Samson 5 - Judges 16

Here is our final chapter with Samson, and again, like everything he does, it’ wild. The 20 years of judging Israel mentioned at the end of the last chapter doesn’t indicate how the judging went, it if was done righteously (doubtful by his history) or if it was just something else. What is clear though is that it seems that neither he nor the people of Israel did what God wanted and severed their relationship with the Philistines. Case in point, Samson goes down to Gaza to find a prostitute to have sex with and he does and falls asleep. The Philistines find out that he’s there and wait outside so that they can kill him in the morning. Samson must have felt that something was off and so he leaves in the middle of the night and takes the doors to the gate of the city off their hinges and carries them out of the city. I didn’t understand why he would take the doors off, why not just leave, but it must be that Gaza was a gated city and those gates were locked at night so he had to open them manually and he did that by just taking them off the hinges and carrying them away. Those doors are incredibly heavy, made out of big wooden slats, held together by metal rods and often coated in metal on the outside to strengthen them against attack. Samson carried these doors far away, very heavy, requiring superhuman strength only granted by God.

Next, he falls in love with a Philistine woman named Delilah. There were 5 Philistine kings that were so desperate to get rid of Samson that they went to her, after finding out about their affair, and asked her to find out what the source of his strength is, and offer her 1,100 pieces of silver EACH. The offer of 5,500 pieces of silver was probably beyond any comprehension at that time. I looked it up and the estimates of the modern day equivalents are anywhere from $100,000 to several million dollars. Is this a lot of money to betray Samson? Considering what kind of person he is, I can’t imagine that Delilah loved him or that he treated her well so my guess if that she had very little loyalty to him, I could be projecting here too though.

She accepts their offer and asks Samson several times where he gets his strength from and how can it be taken away. Honestly, I don’t understand because if someone is asking me “how can I make you weaker and take away a supernatural gift that you have,” to me, I wouldn’t want to be around a person who it trying to take away my gift from God, that’s just me, but Samson is cool with it so whatever. He tells her different things like “tie me up with these certain ropes” and “braid my hair into the loom” and none of it works. But eventually, she cries enough, and “when she pressed him daily with her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death; that he told her all his heart.” Again, why would I spend my time with someone who is asking me all day every day how to have my gift removed from me, like what else did they do or talk about if she pestered him about it every day, I just don’t get it. And like, he was a judge, he was a legend, he was a very powerful man physically and socially, he could have had any number of women, why spend his time with this one specifically if she was like this to him?

He finally tells her, he’s strong because he never cut his hair because “I have been a Nazarite unto God from my mother’s womb: if I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man.” This begs the question, was his hair really the source of his strength? Of course not, God was. The IM explains, “Samson’s misfortunes began when his confidence in God turned into conceit and pride. Over a period of time he broke the vows of a Nazarite and violated other commandments, including the law of chastity. Samson’s superhuman strength did not reside in his hair but in his confidence in God and in the Nazarite oath, of which the hair was the outward symbol. Delilah’s treachery and the shaving of Samson’s hair signified the final betrayal of his vows. Thus, he became a miserable, broken man with no power left.”

Delilah made Samson fall asleep on her lap and while he was asleep, she cut off all his hair, and then she woke him up yelling “the Philistines be upon thee” and he just assumed that he would be able to fight them off like always, but his strength was gone, “and he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.” And man, what a way to go. The Philistines take him, “put out his eyes” bind him in brass chains and made him grind grain in the prison house. A couple of points here, first the irony that they took out his eyes because he had spent all his life doing whatever was “right in his own eyes,” pursuing beautiful women was a huge downfall for him. I’m sure they didn’t understand the irony when they did it, but it was very karmic. The second interesting fact was that they made him grind grain in the prison. Apparently, there are some pictures out there showing Samson pushing a large stone wheel like donkeys used to, but TB says that that wasn’t the case, he just used a regular grind stone like regular humans do. More specifically that was work that women did, so to have this man, the strongest and most manly man at the time grinding grain like a woman was very humiliating.

