the Week of Proper 25 / Ordinary 30
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Bible Encyclopedias
Riddle
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or Riddle, literally, 'something intricate or complicated.' An example of a riddle occurs in , where Samson proposes to the thirty young Philistines who attended his nuptials, an enigma, derived from the circumstance of his having lately found a swarm of bees and honey in the skeleton of the lion, which he had killed some months before, when he had come to espouse his wife. This riddle or enigma, though unfair in regard to those who accepted the pledge to unravel it, because they were ignorant of the particular fact by the knowledge of which alone it could be explained by them, nevertheless answers to the approved definition of an enigma, as consisting of an artful and abstruse proposition, put in obscure, ambiguous, and even contrary terms, in order to exercise the ingenuity of others in finding out its meaning.
Public Domain.
Kitto, John, ed. Entry for 'Riddle'. "Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature". https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/kbe/r/riddle.html.
