Samson - Part 2
Notes
Transcript
Hook?
Previously on the feats of Samson
Miraculous birth
Nazirite - Set apart to Serve God
God was using Samson to defeat the Philistines who had been oppressing Israel 40 years. God did this by filling him with his spirit, and giving him super-human strength. The first Superman!
Instead of being set apart and a great deliver - self serving and questionable efforts around Nazi-rite vow.
God uses Samson despite himself - He killed a lion, he killed at least 30 Philistines while he was angry for loosing a wager.
Episode 2: The Wife (Continued)
Episode 2: The Wife (Continued)
So Samson had hosted his own wedding - week long feast. There were a bunch of people there.
At the end of the wedding, he stormed off in his wrath when he was tricked. Then we were told:
And Samson’s wife was given to his companion, who had been his best man.
But, Samson doesn’t know this yet! He thinks his wife is waiting for him. So when he’s “in the mood” he thinks he’ll go down with a nice present for his wife and enjoy some alone time.
Samson gets down there, only to discover the bad news.
After some days, at the time of wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife with a young goat. And he said, “I will go in to my wife in the chamber.” But her father would not allow him to go in. And her father said, “I really thought that you utterly hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her instead.”
So the woman Samson had already married, remember he hosted the wedding, it lasted the whole 7 days! She had been wedded to the best man because the father thought Samson wasn’t coming back.
He tries to ameliorate the situation by trying to make a match with his younger daughter.
Samson is not happy once again (justifiably so, but he did kind of leave things up in the air!), but once again God uses this to strike another blow against the Philisitines.
So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches. And he turned them tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails. And when he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines and set fire to the stacked grain and the standing grain, as well as the olive orchards.
Foxes, could be jackals - much more common, and the same word is used in Hebrew for both animals.
This is a great feat of strength, that causes great damage to Philistias economy.
The Philistines then try to figure out who’s the culprit, the story comes out about the wife being married off to someone else and the fires were Samsons’s revenge.
Then the Philistines said, “Who has done this?” And they said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.” And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire.
Ironically, the wife died by the way she was trying to avoid when she betrayed Samson. A reminder that wickedness often sows the seeds for one’s own destruction. What you sow, you reap.
Then Samson responds to that outrage with another attack...
And Samson said to them, “If this is what you do, I swear I will be avenged on you, and after that I will quit.” And he struck them hip and thigh with a great blow, and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam.
So Samson attacked them all, then went and camped out in hiding.
Philistines form an army and come to Judah looking for Samson.
Judah goes looking for Samson. Instead of joining forces against Philistia, they take Samson captive and hand him over.
But Samson allowed himself to be captured. He was tied up with ropes, and then when he saw an opportunity, broke the ropes and killed everybody.
When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. Then the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, and with it he struck 1,000 men.
Another great feat of strength. Will he now give up his self serving ways and take seriously his mission to be set apart to the Lord and deliver Israel?
Well, we get a good sign, Samson is thirsty, he is in need and he cries to the Lord. He sees that after such a great victory he is weak and fading. He fears that he will either die of thirst or be captured. SO God supplies his need:
And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it. And when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore the name of it was called En-hakkore; it is at Lehi to this day. And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.
The number of years he judged normally signals the end of a Judges life, we’re used to this being the conclusion, yet interestingly this is only halfway through the structure
The devolving nature of sin. First you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, then you’re having an inappropriate relationship with someone you shouldn’t be, then you’re trying to defraud them, then being betrayed and tricked, then there’s the tit-for-tat of each trying to hurt the other in a devolving spiral of anger and hurt.
The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
IF your life is like a garden, you can either plant to reap a great harvest, or you can sow seeds of destruction. Is your life a tangled web of brambles, box thorn and blackberry? Snaring you, trapping you, wounding you?
God can use you despite yourself, but it is much better to be aligned with God’s plans, walking with him rather than opposed to Him.
God used Jacob who tried to get ahead with trickery and deceit,
God used Balaam even though he was a selfish prophet,
God used Judas who was driven by greed,
God used Samson who was driven by his desires and anger.
Will that be your story? That lady, or the guy was a real peace of work, but at least God used them?
God can use you. But it will go so much better if you give submit yourself to him and are not halfhearted. You’re lukewarm, you have one foot in Christ but you carry on as if that is of little consequence to your life. You do what is right in your own eyes, instead of obeying the LORD.
You call out to God when you get in a tough spot, but do you turn aside as soon as the crisis is averted?
Submit to God, humble yourselves before him.
Call on Jesus to supply you with living water so that you may not thirst again.
Episode 3: The Prostitute
Episode 3: The Prostitute
Episode 3 is much shorter. Mother, then Wife, now a new woman.
Unfortunately, Samson’s devotion to the Lord seems short lived. He goes from crying out in need to the Lord, to this:
Samson went to Gaza, and there he saw a prostitute, and he went in to her.
Fraternizing in enemy territory again. If you’re a Ukrainian, would you take a holiday in Russia?
You can see the euphemism here. He did not only go into her house.
Once again we see a man of God, the strongest man in the world, having a great weakness for his passions. He was more interested in the ladies, than he was in serving God. Good desires misused.
Prostitution is a sin - it is a corruption of God’s design for sexual relations. We know that some people turn to this way of life out of desperation, or they are forced into this line of work by others. So there are victims here, but we can understand that, while simultaneously understanding it is wrong.
Samson should have know what he was doing was wrong. He should have know God’s Law, but he either did not know, because he was not taught, or he ignored it. Marrying a non-believer was bad enough, but now he’s not even trying.
