The question we keep asking about this text is, 'Why is this here? What are we supposed to learn from this? Where is God?' This is a strange story of a young Samson going down into Philistine territory and finding a wife among Israel's overseers, and we're told this was God's doing! Huh?! Then we have the Lord gripping Samson, and Samson rips apart a lion but tells no one. He finds honey in the skeleton and turns it into a riddle to trick the companions given to him at his wedding banquet. There is a lot of deception and trickery, violence and cruelty in this and we keep hearing "The Lord gripped Samson". We are left sitting in profound discomfort and over and over asking the question why.