שופטים, פרק י״ד, פסוק י״ח

In the final moments of the feast, just before the allotted time expires, the men of the city rush to deliver their answer. They arrive precisely before sunset on the seventh day. This deadline is absolute; had the sun gone down before they spoke, they would have lost the wager and been forced to provide thirty sheets [רש״י, מצודת דוד, רד״ק, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. They answer by asking what is sweeter than honey and what is stronger than a lion, correctly identifying the sweet honey that emerged from the fierce beast [מצודת דוד]. Fitting the occasion, they present this solution in a deliberately poetic style [ביאור שטיינזלץ].

Samson immediately recognizes the deception behind their words. While the first half of the riddle—about food coming from an eater—could theoretically be deduced by thinking of bees that produce food from their own bodies, the second half was entirely different. Knowing that a sweet substance came from a strong creature was impossible without physically finding the lion's carcass. Because discovering such a carcass would have sparked massive public excitement, Samson knows they did not find it and therefore did not arrive at the solution on their own [מלבי״ם]. He realizes they simply were not sharp enough to pull the correct answer out of thin air [חומת אנך].

Confronting their fraud, Samson delivers a sharp rebuke, accusing them of plowing with his heifer. This metaphor operates on two levels: plowing represents both physical agricultural work and the act of digging deeply into someone's mind to uncover a secret. By comparing his wife to a trained heifer, Samson makes it clear that the men used her as a tool to investigate and extract the truth [רש״י, מצודת דוד, מצודת ציון, רד״ק]. Samson had guarded this secret so closely that he did not even tell his parents. He now understands that his wife's relentless pressure and anxiety were orchestrated entirely to feed the answer to the townsmen [חומת אנך]. He emphasizes that the men never actually solved the riddle; they merely took the stolen answer from his wife [מלבי״ם].

While the primary approach views this as the men manipulating his wife to interrogate him, another perspective suggests an even darker betrayal. This approach proposes that Samson suspected his wife of being unfaithful with one of the townsmen, and that the secret was shared during this illicit relationship [רלב״ג]. Ultimately, despite reprimanding them for their completely unfair tactics, Samson acknowledges that they technically provided the solution before the deadline. Bound by his word, he is forced to honor the agreement and pay the wager [ביאור שטיינזלץ].