Samson Pt 2
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Intro
Intro
Every groom wakes up the day of his wedding with several thoughts running through his head:
Am I ready for this?
Is she going to realize she is getting the short end of the deal and leave me hanging at the altar?
Am I supposed to keep my legs locked or unlocked?
Did I need to RSVP for steak instead of chicken for the reception
Every groom also desires to see the wedding go smoothly—we know this is something our brides have dreamed of, we love them, and so we want the wedding to go perfectly.
Well, our wedding didn’t, and it was all my fault.
This morning we are going to look at a wedding that was a real disaster. We resume the Samson narrative where we left it—Samson’s wedding. But this wedding is going to go off so badly that it will effectively launch Samson into his career against the Philistines.
we might hope that Samson will now live up to his promise as a great judge who will bring deliverance and restoration to Israel.
But Samson will disappoint with his wayward pursuit of his own desires
Samson’s failure to be the hero Israel and we need, a savior, someone who can bring us back to God, does not cause us to despair of God’s redemptive purpose
Instead the text will drive us to the ultimate triumph of God’s mission in the victory of Jesus Christ.
Today we conclude: In Search of the Hero: the Failure of Samson, the Triumph of Jesus
Review
Review
Same Old Story in Israel
Failure to drive out the pagan people resulted in a cycle of spiritual dysfunction
This repeated cycle had four stages
Israel does what is right in their own eyes and evil in the sight of the LORD.
God gives Israel over to her enemies
Israel calls to God for deliverance (thought not in the Samson narrative)
God raises a judge to deliver Israel
A New Hope
New judge with an extraordinary birth story
Perhaps the dawn of a new day in Israel?
An Inauspicious beginning
High hopes for Samson are quickly disappointed
1. Exploits of the Hotheaded Hero
1. Exploits of the Hotheaded Hero
A three-fold progression which demonstrates why Samson will not be the hero Israel most needs.
A disastrous wedding (or My Big Fat Philistine Wedding)
Samson is engaged to a Philistine woman
on his way to visit her he kills a lion
later on his way to the wedding he scoops honey from inside the lions and eats it (Nazarite transgression)
Samson is given 30 Philistine companions for his wedding drinking party (possible Nazarite transgression)
Samson endeavors to trick his 30 Philistine companions out of thirty garments and so he puts to them a riddle
the wager at first glance seems unfair—it is 30 heads against one—but Samson is clever
his riddle depends on a secret that he has kept to himself
he stands to gain 30x more than any of the Philistines
so while each of the Philistines will be entitled to a new outfit should they win, Samson stands to effectively gain a new wardrobe.
“Out of the eater came something to eat/ Out of the strong came something sweet.”
after 3 days the Philistines haven’t solved the riddle.
On the fourth day they said to Samson’s wife, “Entice your husband to tell us what the riddle is, lest we burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you invited us here to impoverish us?” And Samson’s wife wept over him and said, “You only hate me; you do not love me. You have put a riddle to my people, and you have not told me what it is.” And he said to her, “Behold, I have not told my father nor my mother, and shall I tell you?” She wept before him the seven days that their feast lasted, and on the seventh day he told her, because she pressed him hard. Then she told the riddle to her people. And the men of the city said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down,
“What is sweeter than honey?
What is stronger than a lion?”
And he said to them,
“If you had not plowed with my heifer,
you would not have found out my riddle.”
And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon and struck down thirty men of the town and took their spoil and gave the garments to those who had told the riddle. In hot anger he went back to his father’s house. And Samson’s wife was given to his companion, who had been his best man.
Three observations:
Samson got into business with some pretty mean fellas.
these are not modern “groomsmen”
in our mind, if a groom ask someone to stand up for him in the wedding it is because he thinks they are a stand up guy—not the situation here
these are rough men, and Samson has just lit their competitive fuse
Samson is now paying the price for marrying a Philistine woman
he is now entangled with people who are enemies of the people of God—they have been persecuting Israel with impunity for 40 years, they are not about to be shown up by this up-start Israelite in their town.
his own wife reveals her own loyalties “you have put a riddle to my people” which is in contrast to the attitude of Ruth to Naomi “your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
Samson follows this up “I haven’t told my parents, why should I tell you?”
Clearly on both sides this union is well short of the “leaving and cleaving” standard
Samson reveals his secret
Samson holds out until the last day
He is finally worn down—he tells his new wife
She tells her people—and Samson loses an expensive bet that he never imagined he would have to pay
The Fallout:
1. Samson accuses the Philistines with unfairness and his wife of disloyalty (“if you had not plowed with my heifer you would not have found out my riddle”)
2. Samson kills 30 Philistines in Ashkelon and pays back his bet with their clothes
3. In hot anger Samson abandons his wife and returns home
>end of this unhappy event? not quite
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.” And Samson said to them, “This time I shall be innocent in regard to the Philistines, when I do them harm.”
