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How could Bnei Yisrael hand Shimshon over to

the Philistines?

It is written in Shoftim (15:9-13):“The Philistines went up and encamp-
ed in Yehudah…. The men of Yehudah said,‘Why have you come up
against us?’ and they said, ‘We have come up to bind Shimshon, to
do to him as he did to us.’ Three thousand men of Judah went down
to the cleft rock of Eitam and said to Shimshon, ‘Do you not know
that the Philistines rule over us? So what is this that you have done
to us?’ He said to them, ‘As they did to me, so I did to them.’ They
said to him,‘We have come to bind you that we may deliver you into
the hands of the Philistines’... They spoke to him saying, ‘No, but we
will bind you and hand you over to them and we shall not put you to
death’ and they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up
from the rock” (Shoftim 15:9-13). We need to understand how the men
of Yehudah could hand Shimshon over to the Philistines knowing
that they intended to kill him?

Now, it is related in Shmuel II (chap. 20) how Yoav ben Tzeruyah,
the general of the army of Yisrael besieged the city of Avel and
demanded that they hand over Sheva ben Bichri who had rebelled
against the rule of David Hamelech, threatening to otherwise kill all
the inhabitants of Avel. The people of Avel killed Sheva and gave him
to Yoav. See the Tosefta (Terumos, end of chapter 7):“If gentiles told a
group of Jews,‘Give us one of you and we will kill him, otherwise we
will kill all of you,’ they should all be killed rather than hand over a
single Jewish soul. But if they specified one of them, as they specified
Sheva ben Bichri, they should hand him over and not all be killed.”
Resh Lakish and Rabbi Yochanan disagree (in the Yerushalmi, Ter-
umos 8:4) over how to understand the Tosefta. In Rabbi Yochanan’s
opinion, merely specifying the individual to be given over is sufficient,
whereas according to Resh Lakish only in a similar case to that of
Sheva ben Bichri who had incurred the death penalty, can the speci-
fied person be handed over but if he is not liable for the death penalty
even if they specified him he should not be handed over. The Semag

308 1 Medical-Halachic Responsa of Rav Zilberstein