DRAWING NEAR
What is the issue with being complacent with the ways of the world? How do Christians often fall into this particular trap?
[Your Response]
THE CONTEXT
Our passage for this study opens many years after Gideon had judged Israel, at a time when the Philistines had become the overlords of the nation. The Philistines were a seafaring people who had probably moved into Canaan from the Greek islands over time. Today we use the term philistine to refer to someone who is uncouth, but that does not describe the people who lived during the time of the judges. On the contrary, they were a wealthy and powerful civilization, and their armies were feared around the world. Even the great Egypt could not defeat them.
The Philistines were not tyrannical in the sense of imposing harsh laws, punishments, or enslavement. Instead, they ruled by economic means, imposing taxes and a few laws on the people while still permitting them to live with some measure of autonomy. The people of Israel were kept on a leash, but it was a golden leash. In fact, the Israelites experienced a measure of comfort and economic wealth during this time. It was an easy yoke to bear.
That was part of the problem: the Israelites were becoming too comfortable under the dominion of their heathen neighbors. They were slipping into a state of spiritual lethargy and were in danger of becoming just one more pagan nation in Canaan. They were embracing the pagan practices of the world around them, and the Lord would not tolerate such apostasy from His people. So God raised up yet another judge to lead His people.
However, this time God’s plan was not to defeat the enemy in one open battle. Instead, He used this judge to stir up trouble between Israel and the Philistines, wake up His people from their spiritual stupor, and force them to recognize their grave danger. This was the calling of Samson, a man raised as a Nazirite—one who took a vow of purity, made evident to the world by his abstinence from wine, avoiding dead bodies, and never cutting his hair. Samson was called to a life of purity and power. Unfortunately, he did not live up to that calling.
KEYS TO THE TEXT
Read Judges 15:1–16:31, noting the key words and phrases indicated below.
THE PHILISTINES’ REVENGE: We pick up Samson’s story when he is judge in Israel. He attacks the Philistines and then goes off to a cave. The Philistines come looking for revenge.
15:1. WHEAT HARVEST: The events in this passage would have taken place in May or June.
SAMSON: The Lord had appeared to Samson’s parents before he was born, prophesying that their son would one day deliver God’s people from Philistine oppression. They were given strict instructions that he was to live under the strictures of the Nazirite vow. Samson was forbidden to drink wine, touch any dead body, or cut his hair. By the time our passage begins, however, he had grown to manhood—and already violated two of the three stipulations by getting drunk and touching a lion’s carcass.
2. I REALLY THOUGHT: Shortly after Samson’s ill-conceived marriage to a Philistine woman, his father-in-law gave his new bride to his best man (see Judges 14). When Samson returned and asked to see his wife, his father-in-law gave a flimsy excuse to escape the trap he faced. He feared the Philistines if he turned on the new husband, yet he also feared Samson, so he offered his second daughter as a way out. This action set up the events that followed.
4. CAUGHT THREE HUNDRED FOXES: Samson, insulted and provoked to resentment, took vengeance on the Philistines. Apparently, he tied the foxes in pairs by their tails, then attached slow-burning torches, and sent them into the fields. This was a loss of great proportion to the Philistine farmers.
6. BURNED HER AND HER FATHER: The general principle of reaping what is sown was at work here (see Galatians 6:7).
8. ATTACKED THEM HIP AND THIGH: This is proverbial for a ruthless slaughter.
9. THE PHILISTINES: The Philistine nation comprised five major city-states: Gath, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gaza. The modern-day Gaza strip is built on the Philistine city.
LEHI: Meaning “jawbone.” The exact location is not known, but it probably received this name after Samson’s great slaughter there.
BINDING THE STRONG MAN: The men of Judah simply want to live in peace with the Philistines—even if it means betraying their own judge to maintain that peace.
11. THREE THOUSAND MEN OF JUDAH: This was a strong response to the situation, and it indicates Samson’s strength was already well known. The response of so many men of Judah also suggests they had grown quite comfortable under the oppression of the Philistines. Their question, “Do you not know that the Philistines rule over us?” indicates they were content to leave things as they were. But that was not the Lord’s plan for His people.
