Note: You can watch this teaching on CrossWalk’s YouTube channel.

If you’re looking for action and adventure, the Bible’s book of Judges should probably be your top pick.  It remembers (and embellishes, no doubt) the history of Israel between the conquest of the Promised Land and the era of the kings, when judges led the tribes.  Most of the judges were military rulers, except for Deborah, who also served as an arbitrator.  On the whole, the story of Israel and her leaders remembered in the book is one slow decline, where the Jewish people keep blowing it one way or another, which makes them vulnerable to neighboring enemies.  Yet God hears their cry each time and responds with redemption.

            The last judge the book recalls is Samson.  He may be the most familiar of all the judges.  His story surely is entertaining, even if disturbing.  His birth came with a heavenly announcement to an unlikely couple.  They were instructed to raise him from birth keeping the Nazarite vow, which was usually kept for a season rather than a lifetime:  he could consume any grape product, eat anything unclean, and could not cut his hair.  He was supposed to be a model of good citizenship.  Instead, he was a self-absorbed, immature louse and bully.  He chose to marry foreign women (breaking a Jewish covenant), ate unclean food (honey out of the carcass of a dead animal), enjoyed copious amounts of wine (from grapes, not cherries), pleasured himself at the expense of a foreign prostitute, and had a nasty temper: if you crossed him, you could be confident that you would be repaid unjustly – the eye for an eye ethic was lost on this guy.  He was as corrupt a judge as you could get, really.  One weird part of the story is that he broke two thirds of his vows with no real consequence (except, perhaps, of losing people’s respect).  Growing his hair out was the only one that he apparently kept.  Maybe he thought it helped his chances with women…

He was best known, of course, for his apparent superhuman strength based on the maintaining his vow to God – he never cut his hair.  Most people can also recall the woman who brought him down, too – Delilah – who was relentless in bugging him to share the secret of this strength until she got it, which led to betrayal (as had the other times when he lied to her).  His strength lost, he was easily bound, his eyes gouged out, and put into service as a slave.

Especially when appreciated in context, the story of Samson serves to reflect just how far the people of Israel fell from their original covenant with God.  By this time, they were satisfied with a leader who was all about using fear and intimidation with the superpower he had at his disposal.  Samson wasn’t trying to look out for the people – he was all about himself.  He was in some ways a reflection of the people he was supposed to serve.  The people of Israel had abandoned God with great fanfare, and even turned out their own judge to their adversaries.           

            My first reaction to Samson is one of utter disdain and judgment.  His story triggers memories of every self-absorbed leader I’ve known – from teachers to coaches to directors to bosses to colleagues to pastors to business leaders to government leaders.  I think about how their ego-driven decisions made their lives a little easier, often at the expense of others (including myself).  I think we’ve all known people like this, and I bet just thinking about them can make your blood boil.  We can easily find ourselves rehearsing what we would say to them if we had the right opportunity and courage to do so.  We enlist the rage of friends who share similar views.  Before you know it, we find ourselves surrounded by a host of people frustrated by the same “enemy.”  Nothing unites people together quicker than a common enemy, after all.  Samson is a pretty good target.  He was an unscrupulous louse by every account.  And yet for the people of Israel, he was their louse, which complicated things. We don’t read much about the attitude of the Jewish people toward Samson.  In some ways, I am sure many liked him, because, even though he didn’t give a rip about basic Jewish law or innate human dignity, when he wasn’t sleeping with a Philistine (or drinking with them), he was kicking their butts and keeping them at bay.  He was a one-man national defense strategy.  Gotta love him for keeping us safe, right?  And burning our enemy’s crops?  That’s brilliant – they will need to buy from Israel which will bring an economic boom.  So, even though the Jewish people cringed a lot when their “I’m-sensitive-about-my-hair” leader failed repeatedly to act like a healthy human being, they probably felt safer, and their 401k’s were in better shape.  As James Carville coined nearly 30 years ago, for many people, the single most important reality for them is “the economy, stupid.” 

Seeing Samson in this light is exactly what the writers of the book of Judges hoped would happen.  Why? Because Samson’s story would provide a mirror for the entire nation with which to see themselves in an honest light.  Samson’s follies echoed themes throughout the book.  Samson’s utter lack of care for what it meant to be a healthy person as directed by the Law was clearly mimicked by the people he protected.  Israel was Samson.  Samson was Israel.  When Samson finally died, unlike the judges before him, his leadership offered no lasting peace for those he served.  They may have been okay as long as they had their tough guy, but as soon as he was gone, there was no structure, no relationship, no treaties, no nothing to protect the people he was supposed to serve.  Samson was too self-centered to see it.  So were the Israelites.  So are we.

Anytime we point a finger at someone, we have three pointing back at us.  The writers of Judges weren’t wanting people to simply rally around their hatred of Samson (or love for him for those that were like him).  They wanted people to take a look at themselves.  Sometimes when we do the work to really identify what we don’t like about the other person, we discover that it is something we don’t like about ourselves.  Maybe you can’t stand how the person doesn’t listen to anyone around them – do you?  Maybe you can’t stand the person’s hypocrisy – what about your own? Maybe it’s their greed – how’s that going for you? Maybe it’s the attitude they carry with them – what’s yours? Maybe it’s their quick-to-judgment-and-anger you dislike – how have you been guilty of the same?  Continuing to take shots at the object of our loathing likely won’t do much good – not even for the sake of catharsis.  In fact, it may entrench us in a binary mire that is incredibly difficult to escape.

Samson’s wake-up call, literary, was the sound of scissors. His hair represented his strength and power that he had abused his entire life.  His decisions caught up with him.  How’s your hair today?  If you were Samson, what would your hair represent, and what would cutting it represent?  The haircut represented Samson’s compromising writ large.  He couldn’t come back from this one.  Have you ever had any of these moments?  They really, really suck.  If we are experts at denial, we can avoid the pain for a long time – a lifetime, in fact.  Yet we never really escape a bad haircut.  When we come to our senses, however, which always requires humility, we find a strange peace.  That peace allows for perspective which affords the opportunity to try again and try it right.  That second chance is found within Samson’s story.

There is a very weird twist at the end of Samson’s story which speaks much about God and ourselves.  Recall that the Nazarite vow prohibited Samson from eating any grape product, from touching a dead animal, and from cutting his hair.  That last one, for whatever reason, was tied to his strength.  Once he got a shave, it was over.  Imprisoned slavery was his new life:  God’s “judgment” (consequences) of Samson’s lack of moral resolve.  But Samson’s hair grew back.  His last prayer was to pay back Israel’s enemies one last time.  This is the only instance in the Old Testament where a person asked to die and got their wish.  He had the strength to do it once again.  This time, however, he put the ball in God’s court instead of making it his decision.

