Samson

Samson and Delilah is probably one of the best-known stories in the Old Testament. I mentioned briefly last week, when blogging about the women of the Bible, and pointing out that Delilah was the exception, rather than the rule. Samson was something of an exception, himself. I don’t think there was any hero in the bible quite like Samson.
First of all, the Bible tells us that Samson was a Nazarite. A Nazarite was supposed to be separated unto God. I think most of us know that he wasn’t allowed to have his head shaved. That was part of being a Nazarite. He also wasn’t allowed to imbibe alcohol, or touch a dead body.
Samson’s first choice of women was a Philistine woman. That’s generally a bad idea. Here is a man, that, for religious reasons, has to avoid a lot of different things, and he’s getting married to a woman who isn’t even the same religion. She’s not only not a Nazarite, she’s not even a Jew! There is enough stress in married life without those kinds of differences. In this case, we have a man who has a special calling on his life, married to a woman who would probably like nothing better than to see his religion go away.
Prior to the wedding, Samson killed a young lion in a field. After a few days, he was interested to note that, as the lion’s carcass decayed, some bees nested inside the remains. Samson reached in, and snagged some honey. Now, a case could be made that it was all right for him to be handling a dead lion, because the commandment was not to touch a dead body—implying human remains. Jews in general were not supposed to touch dead beasts that ‘go on all four’ which would seem to include lions.
Then he begins toying with the Philistine guests at his wedding (friends of his prospective in-laws). He asks them a riddle, “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness,” and told them that if they could figure out what that meant, he would get them each thirty changes of garment, but if they couldn’t, each of them would buy him thirty changes of garment. Well, the Philistines and the Jews didn’t get along very well to start with. Toying with one’s enemy is a bad idea. Perhaps Samson didn’t consider these Philistines his enemy, because his in-laws knew them, but playing games with prospective in-laws isn’t very smart, either. The Philistines started putting pressure on Samson fiancée to find out the riddle, which she of course did. Samson was furious that his betrothed would betray him, and stormed off. That may have been the most intelligent thing he had done thus far in his entire life. But then he came back. Her father had married her to someone else, thinking that Samson didn’t want her any more (a reasonable assumption). Samson tried to take her back anyway, after she betrayed him.
So he decides he wants a different wife. Again he chooses a Philistine woman. He didn’t learn from the first one? By this time, the Philistines have a pretty good idea that Samson is a problem (they’ve already tried to kill him at least once). Not only is he a Jew, but he is a very strong individual, and he is unstable. They never know what he is going to do next. He must have some weakness, though, so they conspired with Delilah to find out what it is.
She asks him the secret to afflicting him, and he makes up some nonsense about binding him with green withs (cords). She tries it, while he is asleep, but it doesn’t work. She asks again. Now some would say that he didn’t even realize that she had tried the withs, and, certainly there is a basis for that belief in that he broke the withs so easily that he might not have even realized that they were there, but, why would she ask again unless she knew he had lied, and how would she know he had lied, unless she had tested it? So, maybe Samson wasn’t really consciously aware that she had attempted to take away his strength, but he should have been. He lied to her three times, and eventually told her the truth. Samson really was thinking impaired. I’m not entirely sure whether he didn’t think through how Delilah knew when he lied, or if didn’t think through what would happen if he told the truth about what could make him weak, when she’s already tried every thing she knows that could possibly have that effect, but, one way or the other, he really should have spent more time thinking about what he was doing before he did it.
We have a bad tendency to think that Delilah was Samson’s downfall. Delilah certainly didn’t help his situation any, but, realistically, Samson’s downfall was Samson. Delilah couldn’t have touched him if he had been doing what he was supposed to be doing. I’m not sure if Samson had just gotten so full of himself that he actually believed that he could do whatever he wanted, and nobody could touch him, or if he had led such a blessed life from his youth up that he just thought God would never leave him. Romans 8:37-38 provides a list of things that could not separate Samson from the love of God; it sounds like an all-encompassing list (but that’s New Testament—Samson lived in the Old Testament; God hasn’t changed), but notice that it never even suggested that Samson couldn’t separate Samson from God. It does make it clear that Delilah could not separate Samson from God, but she could help persuade him to put himself in a situation where God wouldn’t bail him out. Of course, God did eventually give Samson his strength back, but not until the Philistines gave their god, Dagon, credit for bringing down Samson.
Here’s the thing, though, Samson is a lot like most of us. A lot of times, for one reason or another, we start thinking that we can handle this situation, or that problem, on our own. I won’t bother God with this one; he’s busy. This is a no-brainer; I’ll be fine. The ‘no-brainer’ is thinking that you can do anything right without God. Don’t be like Samson

