grain, as well as the olive orchards.