After cooling off, Samson returns to resume marital relations with his wife
The force of this intention is clear “I will go in” is a cohortative or an imperative verb
Samson’s father-in-law protests—he thought Samson hated his daughter and had permanently abandoned her
Samson’s dealings with the Philistines have cost him dearly—he will now repay them in kind (and be right in doing so, this time)
Second chain reaction
Samson, incensed, burns the Philistine grain fields and olive orchards to the ground before harvest
The Philistines, in turn, burn Samson’s wife and his father-in-law to death for inciting Samson’s wrath (they ultimately suffer the fate the 30 companions threatened in the first place).
Samson in turn, finds vengeance by striking down the Philistines who murdered his wife and father-in-law
—>Samson is essentially launched into his life-long career against the Philistines.
The Point:
Samson is not endeavoring to pursue God’s agenda, he is pursuing his own
2. 2nd Exploit of the Hotheaded Hero: Betrayal & Death at Jawbone Hill
Following these events, Samson flees the Philistines who are out for his blood
He finds refuge in a cave in Etam
The Philistines come and make life miserable for the people of Judah in Lehi
the people of Judah ask what they have done to earn this persecution
the Philistines reply that it is on account of Samson, who the Philistines are seeking to capture
the men of Judah therefore come looking for Samson
—>Now we hope that this is the moment the Samson narrative takes a dramatic turn
>Will he now unite Judah, unite Israel to overthrow the Philistines, remove their pagan idolatry from the land and bring rest and peace to Israel from her enemies?
Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” And he said to them, “As they did to me, so have I done to them.” And they said to him, “We have come down to bind you, that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines.” And Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.” They said to him, “No; we will only bind you and give you into their hands. We will surely not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.
Rather than unite around their deliverer, the men of Judah are happy to hand him over for death to their enemies
Relevant: remember the cycle of spiritual dysfunction in Judges is slightly disrupted in the Samson narrative
Israel does evil the sight of the LORD
God give Israel over to her enemies
The people cry out for deliverance (not the case in the Samson narrative)
God raises a judge to deliver Israel
By the time we reach Samson in the book of Judges, the people aren’t even crying to God for help!
as this incident reveals, they are all too happy to ‘go along to get along’
they don’t want to upset the apple cart, they don’t want to rock the boat
What an astonishing bargain they are willing to make—they will hand over the man who is supposed to be their deliverer over to their enemies to be executed, for momentary relief from the pagans.
Where is the faith? Where is the vision? Where is the boldness to lay hold of the promises of God’s in Israel? Where is the strength to stand against the enemies of God? Clearly, it is not to be found here.
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. And Samson said,
“With the jawbone of a donkey,
heaps upon heaps,
with the jawbone of a donkey
have I struck down a thousand men.”
Note the parallel that exists between this accounts of the Spirit of God rushing to Samson’s aid and Samson’s encounter with the Lion
1st in the vineyards of Timnah “And behold, a young lion came toward him roaring.” (14:5)
2nd at Lehi “The Philistines came shouting to meet him.” (15:14)
So again, as the adversary charges against Samson yelling threats the Spirit of God rushes to his aid
Samson is not inherently the mighty man, he is mighty when God is with him!
Samson’s weapon is a “fresh jawbone”
that adjective “fresh” means not yet dry, it is still moist, bloody and fleshy
in other words, Samson is touching the corpse of a dead thing, again.
Another complication of his Nazarite status
His prodigious military victory is followed by some clever wordplay
Samson may be brash and hotheaded—but he is not stupid
He claims this victory as his own accomplishment
there is no recognition of God
there is no awareness that this conquest is hardly the result of his own strength
He claims the glory for himself
And he was very thirsty, and he called upon the Lord and said, “You have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant, and shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 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.
Note that Samson is in desperate physical need—he needs water or he will faint with weariness and be vulnerable to capture or die of thirst
it is revealing in the extreme that the first time Samson acknowledges God in the narrative is when he is desperate need and without other resources
Up until the moment he needed God he had no thought for him.
The logic of the prayer reads more like an attempt at divine manipulation than a legitimate prayer of praise and supplication
the function of the praise is not praise
the function of the praise is to suggest that it is illogical to allow Samson to die! (what is the point of allowing me to win if I am immediately to die?)
Samson’s prayer is indicative of Israel’s cycle of spiritual dysfunction
Samson does what is right in his own eyes
Hardship comes into Samson’s life
Samson cries out to God for deliverance
God delivers
Summary: We noted last week that rather than be the moral example Israel needed, Samson is embodies Israel’s moral decay.