Samson’s regrown hair is a symbol of hope for all of us.  God is forever faithful, forever offering a hand to help us get back on our feet, always graceful and forgiving, ready to help us move forward from a renewed foundation of love. There are times in our lives when our decisions really catch up with us.  We feel enslaved to them.  Without hope.  Yet Samson’s hair still grows.  Even if we really are in our eleventh hour, we have a chance to do something redemptive with it.  Samson wiped out a local god whose worship undoubtedly forced women and perhaps children into prostitution and cost the poor what little they had.  Samson’s last moment was spent on something “good”.

From that stance of wondering what good we might do with our regrown hair, we can then look at ourselves and our Samsonite leaders with more humility and choose to respond instead of react in order to call out the best of those around us. We become a part of the solution instead of the noisy problem.  We use the remainder of our lives pursuing what is good and best together for everyone.  Like Samson, I believe that is something God will actually grant.

            

Notes to Nerd Out On…

 

From The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary (Dennis T. Olson)

 

SAMSON, THE LAST JUDGE

Overview

The seventeenth-century poet John Milton retold the biblical story of Samson in an epic poem entitled Samson Agonistes. Milton himself had tragically become blind, and he put this searching question into Samson’s mouth:

Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed

As of a person separate to God,

Designed for great exploits; if I must die

Betrayed, captive, and both my eyes put out …?

(Line 30)

Milton’s question captures the essential riddle of great expectations and tragic humiliation that is the story of Samson. More than any previous judge, Samson is wondrously chosen by God from birth. He is a special judge, a Nazarite called to deliver Israel from the oppressive Philistines. Tragically, all our expectations about what a judge should be fall apart in Samson. He leads no Israelites into battle. He marries a Philistine woman. He attends drinking parties with the enemy. He spends the night with a foreign prostitute. He engages only in personal vendettas with little sense of working in service to God or for the well-being of all Israel. He succumbs to Delilah’s pleas to know the secret of his strength, which leads to imprisonment, torture, and blindness. In the end, Samson prays to God to let him die and destroy the Philistines and the temple of the god Dagon in the process. Samson is no ordinary judge. He plays an important and even climactic role as the last of the judges of Israel in the book of Judges.

The importance of the Samson cycle for the book of Judges is demonstrated by the extensive number of motifs the writers or editors have borrowed from earlier judge narratives and incorporated into the Samson saga. The following is a list of sixteen important allusions to other parts of Judges, both allusive parallels and contrasts.

(1) In the first chapter of Judges, the role of the tribe of Judah was positive, bold, and courageous in leading the fight against Israel’s enemy (1:1–15). In the Samson story, the people of Judah simply acquiesce to the Philistines’ oppressive rule over them. They show no courage or ability to resist the enemy (15:9–11). Instead, they betray their own judge Samson, bind him with ropes, and hand him over to the Philistines (15:12–13).

(2) Judges 3:6 condemned the Israelites for intermarrying with other nations, since marriage with foreigners led to worshiping foreign gods. Samson loved and married a foreign woman (14:1–4). His marriage violated God’s prohibition to the Israelites in 2:2: “For your part, do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of this land” (2:2). Moreover, Samson also slept with a foreign prostitute (זנה zōnâ, 16:1–3). The same Hebrew root (זנה znh) is used to describe Israel’s “prostituting” and “lusting” after foreign gods elsewhere in Judges (2:17; 8:33).

(3) The last rogue judge, Samson, is the reverse image of the first model judge, Othniel (1:11–15; 3:7–11). Othniel’s exemplary marriage to the Israelite Achsah contrasts with Samson’s troubled marriage and relationships with foreign women. Othniel leads Israelite soldiers in a successful holy war. Samson is a loner who has no desire to lead Israel in any way. Othniel “delivered” Israel from its enemy and gave Israel “rest,” or peace, for forty years (3:9, 11). Samson will only “begin to deliver Israel” from the Philistines, and no period of rest will result from his judgeship (13:5; 16:31).

(4) In all the previous judge stories, it is always Israel who cries in distress and causes God to intervene (3:15; 4:3; 6:7; 10:10). In the Samson story, Samson replaces Israel as the one who cries out to God, once when he is dying of thirst (15:18–19) and once at the end of his life, when he desires revenge on the Philistines (16:28–30). In both cases, God responds to Samson’s cry just as God had responded to the Israelites’ cry of distress in the previous stories.

(5) The early judge Ehud approached the fat king Eglon with a sword hidden at his side, and he said, “I have a secret message for you, O king” (3:19). Similarly, secrets figure prominently throughout the Samson story: the angel’s secret identity (13:17–18), the secret that Samson’s marriage to a Philistine woman is from the Lord (14:4), the riddle and its secret solution (14:18), the secret of Samson’s strength in his uncut hair (16:4–17), the secret that the Lord had left Samson when his head was shaved (16:20), and the secret of Samson’s hair growing back, which allowed him one last opportunity to bring revenge on the Philistines (16:22–30).

(6) One of the early minor judges, Shamgar, killed six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad (3:31). Samson killed one thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass (15:14–17).

(7) Jael the Kenite killed the Canaanite general Sisera by putting him to sleep in her tent and then secretly “driving” a tent peg into his head (4:21). Similarly, Delilah tries to capture Samson by putting him to sleep and “driving” (תקע tāqaʿ; the same verbs as in 4:21) a tent peg or pin into the long braid of hair on his head (16:14). In the end, Jael succeeds in killing Israel’s enemy, Sisera, and Delilah succeeds in the plot to kill Israel’s judge, Samson (16:18–31).

(8) The judge Gideon began his career by pulling down the altar of the Canaanite god Baal (6:25–27). Samson ends his career by pushing down the pillars of the temple of the Philistine god Dagon (16:23–31).

(9) Gideon’s main mission to fight the Midianites was momentarily diverted by a personal vendetta against the inhabitants of the towns of Succoth and Penuel who had taunted him (8:4–9, 13–17). Similarly, Jephthah’s primary fight with the Ammonites was interrupted when as an act of personal revenge he killed thousands of Ephraimites who had taunted him (12:1–6). Samson’s career as a judge was devoted entirely to personal vendettas and individual acts of revenge against the Philistines (14:19; 15:7, 14–17; 16:28–30). What was occasional with Gideon and Jephthah became Samson’s whole mission: a self-centered desire for personal revenge with no awareness of serving God or leading all Israel.

(10) Several elements in God’s call of Gideon to be a judge in 6:11–24 reappear in the story of Samson’s birth and call to be a deliverer of Israel in 13:1–25. Shared motifs include the dramatic appearance of an angel of the Lord (6:11–12; 13:3); the request for confirmation and repetition of signs (6:17–18; 13:8); the fear of death due to seeing the Lord (6:22; 13:22); the reassurance that the people involved will not die (6:23; 13:23); the offering of a kid and a grain offering to the Lord on a rock (6:19–20; 13:19); a divine fire that springs up from the altar, accompanied by the disappearance of the angel (6:21; 13:20–21); and the divine commissioning of Gideon and Samson to deliver Israel (6:14; 13:5).

(11) Gideon employed three hundred men with torches in the attack against the Midianites (7:16, 20–23). Samson employed three hundred foxes with torches tied between their tails in the attack against the Philistines (15:1–8).

