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Chapter 1: Who is Samson and what are his contradictions?
Hey Bible Readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. The adventures of Samson continue today as we read about the man who isn't allowed to touch dead people, but who is appointed by God to kill people. What an interesting juxtaposition. He starts off our reading today by visiting a prostitute in Gaza, which is a Philistine city.
Chapter 2: Why does Samson visit a prostitute in Gaza?
So this is a wicked decision for a lot of reasons, but that hasn't stopped him before. The men of the town find out he's there and mount an attack against him. They plan to ambush him when he leaves in the morning, but he leaves in the middle of the night instead and takes part of the city gate with him on his way out.
I picture the men of Gaza crouched outside the city gates waiting for him to leave, then seeing him do that and having a sudden change of heart about their ambush. Next, Samson meets another Philistine woman, Delilah, and word gets out that he is into her. There's nothing in the text to indicate that she loves him back. She's just a hired covert agent.
Chapter 3: How does Delilah betray Samson?
The five lords of the Philistines offer her 1,100 pieces of silver each to find out the secret of his strength. First of all, that's 5,500 pieces of silver. Scripture doesn't give us the weight of each piece, but if each piece weighed a shekel, this would be about $35,000 in today's money.
Chapter 4: What is the significance of Samson's strength and its source?
Second of all, the fact that they want to know the secret of his strength might suggest that he wasn't super muscular. Otherwise, they'd know it was because of the muscles. The fact that they're all like, how is he this strong? Suggests that he probably wasn't built like Thor. That way, his feats of strength could really serve to glorify God, not his own body.
Just a theory, but I thought it was worth mentioning. We learn a lot of other interesting things about Samson in this story, too. First of all, he must be a deep sleeper. Second, he has a head full of locks. Seven, to be exact. Third, he's either blinded by his lust for this seductress, or he's arrogant and assumes he can never be overpowered. Or possibly both.
And fourth, he does not learn from his mistakes. He's at discernment level zero. She tries three times to find out where his strength comes from, and it's hard to tell if he doesn't trust her or if he's just being secretive like he always is, but he lies about it repeatedly. There's one thing that's interesting here that's only evident in the original text.
When Samson finally gives Delilah the real answer about his strength after her first three failed attempts to get it out of him, he explains that he's under a vow to God, but he refers to God by his generic name, Elohim, not his personal name, Yahweh. This gives us an idea of the way he views God. It's the difference between knowing God and knowing about God.
Chapter 5: How does Samson's disobedience lead to his downfall?
Maybe it's just me, but everything seems kind of like a joke to Samson. I love a joke as much as the next person, but he doesn't seem to take God's call on his life seriously. He's invested in the killing part, but not much else. And it's doubtful he'll ever get serious unless he's humbled, which is what happens next. Samson's disobedience leaves him vulnerable.
Delilah gets her money, has a man shave his head, and the Spirit of the Lord leaves Samson. We've talked about this before, but it bears repeating. In the Old Testament, that was possible. God the Spirit didn't indwell people yet. With the exception of John the Baptist, that doesn't seem to happen until the book of Acts in the New Testament.
In the Old Testament, God's Spirit traveled around a lot and is described as being over or on people, but not in them. This post-resurrection life we're living is far superior. We don't have to worry about his spirit leaving us. Okay, back to the story. The Philistines overtake Samson, obviously, and this whole incident strips him of everything we've ever identified him with.
Chapter 6: What consequences does Samson face from the Philistines?
Everything he knows about himself is gone. His locks are gone, his strength is gone, his vision is gone, and the spirit is gone. This must have been a horrific identity crisis for him. Not only that, but the Philistines' punishments on him are oddly fitting, because they correspond to his two major areas of sin.
They gouge out his eyes, which have been a major weakness for him, and they force him to do a woman's work, grinding at the mill, which has to be an affront to his pride as well. Without God, he doesn't even have the strength to do a regular man's work. But as his hair grows back, so does his strength.
One day they bring him out at one of their pagan festivals where they sacrifice who knows what, and he's supposed to entertain them. Sometimes this kind of thing involved taunting or beating the prisoner, but all we know is that it probably didn't involve feats of strength, because as far as they know, he's weak now.
Regardless, what we do know is that Samson cries out to God, and this time he calls him Yahweh, and he asks for strength. This indicates that he may have been repentant after he'd hit rock bottom. He calls God by his personal name, and he recognizes God as the source of his strength.
Then Samson pushes over two of the load-bearing pillars of the temple, and the whole thing comes crashing down and kills everyone, including him. As we move on to chapter 17, we transition out of the personal accounts of the judges into some stories that just show us the sheer level of anarchy that's happening throughout Israel at this point. We start with a man named Micah, who is an Ephraimite.
He steals some stuff from his mom, then confesses, and she decides to build an idol to Yahweh in response. See anything wrong so far? This is the first of many instances where the people demonstrate both a lack of awareness of God's laws and a total disregard for the ones they do know. Because as 17.6 says, "...everyone did what was right in his own eyes."
Without leadership, people self-govern, but it's usually too subjective to be righteous or good. For instance, Micah sets up a little temple in his house and ordains his son, an Ephraimite, not a Levite, as a priest. It seems that Micah has actually set up his own little secondary holy site here, which is not just unauthorized by God, but is actually wicked and defiant.
Later, Micah meets a man named Jonathan, who is a Levite appointed to live among the tribe of Judah. Micah realizes that this is his chance to have an actual Levite priest, not a pretend Levite priest like his son. In 1713, we see that Micah is trying to use God for selfish gain. He says, "...now I know that the Lord will prosper me, because I have a Levite as a priest."
Micah also made his own ephod, which we already know is a violation of God's command. An ephod contains the urim and thumim, which are used to discern God's will. So having his own replicas suggests that he's trying to go after things that aren't appointed to him. Stay in your lane, Micah. We could say it's a good thing that he wants to know God's will. I mean, don't we all?
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