>Application thought:
Are we bolder than the men of Judah?
Do we contend for the faith or capitulate to the culture?
“Theology becomes self-destructive when its primary goal is accommodation of the culture.”- Johnn Leith
Our spiritual lives are often characterized by “Samson syndrome”
When things are going well—how often do we coast through life with hardly a thought for God?
We may go to church, attend Bible studies, know the truth
But our prayer life is nonexistent, our internal spiritual life is a dry wasteland
We tolerate and even cultivate the idols of our heart
We are content to live in our own strength, convinced that we’ve got this.
But then crises turns our lives upside down—our illusions of self-sufficiency are ripped away, and our moment-by-moment absolute dependence upon God is revealed in vivid clarity
a loved one undergoing an unexpected health crises
the sudden death of a friend
the loss of a job, of a career,
a life-changing diagnosis that alters life as you know it
suddenly God is our only resources for help and we make a pretence at spirituality—as if we were not living every day like functional agnostics.
3. 3rd Exploit: The Gates of Gaza
Samson went to Gaza, and there he saw a prostitute, and he went in to her. 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.” 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.
Yet again—Samson is controlled by his own lusts and pursues what is right in his own eyes
this is perhaps the reason that alongside “Dare to be a Daniel” there is not a companion “Strive to be a Samson” Sunday School campaign for children
Another reason to doubt the sincerity of the prayer in the previous chapter
That Samson went to Gaza (the heart of Philistia) at all shows his brazen confidence in his strength against the Philistines
Samson alludes the trap that has been set for him
Samson removes the whole gate structure—a massive structure—and carries it 40 miles uphill to Hebron—a herculean feat of strength!
Hebron was the leading city in Judah at the time
This is a direct, in-your-face rebuke to the men of Judah who had betrayed him into the hands of the Philistines
It reveals, again, the growing tension between the tribes in Israel, and the lack of unity despite the arrival of Samson on the scene.
The Point of These Exploits: Samson is bent on pursuing his own agenda, not God’s. Yet God continues to use Samson.
Samson’s Final Act
Samson’s Final Act
We read the first part of Samson’s deadly dance with Delilah in the Scripture reading this morning
Delilah is willing to betray Samson to the Philistine rulers for 1,100 pieces of silver
She seduces him, and seeks to draw out of him the secret of his great strength
Fascinating—the Philistines know this strength is not that of a mortal man, but Samson has not given glory to God
3 times Samson lies to her and evades.
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. And he told her all his heart, and said to her, “A razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak and be like any other man.”
Samson’s willingness to reveal his secret is shocking
Delilah’s aims are transparent
She is not just curious about what makes her new boyfriend strong—this is not a “let’s have not secrets between us” search for relational intimacy
Every time Samson awakes he finds that she has done to him what he told her would make him powerless and vulnerable
It would be like Superman waking up to discover Lois Lane stabbing him with kryptonite asking “how does this feel, buddy?”
Samson has seen this movie before!
all of Samson’s trouble with the Philistines stems from a situation that was uncannily parallel
Samson, infatuated with a woman is worn down by her relentless attempts to get his secret, and who then betrays his secret to Philistines plotting against him (his wife)
Fool me once…shame on you. Fool me twice...
->Are we to conclude that Samson was simply an idiot?
The story of the lion and the woodcutters daughter
Samson has been demonstrably clever throughout this narrative
>doubtless, being controlled by his lusts are at play here, and we should never underestimate the deceptive allure of sin, no question but there is something more
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.
Notice what Samson does NOT say:
He doe not say “the Spirit of the LORD will rush upon me as at other times”
Notice what Samson DOES say
I will shake myself free
in Hebrew, this is a rare form of a reflexive verb, meaning the subject is acting upon himself
he will not be shaken loose or freed by someone else
he will shake himself free
We have noted several times that Samson is not inherently the mighty man, but that he is mighty when God is with him—a truth that Samson seems to have forgotten and that is now being driven home to devastating effect.
Samson’s willingness divulge the secret of his Nazarite status reveals his arrogance
he believes he can disregard his commitments to God and remain strong
Samson believes that he himself is mighty to save!
Samson is convinced of his self-sufficiency
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.
The punishment the Philistines levy against Samson is bitterly ironic
Samson, the man who desired what he saw, he did what was right in his own eyes has his eyes gouged out
Samson, the man whose name means “little sun” is plunged into darkness
—>What a devastating end for the hero of Israel—for their strong man, for their champion. He is humiliated, he is powerless, his strength has been taken away from him.
Wonderfully pregnant line “the hair of his head began to grow again.”