Anyway, the locals find out the guy who’s killed over 1000 of us and decimated our economy is in town. They try to set a trap
The Gazites were told, “Samson has come here.” And they surrounded the place and set an ambush for him all night at the gate of the city. They kept quiet all night, saying, “Let us wait till the light of the morning; then we will kill him.”
They expect Samson to leave the town early in the morning, so they get into position to wait for him. There’s probably only one way in and out of the city, so they’ve set-up an ambush at the gate.
Samson subverts their plan, by leaving early.
But Samson lay till midnight, and at midnight he arose and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two posts, and pulled them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron.
Another feat of great strength!
Now this raises a bunch of questions....
Why did he break the gate? These fortified towns would close their gate at night to stop sneak attacks by enemies, so in order for Samson to get out, they either had to open the gate or break it down. Samson chose the later.
This was also Samson making the city defenseless. They had no way to protect themselves. It’s like having a bank vault with no lock. You can have the best walls in the world, but if you can’t lock the door anyone can come in.
What happened to the guys waiting? We’re not sure if they were in or outside the city, but it seems either Samson did it stealthily, it was a surprise or he fought them off before breaking down the gate.
Where did he take the gate? about 60km away. That’s like taking fortified city gates from here to Traralgon! They couldn’t just go fetch the pieces and put the gate back in place.
Once again, mighty deed against the philistines, but Samson shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
Episode 4: The Seductress
Episode 4: The Seductress
Now we come to the last Episode in Samson’s life, and the last key woman in his life.
Mother, Wife, Prostitute and now seductress, the infamous Delilah.
Samson loved Delilah, but who is she to him? Not a wife, not called a prostitute (though some have suggested she was the prostitute of the previous episode). Given Samson's history with women we would not be surprised if it turned out to be a live-in boyfriend situation. They should either be married, or not together.
We don’t know if this lady was a Philistine or what, but as we will soon see, she effectively aligns herself with the philistines and against God’s people.
And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, “Seduce him, and see where his great strength lies, and by what means we may overpower him, that we may bind him to humble him. And we will each give you 1,100 pieces of silver.” So Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me where your great strength lies, and how you might be bound, that one could subdue you.”
Bribery. Willing to pay vast sums of money. Likley 5 lords for the 5 cities of the philistines. So about 5500 peices of silver to betray her.
Trick him, beguile him, deceive him - we already know that Samson is susceptible to seductive women and trickery. So this has an ominous tone to it. But perhaps Samson may be able to overcome this trickery?
What follows is the classic paneled storytelling technique, with a series of scenes with a repeated structure, until the last one where the changes to the structure reveal the climax of the story.
A Commentary on Judges and Ruth: Commentary Disaster Flirts Back (16:4–22)
Panel 1 (vv. 6–9)
Delilah’s request (v. 6)
Samson’s response (v. 7)
The failed plot (vv. 8–9)
Panel 2 (vv. 10–12)
Delilah’s complaint and request (v. 10)
Samson’s response (v. 11)
The failed plot (v. 12)
Panel 3 (vv. 13–14)
Delilah’s complaint and request (v. 13)
Samson’s response (v. 14a)
The failed plot (v. 14b)
Panel 4 (vv. 15–21)
Delilah’s complaint and request (vv. 15–16)
Samson’s response (v. 17)
The successful plot (vv. 18–21)
Undried Bowstrings
New ropes
Seven locks of his head woven into fabric (getting closer to the truth)
Gives in and gives the truth.
We have flashback’s to Sisera & Jael. Sisera was unguarded with an ambiguous woman, and opened himself up to his own destruction. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and instead of the bad guy getting lured to his downfall, it is the good guy being lured. We’re at that stage in the story where we can’t tell the good guys apart from the bad guys.
Why did Samson give in?
He may not have realized that the philistines were lying in wait every time.
He may not have realized that the loss of the hair would so directly affect his strength. He had seemed unconcerned with keeping his distinctive consecration to the Lord (made obvious by the fact he gives over this information to a woman who has been trying to undermine him this whole time.
But here is the nub of it:
And she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and you have not told me where your great strength lies.” And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day, and urged him, his soul was vexed to death.
Delilah is manipulating him and pressuring him. She puts it back onto him and makes it as though he was the one who was in the wrong, when it was her all along.
Don’t feel sorry, or apologize for things when you haven’t done anything wrong. Let truth reign in your relationships.
Here we have the classic stereotypes of mens and womens sins played out - they guy who can’t keep it in his pants and the lady who manipulates others to her own advantage.
Don’t fall into the trap!
Once again, notice the power of women. Here we have a literal strong man, the strongest man, but we also see the strength of women. She does not have physical strength, but women wield great influence in their relationships. Both are being misused.
Samson was “vexed to death”, sick to death. Basically it was unbearable for him. The strongest man was undone by nagging.
So he gave in, and it was his downfall.
She made him sleep on her knees. And she called a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him, and his strength left him. And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him.
And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles. And he ground at the mill in the prison. But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.
Arrogance in strength
Samson's strength came from the LORD. There is a sense that when the vessel was not holy, the Lord’s power did not fill it (riffing on Caesarius of Arles).
But the knowledge that his hair began to grow again signals God is not done with Samson yet.
Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to rejoice, and they said, “Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hand.”
And Samson said to the young man who held him by the hand, “Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, that I may lean against them.” Now the house was full of men and women. All the lords of the Philistines were there, and on the roof there were about 3,000 men and women, who looked on while Samson entertained.
Then Samson called to the Lord and said, “O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes.”
And Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and he leaned his weight against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other. And Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines.” Then he bowed with all his strength, and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life.
Then his brothers and all his family came down and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father. He had judged Israel twenty years.
So What?
So What?