Judges 16:30 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Bible Comments

Let me die with the Philistines, i.e. I am contented to die, so I can but therewith contribute any thing to the vindication of God's glory, here trampled upon, and to the deliverance of God's people. This is no example nor encouragement to those that wickedly murder themselves; for Samson did not desire nor procure his own death voluntarily, but only by mere force and necessity, because he did desire, and by his office was obliged to seek, the destruction of these enemies and blasphemers of God, and oppressors of his people; which in these circumstances he could not effect without his own death: and his case was not much unlike theirs, that in the heat of battle run upon the very mouth of the cannon, or other evident and certain danger of death, to execute a design upon the enemy; or theirs, who go in a fire-ship to destroy the enemy's best ships, though they are sure to perish in the enterprise. Moreover, Samson did this by Divine instinct and approbation, as God's answer to his prayer manifests, and that he might be a type of Christ, who by voluntarily undergoing death destroyed the enemies of God, and of his people.

Judges 16:30

30 And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.