Judges 15:7

And Samson said unto them, Though ye have done this, yet will I be avenged of you, and after that I will cease.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(7) Though ye have done this.—The rendering of these words is involved in the same obscurity as other details of the narrative. They may mean, “If ye act thus, then will I be avenged on you before I have done;” and perhaps the verse implies, “as long as you avenge yourselves, I mean to retaliate.”

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

15:1-8 When there are differences between relations, let those be reckoned the wisest and best, who are most forward to forgive or forget, and most willing to stoop and yield for the sake of peace. In the means which Samson employed, we must look at the power of God supplying them, and making them successful, to mortify the pride and punish the wickedness of the Philistines. The Philistines threatened Samson's wife that they would burn her and her father's house. She, to save herself and oblige her countrymen, betrayed her husband; and the very thing that she feared, and by sin sought to avoid, came upon her! She, and her father's house, were burnt with fire, and by her countrymen, whom she thought to oblige by the wrong she did to her husband. The mischief we seek to escape by any unlawful practices, we often pull down upon our own heads.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

burnt her and her father - Out of revenge on Samson's nearest relations; or, as others think, as an act of justice in favor of Samson, and in hope of pacifying his anger. Burning was the punishment for adultery and kindred crimes among the Jews Genesis 38:24; Leviticus 20:14; Leviticus 21:9. Samson's wife brought upon herself the very punishment which she sought to escape by betraying her husband Judges 14:15.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

7. Samson said …, Though ye have done this, yet will I be avenged of you—By that act the husbandmen had been the instruments in avenging his private and personal wrongs. But as a judge, divinely appointed to deliver Israel, his work of retribution was not yet accomplished.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Whereby it appears, that it was not his private injuries, but the public, which he did revenge.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And Samson said unto them,.... After they had burnt his wife and her father in their dwelling house, by which they thought to appease him, being afraid of him:

though ye have done this, yet will I be avenged of you; not for burning his wife and father-in-law; his sense is, that though they had done this, in order to ingratiate themselves with him, yet he should not stop on this account, but be avenged on them, not for private injuries done to him, or any that had been in connection with him, but for public injuries done to Israel, and their oppression of them:

and after that I will cease; when he had taken full vengeance on them, and not before.

Geneva Study Bible

And Samson said unto them, Though ye have done this, yet will I be avenged of you, and after that I will cease.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 7. - And Samson said, etc. There are two ways of understanding Samson's speech: one, with the A.V., as meaning to say that though the Philistines had taken his part, and repudiated all fellowship in the shameful deed of the Thimnathite and her father, yet he would have his full revenge upon them; the other, translating the particle in its more common sense of if, makes him say, "If this is the way you treat me, be sure I will not cease till I have had my full revenge." This is perhaps on the whole the most probable meaning. It still leaves it uncertain whether the Philistines meant to do Samson justice, or to do him an additional injury, by putting his wife and her father to death. Judges 15:7

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Samson therefore declared to them, "If ye do such things, truly (כּי) when I have avenged myself upon you, then will I cease," i.e., I will not cease till I have taken vengeance upon you.