And he came up, and told his father and his mother, and said, I have seen a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines: now therefore get her for me to wife.
Get her for me to wife. In the East, parents did, stud do in many cases still negotiate the marriage alliances for their sons. During their period of ascendancy, the Philistine invaders had settled in the towns; and the contact between them and the Israelites was often of such a friendly and familiar character as to issue in matrimonial relations. Moreover, the Philistines were not in the number of the seven devoted nations of Canaan, with whom the law forbade them to marry.