(12) It is only with Samson that the Philistine threat, first mentioned in the Jephthah story, is addressed (13:5; 16:30).

(13) A centerpiece of the Jephthah story is that he keeps his vow to sacrifice his daughter, despite the tragic consequences (11:29–40). One of the central elements of the Samson story is that he does not keep his vows. He breaks all three nazirite vows by eating unclean food, drinking alcohol, and cutting his hair (13:4–5; see Num 6:1–8). He ate unclean food in the form of honey from a lion’s corpse (14:8–9). He drank alcohol or wine at a seven-day drinking festival in honor of his wedding to the Philistine woman (14:10–12). He allowed his hair to be cut after Delilah’s incessant pleas (16:17–20).

(14) Jephthah’s victory against the Ammonites led unintentionally to the death and burning of the daughter whom he loved (11:30–31, 34–40). Samson’s victory against the Philistines led unintentionally to the death and burning of the wife whom he loved (15:1–6).

(15) In 14:3 and 7, Samson desired the woman from Timnah as a wife because “she pleased Samson.” The phrase in Hebrew literally reads, “she was right in the eyes of Samson.” The phrase is unusual when applied to humans as an object, but it appears to be an intentional echo of a key phrase that frames the last section of Judges (chaps. 17–21). The same phrase is used for all Israelites in 17:6 and 21:25: “All the people did what was right in their own eyes.” Samson’s roving eyes, illicit sexual liaisons, and vengeful murder of Philistines resemble the Israelites’ doing whatever was right in their own eyes in Judges 17–21. They worshiped idols (17:1–6). They committed sexual immorality and murder (19:22–30). And Israelites killed each other, nearly exterminating the tribe of Benjamin (20:35–48).

(16) Samson’s shaved head portends his imminent capture and death at the hands of the Philistines (16:17–21; see 13:3–5). However, a note of hope emerges when “the hair of his head began to grow again” (16:22). Similarly, the Israelites’ attack and near extinction of their own fellow tribe of Benjamin portends the end of Israel’s twelve-tribe union (19:22–20:46). However, a note of hope emerges when six hundred Benjaminite soldiers manage to escape the battle and live on to repopulate the tribe (20:47).

How are we to interpret these many allusions to other parts of the book of Judges in the Samson story? These literary echoes suggest that the present form of the story was shaped and edited at a late stage of the book’s composition, when much of the other material in Judges had already been written and set in place. Also, Samson is an embodiment of all that was wrong with the judges who preceded him. On one hand, Samson is the opposite of what the good judges were in the early part of the judges era. He is the reverse image of the first model judge, Othniel. Samson also embodies the worst of the negative characteristics that began to appear in the last two phases of the judges era with Gideon and Jephthah: personal vendettas, selfish rage, reluctance to lead, inability to rally the tribes of Israel into a united community, covenants with foreigners, and breaking of covenant vows. In short, Samson represents the implosion of the whole judge system. The judges have gradually deteriorated in effectiveness as religious and military leaders over the course of three distinct phases in the book of Judges. Samson is the end of the line in that deterioration. He is the judge who no longer leads Israel or obeys God. Moreover, he only begins to deliver Israel from the Philistines (13:5), and he does not gain any years of rest for his people.

Samson is the embodiment not only of the judges but also of the whole nation of Israel. He breaks all of his covenant vows as a Nazirite in the same way that Israel repeatedly broke its covenant obligations in worshiping idols. Samson’s entanglements with foreign women are a metaphor for Israel’s “lusting” after foreign gods. Samson spurned all the obligations of the nazirite covenant to which his parents had been faithful (13:1–24). In the same manner, the new generation of Israelites after the death of Joshua spurned the covenant of their faithful parents (2:6–23). Just as God responded repeatedly to Israel’s cry of distress in spite of its disobedience, so also God responded each time to Samson’s cry of distress (15:18–19; 16:28–30).

Just as Samson embodies the judges and Israel, so also he embodies one other important feature of the book of Judges: the kind of divine love that simply cannot let go. Samson loves even when the loved one repeatedly betrays that love and loyalty. Samson’s wife betrayed the answer to his riddle (14:17), and yet he continued to love her (15:1). One scholar has argued that the answer to the riddle in 14:18 (“What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?”) implies an additional and unspoken answer—namely, love. Delilah betrayed Samson four different times, and yet he continued to return to her and love her (16:1–21). Samson was betrayed not only by the women he loved but even by his fellow Israelites. The tribe of Judah betrayed their own judge, Samson, to the Philistines, and yet he did not take revenge on Judah (15:9–17). The special intensity of Samson’s connection with God—the special birth involving the angelic visitor and the frequent infusion of the divine Spirit (13:25; 14:6, 19; 15:14)—suggests that Samson’s character may reveal something deeper and more direct about God’s character than did previous judges. Samson’s tenacious and often irrational love provides a metaphor for God’s unfailing love in spite of Israel’s repeated betrayals. Samson was a pushover whenever his beloved cried, begged, and pleaded with him. If we shake our heads in puzzlement over Samson’s relentless love for those who betrayed him, then we must do the same for God’s amazingly patient and relentless love for Israel throughout the book of Judges. Ironically, the most disobedient and ineffective of all Israel’s judges becomes the best window into the heart and character of Israel’s God. With Samson, we come to the core of the meaning of the book of Judges for our understanding of the judges, of Israel, and of God.

 

Judges 13:1–25, The Birth of Samson

Commentary

The Samson narrative opens with the usual introductory formula, announcing that Israel again has done evil and the Lord has allowed the Philistines to oppress them for forty years. If this were the typical judges cycle, we would expect the Israelites to cry in distress, prompting God to send a deliverer. In this case, the Israelites do not know enough even to cry out. Instead, God must take the initiative in sending an angel to announce the birth of a son “who shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines” (v. 5). The deliverance will be partial, suggesting that the judge paradigm is increasingly losing effectiveness. The Philistines will return as Israel’s oppressors later in 1 Samuel under the kingships of Saul and David (see 1 Sam 4:1–11).

The birth of this deliverer is announced to the barren, or childless, wife of a man named Manoah from the tribe of Dan. The angel instructs the mother-to-be not to drink wine or alcohol and not to eat unclean food. These same prohibitions presumably apply to the son about to be born, along with one additional prohibition: “no razor is to come on his head” (vv. 4–5). The reason for the prohibitions is that this son will be a “Nazirite” to God from birth. The word “nazirite” (נזיר nāzîr) means “separated one” or “consecrated one,” signifying someone specially dedicated for service to God. The law for the Nazirite is found in Num 6:1–21 and specifies three obligations: no wine, no cutting of hair, and no touching of a corpse. The laws in Numbers 6 assume that the nazirite vow is taken on voluntarily by an adult for a limited period rather than given at birth for a lifetime. However, the special dedication of a Nazirite from the womb suggests an extraordinary act of consecration by God. The special character of this son who is about to be born is underscored by the fact that the mother is barren. The motif of the barren wife to whom God gives a child is associated with several famous female ancestors of Israel’s history: Sarah and her son, Isaac (Gen 11:30; 21:1–7); Rebekah and her sons, Jacob and Esau (Gen 25:21–26); Rachel and her sons, Joseph and Benjamin (Gen 29:31; 30:22–24; 35:16–20); and Hannah and her son Samuel (1 Sam 1:1–28). The nazirite vow and the barren woman who gives birth raise enormous expectations in the reader to look for something extraordinary from this son who is about to be born.

