Beware of Turning Loose the Jackals - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2026

Samson went and caught three hundred jackals, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the midst between the two tails. And he set the torches on fire, and let them run into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, and the olive gardens.
Judges 15:4-5 JND

Beware of Turning Loose the Jackals
Samson goes and takes jackals—a strange thing for a Nazarite to be tampering with: the unclean beast that roams around Palestine, the beast that feeds upon carrion, that hides the bones of its prey until it is ready to renew its putrid meal. It is a striking picture of the flesh, which feeds on carrion, on corruption. He takes that which feeds on corruption, he catches these three hundred jackals, ties them tail to tail, puts a torch between them, and lets them fly.

He is not caring what they do, and we do not read that he killed a single Philistine by doing it. He burned up corn, he burned up vineyards, he burned up olive orchards, but in the land these things stand for spiritual blessings. In the land these things represent what the people of God had a right to. Why not drive out the Philistine and enjoy the corn, the olives, and the vineyards? Why burn them up and leave the enemy?

How often personal strife, personal vindication, and everything of that kind simply results in consuming, not the enemy, but the spiritual things that we should enjoy. Have you not seen jackals turned loose that just burn up everything on the face of the ground that would be food for the soul? As the apostle says, "If ye bite and devour one another, see that ye are not consumed one of another" (Gal. 5:15). And so Samson turning loose jackals: it surely effected no victory for God. Let us beware of fighting with jackals; let us beware of trying to use the flesh against one another.

-- Samuel Ridout