appear to characterize him as someone who “inhabits the borderlands between the civilized and the wild.”50 Upon seeing a particular Philistine woman from Timnah, Samson desired her for a wife (Judg. 14:1) and requested that his parents secure her for him (14:2, 7). That God had a greater purpose in the marriage—“seeking an opportunity against the Philistines” (14:4)—was not disclosed to Samson and as such did not justify his desire to have a wife from among Israel’s idolatrous oppressors. Whereas