The wife of Manoah reports the encounter to her husband. She tells him that “a man of God” whose appearance was like that of “an angel of God” came to her with the news of the imminent birth of a son. She simply accepts his words as true, not pressing to know from where he came or what his name is (vv. 6–7). Manoah’s wife explains that the boy will be a Nazirite to God from birth, as the man of God had said. Then she adds her own ominous words: His nazirite mission will extend from birth “to the day of his death” (v. 7). Her words allude in a tragic way to the final scene of the Samson story (16:23–31).

The husband, Manoah, is not satisfied with this secondhand report from his wife. He prays to God to send the man of God again to confirm the news and to teach them what they are to do with the boy who will be born. God grants Manoah’s request. The man of God comes to Manoah’s wife in the field, and she runs and brings her husband to meet him. After the man of God, who is indeed an angel of God, repeats the nazirite instructions, Manoah invites him to stay and eat. Manoah wants to prepare a kid or young goat as a meal. The hospitality is reminiscent of Abraham’s invitation to the three men of God in Gen 18:1–15. The angel of God demurs, saying he will not eat the food, but Manoah can offer the kid as a burnt offering to the Lord. Still unaware that this is an angel, Manoah asks, “What is your name?” The angel replies, “Why do you ask my name? It is too wonderful” (vv. 17–18). This exchange is a direct allusion to the famous wrestling match between the ancestor Jacob and the angel of God (Gen 32:29).

After Manoah offers up a burnt offering, the angel ascends in the flame up to heaven. Now Manoah knows this was an angel of the Lord. He is fearful that he and his wife will die because “we have seen God” (v. 22). This concern reflects a common OT notion that any human who sees God face to face will die (Exod 33:20). But Manoah’s wife assures him that they will not die. God has come, not to destroy them, but to give them life in the form of a son soon to be born (v. 23). In due time, Manoah’s wife gives birth to a son, whom she names Samson. The Lord blesses the boy as he grows, and “the spirit of the Lord began to stir him” (v. 24).

This opening episode of the Samson story is saturated with allusions to the wider biblical tradition. The famous barren mothers, the nazirite vow, the angels’ visit to Abraham and Sarah, the wrestling match with Jacob, and seeing God face to face all point to the birth of this son as an extraordinarily momentous event. These allusions all suggest that God has pulled out all the stops and is investing enormous divine power and hope in this one son about to be born. After the debacle of the Jephthah story and the brief respite of the minor judges in 12:8–15, God is now intervening in a dramatic and unprecedented way to save Israel. Even so, God realizes that even this child will only “begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines” (v. 5).

 

Reflections

1. When it comes to believing and trusting in what God promises, the Bible affirms that a variety of responses is available and legitimate. The first scene of the story presents us with two quite different approaches in the wife of Manoah and Manoah himself. The wife of Manoah simply trusts what the man of God tells her. She does not require or ask for his source of authority or his name (13:6). In spite of the obstacle of her barrenness, she is willing to trust that God will somehow find a way to make the promise come true. Her strong faith finds a New Testament counterpart in the angel’s promise to Mary that she would be the mother of Jesus. Mary accepted the angel’s words, saying, “Let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38 NRSV). Likewise, the women at Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning believed without question the angels’ words that Jesus had risen from the dead (Luke 24:1–9).

However, not all of God’s people find it easy to trust God’s promises without some sort of sign or confirmation. In Judges 13, the husband, Manoah, needs some assurance that his wife’s report is truly a word from God. His request echoes the experience of Abraham and his struggle to believe God’s promise of a son and of a land in Genesis 15. On one hand, Abraham trusted God’s promise of a son (Gen 15:6). On the other hand, a part of Abraham needed an additional sign and confirmation of God’s promise of the land (Gen 15:8–19). In the New Testament retelling of the first Easter story, the women came from Jesus’ tomb and relayed to the disciples what the angel had said about Jesus’ resurrection. But the text reports that “these words seemed to them an idle tale” (Luke 24:11 NRSV). The confirmation came in Jesus’ resurrection appearances to the disciples. Examples include the scene on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35) and the confrontation of the risen Jesus with doubting Thomas, the disciple who wanted proof that Jesus was alive (John 20:19–29). In each of these cases, God took seriously and accepted those who expressed their doubts and struggles to believe. To those who doubt, God often offers signs and assurances that are visible to the eyes of faith.

2. The parents of Samson emerge as faithful and obedient models of faith who desire that God “teach us what we are to do concerning the boy” (13:8). We have seen this motif of a faithful generation of parents once before in the book of Judges. In chapter 2, the previous generation of Israelites under the leadership of Joshua had “worshiped the Lord all the days of Joshua” (2:7). However, after the death of that generation, “another generation grew up after them, who did not know the Lord” (2:10). The parents of Samson display a strong faith similar to that of the generation of Joshua. As readers at this early point in the Samson story, we wonder whether the son Samson and the generation of Israelites he represents will continue to be faithful. Or will Samson and his generation fail to maintain their covenant loyalty to the Lord? By the end of the Samson saga, we will see that the paradigm of an old faithful generation of parents, followed by a disobedient and rebellious generation will, indeed, be repeated in the story of Manoah and his wife and their son, Samson. The paradigm raises the ever-present challenges of an older generation’s passing on its faith tradition to a new generation.

3. The many allusions to important biblical traditions of consecration and special service in Judges 13 demonstrate that the divine investment in this son named Samson as a deliverer of Israel is enormous. At the same time, the continuing decline in the effectiveness of the whole judges system of leadership and the degradation of Israel’s social and religious life pose massive obstacles to God’s will to deliver Israel yet again. This combination of intense divine energy and a resistant people and system of leadership will result only in Israel’s partial deliverance: Samson “shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines” (v. 5). This observation may lead us to reflect on the role of humans and human systems and institutions both to advance and to thwart the efficiency and effectiveness of God’s will’s being done in a given situation. Ultimately, God’s final will and loving purpose for the people of God and for the whole creation will be done. As the apostle Paul affirms, nothing “in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:39 NRSV). However, God’s specific will in particular circumstances may be helped or hindered by what humans and other forces in the world may do.

Judges 14:1–20, Samson the Riddler

Commentary

Judges 13 had prepared the reader to have great expectations for Samson as a deliverer of Israel. However, his first recorded action as an adult seems quickly to dash those expectations. He falls in love with a Philistine woman and orders his mother and father, “Get her for me as my wife” (v. 2). Samson’s parents know that their covenant with God condemns intermarriage with foreigners (3:6) and making covenants with non-Israelites (2:2). Thus they try to dissuade Samson from marrying the Philistine woman, but he will not take no for an answer. He insists that “she pleases me” (היא ישׁרה בעיני hîʾ yāšĕrâ bĕʿênāy; lit., “she is right in my eyes”). The phrase is an echo of the important refrain that characterizes all Israel in the final and most tragic section of Judges: “all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (17:6; 21:25).