Samson has routinely disregarded his obligations of being a Nazarite to God
but we noted a unique feature of Samson’s Nazarite status was that it was not a voluntary choice of Samson’s choosing
instead he was set aside as a Nazarite by God’s sovereign choice
>and so, despite Samson’s wanton disregard for his commitment to God, God is here reasserting his sovereign claim over his chosen instrument.
it is a powerful depiction of the gracious and merciful sense in which Samson is the man of whom God will not let go, and who will never be free of God.
the Philistines make a mockery of Samson, and they mock the God of Israel
they turn Samson into an object of derision, and a cheap entertainer
the lords of the Philistines are having a grand party, and the trot Samson out to entertain them
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.
For the first and only time, the deliverer of Israel calls out to God by God’s covenant name
Despite the unfaithfulness of Israel, despite the unfaithfulness of Samson, God has remained faithful to his redemptive purpose and promises.
One last time the Spirit of God rushes to Samson’s aid, and Samson, reduced to a humble entertainer, brings down the house one last time.
Application Thoughts:
Samson demonstrates that God reveals his glory though flawed human beings.
How does a fella like Samson get used by God to bring reprieve from a whole nation of Philistines for the people of Israel? And he gets mentioned in Heb 11!!
How does God use people like us—who daily flutter here and there between faithfulness and faithlessness, whose hearts are idol factories whose love for God is inconstant and too often tepid.
If Samson epitomizes the heights of God’s redemptive plan, we are in trouble!
If Samson is the ultimate hero, than our ultimate end is the endless loop of the cycle of spiritual dysfunction!
none of the judges were stronger than their own sin!
none of the judges succeeded in restoring us back to God
The Samson narrative reveals the frailty of human strength and points to our need for a stronger hero!
In Search of The Hero
In Search of The Hero
The concluding line of the book is a referendum on the failure of the Judges to fulfill the promise at the end of the book of Joshua to remain faithful to the covenant.
In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
the kings, by and large, will prove a massive disappointment
>>>So why spend all this time noting the failures of Samson?
it is not as though Samson was even the most promising figure in the OT who failed to be the savior Israel most needed.
we can think of so many cases in which God raised up a man to rescue his people but who failed to be the Rescuer!
Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samson, Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon, Elijah
and these were among the most promising heroes—men who in dark and desperate times God raised up—
and in each case there are reasons for hope, reasons to believe that perhaps this will be the one who make the wrong things right!
>>>But each man fails to be the hero of redemption because none of these men were stronger than their own sin!
So like a swelling percussion line, man after man in biblical history, hero after hero, like a rising drum beat endlessly declaring “not enough, not enough, not enough” each of these heroes passes away without bringing final deliverance.
like a prosecutor brilliantly and relentless driving toward a guilty verdict beyond a reasonable doubt, God demonstrates again, and again throughout the OT the failure of human strength to deliver.
Our study of Samson is but a snapshot of the broader message of the great men of the OT—who cannot be the savior we most need
the strong man Samson could not could not finally, definitively bring deliverance—his life, and that of the patriarchs, judges, kings, and prophets demonstrates the fragility and weakness of human strength.
the simple fact is that Samson was not stronger than his own sin!
But this brings us back to the big idea of the Samson narrative: That God graciously and patiently remains faithful to his redemptive purpose and promises, despite the unfaithfulness of people.
—>we can affirm the truth of that statement this morning, as a redeemed people because God provided a stronger hero, a better champion.
A number of similarities between Samson and Jesus
the angelic announcement of a coming deliver
Samson is the unlikely Nazarite, Jesus is the unlikely savior from Nazareth
Like Samson with the men of Judah, Jesus was handed over by his countrymen to be killed by Israel’s enemies
Like Samson, Jesus was betrayed for pieces of silver
Like Samson, Jesus was mocked, and treated as an objection of entertainment and derision in his humiliation
Like Samson, Jesus brought deliverance in his death
Unlike Samson, here is why our search for the hero need look no further than Christ:
Unlike Samson who did what was right in his own eyes, Jesus came to do the righteous will of his Father
Unlike Samson who was controlled by his lusts, Jesus was tempted in every way as we are, yet he did not sin
Whereas Samson embodied the moral decay of fallen Israel, Jesus Christ stands as the likeness of true Israel.
Where Samson was brash and arrogant, Jesus humbled himself to the point of death for our deliverance.
Whereas the death of Samson brought only death to his enemies, the death of Christ brings life to his friends.
While the death of Samson brought incomplete deliverance, the death of Jesus proclaims of the work of redemption that “It. Is. Finished!”
And whereas Samson is the “strong man” who ends bound by his enemies, Jesus is the stronger champion who death cannot bind!
Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God's own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.
So as we head into this Easter season, let rejoice that our hope rests not on the failure of men like Samson, but on the triumph of Jesus. Our stronger champion.