Today we will discuss a rather unusual phenomenon in the Bible: the mention of riddles. Riddles are well known from ancient times, and as an example I will use the riddle that the sphinx poses to Eudiphus: "What walks on 4 in the mornings, on 2 in the afternoon and on 3 in the evening?" Wise Eudiphus was the first to solve this riddle, realizing that it was a general statement about mankind – babies crawl on 4, people in their prime walk on 2, and older people who are supported by a cane walk on 3.
In the Bible, we hear both of riddles presented by the protagonists, as well as riddles being posed to them as a challenge. A famous riddle, and in fact the only one presented in the Bible of which we have the actual phrasing of, is one presented by Samson to 30 celebrating Philistines at his wedding feast (Samson married a Philistine woman). The riddle is based on his own personal experience: Samson had recently slain a lion, and when passing by it later on, saw that a swarm of bees were upon the carcass and had scraped off the honey. He therefore asks them to interpret the riddle:
"Out of the eater came forth food, and out of the strong came forth sweetness" (Judges 14:14).
The Philistines try for three days to solve the riddle, to no avail, and eventually, after a week, threaten Samson's newly wedded wife so as to have her find out the answer. She does, and they solve the riddle – saying "what is sweeter than honey? And what is stronger than a lion?" (Judges 14:18). Samson immediately understands that his wife was the one to pass on the information, thus indicating that his riddle was not one that could be solved without previous information about his experiences.
In contrast to the Philistines, the wisest of all men, King Solomon, knew quite well how to solve riddles. As part of the international admiration of his wisdom described in the Book of Kings, many riddles were put forth to him by the famous Queen of Sheba. She was, of course, overwhelmed by Solomon's great wisdom. Unfortunately, the Bible does not tell us what her riddles were and how he solved them. Jewish tradition expanded on the biblical tradition, revealing one such riddle: Solomon was asked to identify between two flowers which was real and which was fake. According to this tradition, Solomon differentiated between the two with the help of a bee: the bee was likely to be tempted by the real flower only. This wise system for finding the solution was successful, and Solomon correctly identified the real flower.
In the Book of Psalms, the riddle is twice mentioned in parallelism together with the parable, another form of ancient wisdom (Psalms 49:5 and Psalms 78:2). It is interesting to note that in both cases the parable appears first in the parallelism, thus indicating, according to the rules of parallelism, that the parable was more common a word that the riddle, and probably therefore also a more commonly used type of wisdom.
Last, we will mention the greatness of Moses, God's closest servant, When Aaron and Miriam speak badly of Moses, God makes it very clear that Moses is his chosen prophet, declaring, among other things, that "with him I speak mouth to mouth, manifestly and not in riddles" (Numbers 11:8). This plain and direct speech of God with Moses is one of a kind in what is described to us in the Bible.
Have a Great Week!
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