14:4. Just when we are ready to condemn Samson for his roving eye, however, the narrator interrupts with a word to the reader. Samson’s parents did not know that “this was from the Lord”! The Lord wanted Samson to marry the Philistine woman in order to create “a pretext to act against the Philistines.” Remarkably, God steers Samson to disobey God’s own covenant prohibitions against intermarriage in order to help Israel and act against the Philistine oppressors. This is one of many ironies and inverted expectations that we will encounter in the chaotic and unsettled situation in which Samson lives and through which God works at the end of the judges era. The parents’ lack of knowledge about the unexpected ways in which God was working in Samson will also be a recurring theme in the narrative.

14:5–9. Samson convinces his parents to join him in “going down” to the town of Timnah to marry the Philistine woman. Their journey into Philistine territory will lead to Samson’s breaking two of his three nazirite vows: drinking wine or anything produced from the grapevine (13:4; Num 6:4) and eating anything that is unclean, especially anything associated with the corpse of an animal or a human (13:4; Num 6:6–8). They come to the “vineyards of Timnah.” The mention of a vineyard immediately raises warning flags, since the Nazirite is to avoid anything produced from grapes. Suddenly a young lion roars at Samson, the Spirit of the Lord rushes upon him, and he tears apart the lion barehanded. The nazirite instructions in chap. 13 had said nothing about a prohibition against Samson’s touching a corpse; that prohibition is mentioned only in the general nazirite law in Numbers 6. Thus the reader may wonder whether Samson’s touching the corpse of a lion (itself an unclean animal, Lev 11:27) may technically not be a violation of his nazirite covenant. Samson’s parents again do not know about the incident with the lion. In any case, Samson and his parents visit the Philistine woman and then return home. Sometime later, Samson is on his way to the wedding and travels the same road as before. He sees the carcass of the lion he had killed with a swarm of bees and their honey in the carcass. He eats the honey, which is ritually contaminated by the unclean corpse of an unclean animal. The reader now knows that Samson has broken his first nazirite vow, but again his parents are unaware (vv. 8–9).

14:10–11. Samson’s father goes down to arrange for the marriage, and Samson “made a feast” as was the custom for weddings (v. 10). The word for “feast” here (משׁתה mišteh) suggests a drinking feast, and so Samson seems to have broken now the second of his nazirite vows: “be careful not to drink wine or strong drink” (13:4; Num 6:3–4). However, the reader may wonder still whether these are serious infractions, since the angel had applied these two prohibitions to the parents but not explicitly (perhaps implicitly?) to Samson. At least Samson’s hair remains uncut, and it will be that third and last vow of his nazirite covenant that will remain fulfilled until the last episode with Delilah.

14:12–18a. As part of the seven-day feast, Samson proposes a riddle to his wedding guests and places a wager of sixty garments that the guests cannot solve it. The riddle is this: “Out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet.” The answer to the riddle, on the surface, is Samson’s dead lion with its sweet honey, about which the guests know nothing. After three days of guessing, the guests demand that Samson’s new wife beg him for the answer to the riddle “or we will burn you and your father’s house with fire” (v. 15). She begs Samson for the answer until the seventh day of the feast. He finally relents and tells her the answer to the riddle, and then she passes it on to the Philistine guests: “What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?” (v. 18). There may be more than this surface-level meaning to the riddle, however, in the context of the larger Samson story. The solution is given in the form of two questions. The interrogatives invite further searching on the reader’s part to consider another level of meaning as to what might be stronger than a lion and sweeter than honey. One scholar has argued that a more subtle answer to the two questions and an implied solution to the larger riddle of the Samson story itself is the answer “love.” Love is both incredibly strong and incredibly sweet for both Samson and his women, but more significantly for God and the people of Israel. God’s powerful and sweet love cannot let Israel go, no matter how disobedient they are.

14:18b–20. Samson gives a sexually crude and angry response to the wedding guests: “If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle” (v. 18). The Spirit of God rushes on Samson yet again. He then angrily goes to the neighboring Philistine city of Ashkelon, kills thirty men, steals their garments, and gives the stolen clothing to the wedding guests in payment for the wager they had made and Samson had lost. Hot-headed Samson heads back home, leaving his wife with the Philistines. In Samson’s absence, his wife is married off again to the best man at Samson’s wedding (vv. 19–20).

Reflections

In the topsy-turvy world of a disintegrating Israelite society, the Lord works in mysterious and seemingly contradictory ways. The Lord is behind Samson’s desire for a Philistine wife, a desire that contradicts earlier covenant prohibitions for intermarriage in Judg 2:2 and 3:6. The Spirit of the Lord rushed on Samson two times in this episode, and each time Samson disobeyed clear prohibitions of the covenant. The divine Spirit gave Samson the strength to kill the young lion (14:6). Yet that eventually led to his breaking the nazirite prohibition of touching a corpse or eating anything unclean. The Spirit of the Lord also rushed upon Samson when he murdered the thirty men of Ashkelon, stole their clothing, and then used his ill-gotten gains to pay off his wager. Samson kills and steals out of personal revenge and hot-headed anger, violations of the commandments against killing and stealing without community sanction (Deut 5:17, 19).

God seems constrained to work through such devious and sinful means in the disordered context of a splintered and rebellious Israelite nation. God is free to contravene the very laws God has given to Israel for the sake of God’s mercy and love for the people and for the sake of the punishment of the oppressive Philistines. Although laws and ordered structures are important and helpful, the priority remains on God’s will and God’s compassion, which may at times override institutional policy, governmental regulation, and even divine law.

Judges 15:1–20, Samson the Avenger

Commentary

15:1–8. Samson’s hot-headed exploits of personal revenge against the Philistines continue. Samson discovers that his Philistine wife has been given to another man and vows to “do mischief to the Philistines” in retaliation. He implies that his earlier killing and stealing (14:19) had been reckless and sinful when he says that this time his revenge “will be without blame” (v. 4). Samson’s “mischief” involves attaching torches to the tails of three hundred foxes and letting them loose to burn up the grain fields, vineyards, and olive groves of the Philistines. When the Philistines learn that Samson was behind the “mischief,” they up the ante in a spiral of retaliatory violence by burning Samson’s Philistine wife and her father (v. 6; see 14:15). Samson then vows revenge, and “he struck them down hip and thigh with great slaughter” (v. 8).

15:9–13. The spiral of revenge keeps growing as the Philistines in turn attack the tribe of Judah in the hope of capturing Samson. The tribe of Judah had been an exemplary leader among the Israelites in chap. 1. They had been the first and most successful tribe to lead an attack against the Canaanites (1:1–15). However, in this period of the disintegration of Israel under the judges, even the tribe of Judah cannot or will not resist Israel’s oppressors. Instead, they betray God’s designated deliverer, Samson, by binding him and surrendering him to the Philistines (vv. 12–13).