The Philistines took their capture of Samson as a sign that their own god Dagon had won the war against Samson, “and when the people saw him, they praised their god: for they said, Our god hath delivered into our hand our enemy, and the destroyer of our country, which slew many of us.” One day, they were in their religious place, which was huge with thousands of people in it, and importantly all the Philistine leadership was there and they brought Samson out to make fun of him and humiliate him. He asks the oy who’s leading him around to put him against the main pillars to rest, and then he did “called unto the Lord, and said, O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.” He took the two main pillars and pushed them hard, saying, “Let me die with the Philistines” and the whole building fell down and killed everyone inside, thus killing more in death then he ever did in life. He killed a lot in life too though so I think the number can be big in both ways. It seems that the main Philistine leadership died then too.

There is a statement right as the Philistine leaders are gathering, “howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaven.” TB asks a good question here, of course his hair would grow back, why would the scripture make a statement about the obvious? TB answers, “Or course the answer is that the inspired writer has something more in mind here and it implies a re-examination by Samson of his relationship with God and recognition of his personal failings; Samson was ready to acknowledge his sin and was going through the terribly painful process of true repentance. And repentance would lead to some degree of spiritual strengthening and some amount of restoration of his Nazarite status.” One thing that sticks out to me about this is that Samson was blessed all his life with great strength, with great appeal, with status, with social standing. We don’t really see anywhere where Samson dealt with hardship. I’m not saying he never had any but it seems like he always got whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it, and there were no consequences when what he wanted was evil, which there was a lot of that. It really makes you think about what a trouble-free life could lead to, self-destruction, distance from God. It’s interesting to think about, the necessity for hardship in the building of a righteous life even though it is so incredibly painful. TB suggests that God returned Samson’s strength because he was repenting and thus God was granting him favor again. What a rock bottom to hit before turning to God, and I guess that’s what it takes for some people, I hope I never have to get my eyes gouged out in order to see God, but I guess we’ll find out.

Another aspect of this last chapter about Samson is that the event that he knocked down the building at was a religious sacrifice to the pagan god Dagon. Samson, a judge is Israel and the man who was called from birth to begin to free Israel was prisoner and being mocked at a pagan sacrifice while the people thanked their god for his capture. The IM explains, “the claim of the Philistines that ‘our god hath delivered into our hands our enemy’ referred to their belief that their success in capturing Samson proved the Philistine deity Dagon was greater than Jehovah. Thus, the people did not fear to make sport of Samson, the champion of Jehovah, in the temple of their god. In this setting, Samson once again exercised that kind of courage through which God could have used him as a tool But again, the self-centeredness of Samson is evident. Even in his final opportunity, when Samson used his restored strength to destroy the temple of Dagon and the Philistines who were there, he thought only of getting revenge for what had been done to him. In the destruction of his very temple, what better proof could there be that the power of Dagon was nothing? And yet how much more powerfully could Samson have borne witness to the power of Jehovah if he had fulfilled his calling to overthrown the power of the Philistines.” Samson, as the representative of the God of Israel, destroying the temple of this pagan god during the worship of that god and killing all the leadership inside was an incredibly powerful message to all the people about who the more powerful God was.

The whole saga of Samson is so interesting to consider because at the beginning, there is a phrase in the IM that said that Samson could have equaled Joshua in spirituality because he was set apart before birth to serve God and start to free the people. His potential was incalculable, but it seems like any discord that was sown between Samson and the Philistines was just a reaction to his completely irresponsible, self-serving actions that devastated the Philistine people. The rift created wasn’t Samson acting on behalf of God to create circumstances to fulfill God’s will, instead God had to use Samson’s own wickedness to fulfill His will. This is a powerful statement for God’s ability and foreknowledge to use evil for His own good purposes, but also highlights the tragic way that Samson’s life and legacy played out. As much as I kick and scream against God’s will for me, and how much I just want an easy life, I would truly lament throwing away all my potential to live a self-serving life like Samson did. As much as I don’t want to go through the character development that goes along with becoming the person that God wants me to become, I truly hope that I can become the full version of what God has planned, even though it’s so daunting to look toward the future to. As much as I fight against it, it’s something to compare the options, how would I feel looking back at my life if I took the easy, self-serving Samson route, versus, what if I put in the work, the willingness, and the dedication to becoming the full potential version of what God wants. The comparison is very powerful to think about.