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Why such a harsh threat just to solve a riddle? (Judges14:15)
Judges14:15 says, "On the fourth day, they said to Samson’s wife, “Coax your husband into explaining the riddle for us, or we will burn you and your father’s household to death. Did you invite us here to steal our property?”
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Asked January 28 2023
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Jack Gutknecht
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Tim Maas
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I would say that the wedding guests reacted as they did because Samson had told them that, if they could not solve the riddle that he put to them within seven days, each of the thirty guests would have to give to Samson a linen garment and a set of clothes, which apparently represented a considerable expense for each of them. Although the guests willingly agreed to this condition, as the time frame for solving the riddle grew shorter and shorter, and the guests were still unable to answer the riddle, the guests resented the money that each of them was going to have to spend. As they expressed in the verse cited in the question, they felt that they were being taken advantage of, when (as guests) THEY should have been the ones to experience all the benefits that would normally have been provided by the host of the wedding to the guests. This led to the guests making the drastic threat that they did to the bride's family (who were Philistines, rather than Jews). (However, as the biblical account indicates in Judges 14:4, all of this was part of God's plan to bring disaster on the Philistines through the revenge that Samson subsequently exacted on them, as described in Judges 15.)
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