DownloadJune 22, 2009 issue
Finding honey in a carcass
By Jane Yoder-ShortPage:
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My new venture, a box of buzzing bees, has arrived. I’m learning that beekeeping isn’t as straightforward as I would like.
Jane Yoder-Short lives in Kalona, Iowa.
I’ve gotten conflicting advice on issues relating to queen excluders, plastic foundations and mite controls. Even books have contradictory information. How do I know what is best?
After listening to multiple experts I plow ahead, hoping to learn from my mistakes. If I harvest any honey, it will be a miracle.
With all the buzzing in my head it seemed fitting to reread the Samson bee adventure in Judges 14. Samson was never one of my heroes — too macho — but his discovering honey in a dead carcass is an irresistible story. Who doesn’t want to find something sweet among lifeless stink?
Samson is heading to Timnah to make arrangements to marry some Philistine woman whose looks please him. On the way he meets a lion in a vineyard and tears it apart.
Later, returning for the wedding, Samson returns to the lion’s carcass. Bees have constructed a honeycomb inside it. Samson scrapes out some honey and eats this unclean food from the untouchable carcass (Lev. 11:24)
Samson’s bee experience provides a riddle. At his wedding, he offers a special-occasions garment for each of 30 Philistine companions if they can answer the following riddle within the seven-day feast:
Out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet.
It looks like Samson is going to win his bet until he succumbs to his wife’s coaxing and discloses the answer. She tells the companions, and Samson loses the bet. A revengeful Samson travels to Ashkelon and slaughters 30 unnamed Philistines. He returns with their garments as payment. Samson’s continued desire for revenge leads to more killing.
There seems to be no honey in the dead carcasses that Samson leaves in his wake. I wish Samson could have been less arrogant and more conciliatory. I wish his wife-to-be had not been threatened by the Philistines. I wish the story had less bloodshed. The Bible is filled with broken and imperfect people.
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