15:14–17. The Spirit of the Lord once again rushes upon Samson, and he breaks the ropes that bind him. He finds a jawbone of a donkey. As with the lion carcass (14:5–9), Samson again touches a part of an animal corpse, which defiles him and breaks his nazirite vow (Num 6:6). Samson uses the jawbone to kill a thousand Philistines and then utters a proud boast about the “heaps upon heaps” he has killed (v. 16). The boast is reminiscent of the primeval figure Lamech, who boasted of the revenge he took upon those who hurt him (Gen 4:23–24). Samson’s exploits also find a parallel in the earlier minor judge Shamgar, who killed six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad (3:31). The hill on which Samson threw away the donkey’s jawbone is remembered by its name, “Ramath-lehi,” “The Hill of the Jawbone” (v. 17).

15:18–20. The next scene introduces the first of two times when Samson calls upon God for help. Although God’s Spirit has repeatedly rushed upon Samson, it is not clear whether Samson is aware that God has been working through him. Samson seems, in his own mind, to be driven by the desire for personal revenge and nothing else. However, now he acknowledges that it is the Lord who has “granted this great victory by the hand of your servant” (v. 18). In spite of Samson’s disobedience and breach of his nazirite covenant, Samson stays connected to God. He prays to God, asking, “Am I now to die of thirst?” In previous judge stories, it was always Israel who cried out in distress, and not the judges. Samson, who is both judge and a metaphor for Israel itself, cries out to the Lord. And as in previous judge stories, the Lord responds to Samson’s cry. God splits open a rock, and water flows from it. The place was named “En-hakkore,” “The Spring of the One Who Called” (vv. 18–19). This scene of thirst and the provision of water recalls Israel’s experience in the wilderness as the people traveled from Egypt to the promised land and God miraculously provided water from a rock (Exod 17:1–7). The parallel with Israel’s experience further cements the identification of Samson not only as a judge but also as a metaphor for all Israel.

Reflections

The central theme of this section of the Samson story is best summarized by Samson himself, “As they did to me, so I have done to them” (15:11). Samson’s relationship to the Philistines dances between two poles, either legalistic vengeance as expressed in Samson’s statement or a passionate and reckless love as expressed for his Philistine wife (14:3) and later for Delilah (16:4). Samson loves his women, even though he is repeatedly betrayed by them. This dance between vengeful legalism and unrelenting and generous love first appeared in the book of Judges in the juxtaposition of the story of the Canaanite king Adoni-bezek (1:5–7) and the story of Achsah, daughter of the Israelite Othniel (1:11–15). After his capture and punishment, the Canaanite king conceded, “As I have done, so God has paid me back” (1:7). He sees the world through the lens of legalistic retribution. On the other hand, Achsah received from her father an inheritance of land as a gift. Then she boldly asked for an additional area that contains springs of water, and her father graciously and generously gave her two such areas with springs of life-giving water (1:14–15). Achsah saw the world through the lens of a parent’s unconditional and generous love. Both of these themes have been weaving in and out of the stories of the judges throughout the book. Israel has done evil, and God has sent an enemy in punishment. Israel has cried out in distress, and God has sent a deliverer to save them. As Israel’s sin and disloyalty have increased over the course of the judges era, however, God’s love and generosity have been strained to a near breaking point. God’s work in and through Samson is one more attempt by God to embody in a leader both responsible accountability and retribution and an unconditional divine love that cannot let Israel go.

God strains to reconcile these two poles in the relationship with Israel throughout Judges. On one hand, God proclaims to Israel, “I will never break my covenant with you” (2:1). On the other hand, God threatens to end the relationship and let Israel receive its just punishment: “You have abandoned me and worshiped other gods; therefore I will deliver you no more” (10:13). Samson embodies these two poles—vengeful retribution and unrelenting love—in his life and relationships. Ultimately, like the two pillars of Dagon’s temple (16:30–31), these two opposing poles of vengeance and love will crush Samson and lead to his death. The reader may wonder how God is faring under the strain of holding this rebellious Israel accountable for its actions even as God loves Israel with an unfailing love.

Judges 16:1–3, Samson and the Prostitute

Commentary

Samson’s love life continues with a brief nocturnal liaison with a Philistine prostitute in Gaza (v. 1). If Samson can point, however imperfectly, to the vastness of God’s love, Samson can also symbolize the fickle love and loyalty of Israel. His night with the “prostitute” (זנה zōnâ) recalls God’s charge against the Israelites for “prostituting” (זנה zānâ) themselves with all manner of foreign gods (2:17; 8:33).

The Philistines in Gaza discover that Samson is in town. Seeking further revenge, they decide to wait until dawn to capture Samson as he leaves the prostitute and departs through the city gate. But Samson leaves at midnight and eludes capture. With his enormous strength, Samson also picks up the city gate and its two posts and carries them for miles to the Israelite town of Hebron, where he sets them up on a hill as an act of humiliation and defiance aimed at Israel’s Philistine oppressors (vv. 2–3).

Reflections

Samson’s illicit sexual relationship with the Philistine prostitute reminds the reader in some ways of the two Israelite spies who visited Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute, in the city of Jericho (Josh 2:1–24). One key difference between the two stories is that Samson is there for his own personal gratification. The two Israelite spies were in Jericho not for their own pleasure but on a spy mission on behalf of all Israel. Samson’s liaison with the prostitute signifies Israel’s lusting after other gods for the sake of personal gratification and self-centered desires. The Jericho spies were doing the opposite. They risked their lives and well-being for the sake of the larger community.

However, there are also significant similarities between the two stories. Both stories proclaim the ultimate power and authority of Israel’s God over all other gods and powers. Jericho’s walls came tumbling down. Samson’s theft of Gaza’s city gates makes a similar statement about God’s authority even over the Philistines. The city gate is the place of political decision making and the rendering of justice. Samson’s feat of pulling up the city gate and planting it on a hill in Israel portends the eventual political and military defeat of the Philistines by the Israelites. It also prefigures Samson’s final act of defiance when he will push down another entrance and two pillars in the Philistine temple of Dagon. That final act in the Samson saga will entail not only Israel’s partial triumph over the Philistine oppressors but also the Lord’s ultimate victory over the Philistine god Dagon (16:23–31).

Samson’s act of political defiance stands in a long series of biblical people of God who have defied the powers of human authority and government when they have acted oppressively and contrary to God’s will. Moses defied Pharaoh and the Egyptian empire, saying, “Let my people go” (Exodus 5–15). Amos boldly condemned King Jeroboam for the nation’s ill treatment of the poor (Amos 7:10–17). Daniel remained faithful in the face of persecution for his faith because he knew God’s authority supersedes all worldly authorities (Daniel 1–12). When the authorities tried to prevent Peter and the other apostles from proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, they replied, “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29 NRSV). Samson’s placing the Gaza gates on the hill outside Hebron is one more affirmation that “thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.”

