‘ And her father said, “I genuinely thought that you utterly hated her, therefore I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister fairer than she? Take her, I pray you, in her place.” '
The father was not antagonistic to Samson, indeed was probably a little afraid of him, and pressed on him his offer of her more beautiful younger sister to replace what he had lost. He would probably also have ensured that Samson did not lose by it financially by providing equal dowry and gifts. Furthermore he may have drawn attention to the fact that the man she had been married to had been ‘the friend of the bridegroom', drawing attention to why the marriage to him had taken place as a stand in for the bridegroom who had walked out. But he had failed to realise Samson's genuine affection for his elder daughter. Furthermore as Samson considered that he was married to the elder sister, marriage to the younger was not permissible.