Women In the Bible (Part IV)

There are two women that I forgot to mention earlier, both of them in the book of Judges: Delilah, and Jephthah’s daughter. I think pretty much all of us are familiar with Delilah, but I do want to point something out. She asked Samson four times what the secret of his strength was—how could he be defeated, and the first three times he lied to her about it. After she tested those ideas, she accused him of lying to her, and sobbed big crocodile tears and eventually got him to tell her the truth. Delilah, like Jezebel, was loyal to her people; Samson should have realized that. Think about it, if someone asked you how to teach them how to use a gun, and as soon as they learned how to aim it, they started pointing it at you, would you then teach them how to load it?
Jephthah’s daughter is an interesting case. Jephthah was something of an outcast, but when Israel got involved in a war, they decided that Jephthah was the one to lead the army. He prayed about it, and vowed to God that, if they won the war, then, upon his return, whatever came out of his house to greet him, he would offer up as a sacrifice before the Lord. I assume that he had several affectionate dogs that he was fond of, that would normally race to meet him whenever he came home. As it happened, though, when he returned, his daughter wanted to make a special greeting for him, so she tied up the dogs (I suppose) and she went out the door, dancing, and playing timbrels. He became very angry with her, but she was wise enough to realize that if he had made a vow unto God, that he needed to keep it. Some have said that he didn’t really offer her as a sacrifice, but that he simply disowned her as his daughter. Even that would be a high price to pay. The point of the story would seem to be to be careful when you make a vow, it may end up costing you more dearly than you expect; but that was Jephthah’s mistake, not his daughter’s.
There is also the witch at Endor, who King Saul tracked down just before the battle in which he lost his life. Interestingly enough, although the Bible refers to her as a woman with a familiar spirit (which would suggest that she was an evil woman), she became concerned for Saul’s health and fed him and was kind to him (so, was she a kind witch? That’s not exactly what we read about in fairy tales).
And there is Potiphar’s wife. Potiphar was the Egyptian who ended up owning Joseph after Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery. Potiphar’s wife took a liking to Joseph, but Joseph refused her. So, instead, she accused him of trying to rape her, and Potiphar had him imprisoned (the fury of a woman scorned). In prison, Joseph met Pharaoh’s butler, who later told Pharaoh about Joseph, which led to Joseph being made second to Pharaoh. This, in turn, led to the saving of Joseph’s family. I think that we have to apply to Potiphar’s wife the same philosophy that Joseph voiced to his brothers: “…ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good.”
In any case, I think that completes the summary of the women in the Bible. There are more, but I don’t think I’ve left any out that would seem to have a major impact, one way or the other. Of the ones that I’ve listed, it would seem that only Delilah, Jezebel, Athaliah, and possibly Potiphar’s wife, and the Witch at Endor, were actually evil. Many of the others simply made mistakes along the way, just like the men in the Bible. That’s an interesting thing about the Bible. Most of the heroes of the Bible are depicted as flawed, imperfect creatures. The term, “Achilles heel” has become popular in part because Achilles was one of the few heroes in Greek mythology that had an actual weakness. All of the people in the Bible had weaknesses. A lot of the men got themselves in trouble with women: Adam let Eve lead him astray, Samson had his Delilah, David had his Bathsheba, Solomon had his many wives and concubines…Yet in most of these cases, the women were not evil, they were just there.
Apostle Paul wrote once that he had a thorn in his flesh. Some have suggested that Paul’s thorn (or his problem) was that he hated women. I think that if that were the case, then he would not have considered that a problem, and he would not have prayed that God remove it. I also think that God would have healed that, because God wouldn’t want Paul, as a leader in the church, hating women—or God would have removed Paul from his position. If anything, I think Paul was aware that he (like most of the rest of us men) had a weakness for women. I think he worried that women would exert undue influence on the church, not necessarily out of malice, but just because too many men would let them. I think he was really just trying to warn us that we, as men, need to take our marching orders from God, not our wives, or our girlfriends. Not to suggest that we shouldn’t love and to cherish them, or that we should ignore their needs, or even their desires, but to understand that we are God’s servants, and, ultimately, we answer to God for what we do (and that includes how we treat the women in our lives).