Judges 16:4–31, Delilah and the Death of Samson

Commentary

16:4–5. After the one-night liaison in Gaza, Samson “falls in love” with a woman named Delilah (v. 4). She is from the valley of Sorek, which lies within the Israelite land of Canaan, not far from Jerusalem. Scholars disagree about whether Delilah is an Israelite, a Canaanite, or a Philistine. The text remains intentionally ambivalent about her ethnicity so that the reader may wonder whether Samson has at last “come home” to Israel in obedience to his parents’ wishes to find a woman to love from among “our people” (14:3). The name “Delilah” (דלילה dĕlîlâ) means “flirtatious,” which fits her role in the story. The Philistines had earlier coaxed Samson’s wife to betray him in the matter of the riddle (14:15–20). Similarly, the Philistines coax Delilah to find out the secret to the riddle of Samson’s superhuman strength. Whereas earlier the Philistines had threatened Samson’s wife with death (14:15), this time they offer Delilah an enormous bribe of “eleven hundred pieces of silver” (v. 5).

16:6–14. Delilah then tries to coax the secret of Samson’s strength from him. On three different occasions he lies to Delilah about the secret of his power. First, Samson tells her that his strength will vanish if he is bound by seven fresh bow-strings. Then he suggests that he will lose his power if he is bound by new ropes. Finally, he tells Delilah that he will become a normal man if his hair is plaited into seven braids, which are then woven into a web and made tight with a pin. All of these are lies. It is this third false reason that begins to build suspense. Samson’s admission that his strength has something to do with his hair is getting dangerously close to the truth about the one nazirite vow he has not yet broken (13:5). Moreover, the scene with Samson sleeping and Delilah weaving the hair of his head and “making it tight with the pin” (lit., “she thrust the pin/tent peg”) reminds the reader of an earlier story in Judges 4. Jael, the Kenite woman, like Delilah, was not clearly allied with either Israel or Israel’s enemy Sisera. As he slept, she “thrust” (תקע tāqaʿ; the same verb as in 16:14) a tent peg into his temple and killed him (4:17–21). The parallel is a foreboding sign that Samson is moving closer to his own downfall and death.

16:15–22. Delilah pleads one more time with Samson to reveal his secret, appealing to his love for her. After days of nagging, Samson is “tired to death” (v. 16), a figurative image that will soon become a literal fact. Samson gives in and tells her the secret of his nazirite vow and that his hair cannot be cut: “If my head were shaved … I would become weak, and be like anyone else” (v. 17). Delilah senses that this time Samson is telling the truth. She again lets him fall asleep in her lap and then has a man cut Samson’s hair. Samson’s strength begins to leave him, but he appears unaware of his loss: “he did not know that the Lord had left him” (v. 20). Samson’s figurative blindness to his real condition of weakness and divine abandonment is made literal and physical as the Philistines capture him and “gouged out his eyes” (v. 21).

Samson is bound and forced to do what is traditionally the work of women and slaves: “he ground at the mill in the prison” (v. 21; see Exod 11:5; Job 31:10). Samson has been totally transformed and humiliated. He was once a paragon of male bravado, a man of extraordinary physical strength and the knower of deep secrets unknown to others. Now Samson takes the role of a blind female servant, a captive of war, an exile in a foreign land. Indeed, his fate is a mirror image of the later experience of Israel in exile. Lamentations 5:13 laments that in exile “young men are compelled to grind.” Samson’s shaved head is not only a violation of his nazirite vow but also the mark of a person who is taken into exile. Isaiah 7:20 predicts the exile of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians with this image: “On that day the Lord will shave with a razor hired beyond the River—with the king of Assyria—the head and the hair of the feet, and it will take off the beard as well.” Deuteronomy 21:12 speaks of the treatment of female captives of war: “suppose you see among the captives a beautiful woman whom you desire and want to marry … she shall shave her head.” Samson is a feminized captive and exile, a paradigm of Israel in exile, seemingly abandoned by God.

However, the scene does not end in total despair but with what James Crenshaw has described as “one of those pregnant sentences that is the mark of genius.” Verse 22 concludes, “But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.” The new growth of Samson’s hair may yet provide hope for some kind of vindication and purpose in the midst of Samson’s captivity and exile among the Philistines.

16:23–27. The setting for the final scene of the Samson story is the grand temple of the Philistine god Dagon, which is filled with “the lords of the Philistines.” The Philistines are celebrating a grand festival of sacrifice and thanksgiving to their god, who “has given Samson our enemy into our hand” (v. 23). Samson had entertained the Philistines once before at the wedding feast of his Philistine wife. Then he had offered a secret riddle to which they found a solution. The Philistines again command Samson to entertain them; he performs to a full house with standing room only for an additional 3,000 Philistines who are on the roof of the temple (v. 27).

16:28–30. Once before Samson had called upon God in prayer when he was weakened by thirst (15:18). One more time he calls on God in prayer. “Strengthen me,” he prays, “so that with this one act of revenge I may pay back the Philistines for my eyes” (v. 28). Samson continues to define his actions in terms of personal vendetta and revenge. He remains blind, however, to the larger significance of his mission as an agent of God’s deliverance for the sake of the future of the whole people of Israel. Nevertheless, God will use Samson for one last defeat of the Philistines.

In a story filled with secrets and riddles, Samson accomplishes his final act of defeating the Philistines through one final secret. Samson pretends that he is so weak that he must lean on the “pillars on which the house rests” (v. 26). Then, calling on the Lord, Samson leans his full weight aganst the middle pillars of the temple. Dramatically, he prays, “Let me die with the Philistines” (v. 30). Samson strains “with all his might,” which has returned along with his growing hair. The pillars buckle, the roof collapses, and the victory party for Dagon becomes a Philistine disaster of death and destruction. Samson dies along with thousands of Philistines. Ironically, Samson has killed more Philistines in his death than all those he killed during his life (v. 30). In the midst of this final triumph, Samson remains a tragic figure, forever blind to the larger purposes for which God had used him. Samson saw only personal revenge in this event; the Lord sees deliverance for God’s people and the Lord’s victory in the cosmic battle against Dagon, the god of the Philistines.

16:31. Samson’s family takes his body and buries him in the tomb of his father, a sign of a life that has ended and come full circle. In the end, Samson “judged Israel twenty years,” as compared to the much longer forty years of Philistine oppression (13:1). God had invested enormous divine energy in this last of the judges. Even so, Samson was only able to “begin to deliver Israel” from the Philistines (13:5). The Philistines would return as a major threat to Israel, beginning with the events in 1 Samuel 4. In Samson, the line of Israel’s military deliverers called judges comes to an end within the book of Judges. The system of leadership under the judges has finally self-destructed and collapsed under its own weight along with the Philistine temple of Dagon.

Reflections

1. Samson’s many relationships with women invite critical reflection on the role and portraits of women in the Samson saga. His mother is a positive model of faithfulness and trust. However, the other women in his life are not so positively portrayed. They are objects of desire, nagging and tempting Samson into economic ruin, sexual immorality, and ultimately death. Moreover, each of these women is in some way caught in the web of the pressures, economics, and powers of a male-dominated society. Samson’s wife is threatened and forced to betray him. She is ultimately killed and burned along with her father (14:14; 15:16). Samson uses the prostitute at Gaza for a night of self-gratification (16:1–3). Delilah is pressured by an enormous bribe from the Philistines to betray her lover. Both the prostitute and Delilah are used by men in exchange for money.

It was noted in the reflections on Jephthah’s daughter in Judges 11 that the decline in the well-being of women as we move through the book of Judges parallels the gradual disintegration and decline of Israel as a society and a religious community. The women in the Samson story continue to reflect this downward trend in social and religious degradation. Their portraits will find parallels in our own time and communities.

2. One of the most dramatic points in Judges 16 is Samson’s request for God to let him “die with the Philistines” (v. 30). This expression to God of a death wish is not unique to Samson. Other great figures of the Bible reached such points of despair that they also asked God to let them die. Moses was overcome with the burdens of leading the rebellious Israelites through the wilderness and requested that God put him to death (Num 11:10–15). The prophet Elijah sat under a tree in despair because he alone had been faithful to God and yet had been no more effective than his predecessors in leading Israel to faith in God. So he asked God, “take away my life” (1 Kgs 19:4). Jeremiah was so severely persecuted for prophesying God’s word that he wished he had been killed in his mother’s womb (Jer 20:17). The prophet Jonah sulked under a bush because God had shown mercy to the Assyrian city of Nineveh. Jonah was so upset by God’s generosity to this pagan city that he asked God to “please take my life from me” (Jonah 4:3). In each of these cases, however, God always refused the request to put the person to death and instead sent the person on to continue his mission. Samson’s request for God to let him die is the only time such a request is granted in the Old Testament.

Samson’s uniqueness in this regard may stem from two reasons. One reason is that Samson represents the end of the line of the judges. He is more than just another judge. He embodies the office of the judge, which comes to an end with him. Thus, God’s allowing Samson to die is God’s allowing the office or system of judge as a means of leading and saving Israel to die. Another reason for Samson’s uniqueness is that he embodies Israel as a nation. The shaved head, the forced grinding at the mill, and the binding and captivity of Samson are all images of exile and captivity. They prefigure the exile Israel will later experience under kingship. The northern kingdom of Israel will be conquered by the Assyrians and be sent into exile (2 Kings 17:1). Later, the southern kingdom of Judah will succumb to the power of the Babylonian empires, and its population will be exiled (2 Kings 24–25). The exile will be a kind of death for Israel. The Temple in Jerusalem will be destroyed as was the Philistine temple of Dagon. The system of kingship will end, just as the era of the judges also came to an end. Israel and Judah will lose their strength as Samson had done. The prophets will castigate Israel for its blindness to its sin before the exile (Isa 6:9–13) and its blindness to the deliverance God is working out for the sake of the exiles (Isa 43:19). The prophet Ezekiel spoke of Israel’s exile as the death of a nation in his image of Israel as a valley filled with dry bones (Ezek 37:1–14). Thus Samson’s request to die and God’s acquiescence to that request reflect Samson’s larger role as a symbol of the system of judges as an institution and a metaphor for Israel as a nation and its eventual fate of exile.

3. The Samson story holds on to a thread (or hair) of hope as it notes that Samson’s hair begins to grow back after it has been shaved (16:22). If his shaved head represents exile and captivity, then the new growth of hair represents hope in the midst of exile. The Deuteronomistic History of Joshua–2 Kings ends with Israel in exile. But it also ends with a brief note of hope that parallels Samson’s growing hair. In 2 Kgs 25:27–30, the king of Judah, who is in exile, is released from prison and allowed to dine with the king of Babylon. This hint of hope and opening to some kind of possible future functions in a way similar to the growing hair of Samson. As we emerge from the tragedies and downfalls that beset us, we may yet discover such glimpses of hope, such openings to the future, such hints that God is working in hidden ways to redeem and save and heal, of which we may not be fully aware.

4. One of the overriding themes of the Samson story is Israel’s learning that its future depends entirely on God’s guidance and strength, not its own. Samson represents the prideful and boastful Israel who goes it alone, thinking for the most part that he does not need anyone else to help him. Yet there are glimpses of Samson’s recognition of his limits, once when he was dying of thirst and a final time when he was dying at the hand of the Philistines. It is only when Samson reaches the end of his rope and slams up against his dependence on God that he comes to some realization of his need for God. This was God’s experience with Israel as well. That experience is definitively summarized in the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32:

Indeed the Lord will vindicate his people,

have compassion on his servants,

when he sees that their power is gone. (Deut 32:36 NRSV)

Israel will then begin to come to the realization that its future and hope lie not in a particular institution of leadership (whether judges or kings) or in its own strength or virtue. The future of God’s people lies in trusting and worshiping the one God who is worthy of such trust:

See now that I, even I, am he:

there is no god besides me.

I kill and I make alive:

I wound and I heal;

and no one can deliver from my hand. (Deut 32:39 NRSV)

5. In the history of Christian biblical interpretation, one of the dominant ways in which Samson has been interpreted is as a prefigurement, or type, of Christ. In spite of his dubious moral character, Samson has functioned over the centuries in sermons, art, and interpretation as a precursor to Jesus’ life and death. The parallels are many. Samson’s special birth and the angel’s announcement to his mother in Judges 13 functioned as a model for the writer of Jesus’ birth story and announcement in Luke 1–2. The title of “Nazorean” is applied to Jesus, a possible allusion to the special status of a “Nazirite,” similar to Samson, in Matt 2:23. The Spirit of the Lord came upon Samson just as it came upon Jesus as he did battle with Satan in the wilderness (Luke 3:21–22; 4:1–13). However, the most important parallels involve Samson’s suffering and death as a type of Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross. Samson was betrayed by his own people, by Judah and by the women he loved. He was beaten and tortured. Samson’s outstretched arms on the two pillars of the Philistine temple were read by Christian interpreters as a prefigurement of Jesus’ outstretched arms on the cross. In his death, Samson destroyed the enemy and its god. Similarly, interpreters saw Jesus’ death as destroying sin and death and defeating the powers and principalities of this world who resisted God’s will for creation.

Perhaps at a deeper level, the Samson story affirms God’s willingness to enter into the full sinfulness and rebellion of humankind in order to accomplish the purposes of God in the world. At some level, the figure of Samson embodies not only the institution of judgeship or the nation of Israel, but also God’s amazing and relentless love. God keeps coming back to God’s sinful people, responding to their cries of distress and promising to stay with them in and through their failures, their captivities, their exiles, and even their deaths. Whether it is the human nation of Israel or the individual person of Jesus, God is present and at work in an incarnational way in the blood and mess and chaos of human life. In that promise is a word of hope even when we come to the end and death of the era of the judges in the man Samson.