AS THEY DID TO ME, SO I HAVE DONE TO THEM: There is ample room for doubt about the accuracy of this statement. The Philistines had cheated Samson at his own wedding feast, and his father-in-law had given his bride to another man after Samson.
DISAPPEARED FOR A PERIOD OF TIME: Samson’s actions had been excessive and bloody. After collecting payment for the bet he had lost by murdering thirty people in a Philistine city, he had slaughtered more Philistines and burned their crops in retaliation for losing his wife to another man. The Lord was using Samson’s actions to move the Israelites out of their complacency under Philistine rule, yet Samson’s life was no model of godliness.
12. THAT WE MAY DELIVER YOU: The men of Judah were guilty of treachery in this action. They should have banded together under the leadership of God’s chosen judge and fought against the Philistines instead of cooperating with them to deliver one of their own to the oppressor. This demonstrates that the people of Israel were growing dangerously complacent, content to follow the world around them rather than obey God’s commands.
13. TWO NEW ROPES: New ropes would have been stronger and more reliable than ropes that had been used before. The fact that the men used two ropes suggests that Samson’s arms were bound tightly to his side, the ropes twining about his torso and possibly even constricting his legs. The men of Judah were not taking chances, yet their confidence was placed in the wrong direction—they trusted two little ropes rather than God.
GOD’S POWER UNLEASHED: The Spirit of the Lord comes on Samson, and he is transformed into a superhuman fighter. No army can stand before him.
14. THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD CAME MIGHTILY: The Lord’s Spirit manifested His power in a unique way in Samson’s life by giving him superhuman physical strength. The anointing of the Holy Spirit was rare prior to the ascension of Christ. The Spirit came on men temporarily, enabling them to accomplish something beyond their human powers, but did not necessarily remain with them indefinitely. This is one of the many great gifts the Lord has provided to His children today through Christ. Christians are permanently indwelt by the person of God’s Holy Spirit.
LIKE FLAX THAT IS BURNED WITH FIRE: The two new ropes proved laughable when the Spirit came on Samson. The men of Judah may not have recognized that it was the power of God, not the power of a man, that was filling Samson—for binding the Holy Spirit with rope is like trying to stop a locomotive with a piece of thread. The power of man cannot prevent the purposes of God, though man is capable of abusing God’s gifts, as we will see in Samson’s life.
15. A FRESH JAWBONE OF A DONKEY: This was evidently from a donkey that had died fairly recently. The sun would have quickly dried out the bone, making it brittle and of little use as a weapon. Once again, we see Samson touching a dead body, directly against his Nazirite vow.
KILLED A THOUSAND MEN: The Lord had placed Samson under a special set of regulations, including the provision that he not touch anything dead, and Samson had persistently ignored those rules. Yet the Lord, within His providential purposes, chose to use Samson in spite of his shortcomings to perform miraculous feats against Israel’s enemies. Samson single-handedly stirred up the people of Israel to rise against the Philistine oppression. Nonetheless, that conflict would not be completed until the time of David.
16. HEAPS UPON HEAPS: This is a pun, as the Hebrew word for heap is similar to the word for donkey.
19. GOD SPLIT THE HOLLOW PLACE: Samson’s life was not characterized by faithful obedience, yet the Lord continually showed him grace and met his needs.
SAMSON MEETS A PROSTITUTE: Samson’s flesh now leads him further down the path to destruction, yet the Lord still uses him to plague the Philistines.
16:1. GAZA: One of the five major Philistine cities, site of the modern city of Gaza. Each Philistine city had a standing army of its own, and they were the best-trained and best-equipped fighting forces in Canaan at the time.
SAW A HARLOT: Samson’s physical lusts were leading him down a course to ruin.
3. THE DOORS OF THE GATE OF THE CITY AND THE TWO GATEPOSTS: The city of Gaza was probably constructed with a double wall surrounding it, similar to Jericho. There would have been a high-vaulted passageway between the walls, with heavy gates set into the outer wall constructed of thick wood reinforced with iron. The gates would be locked at night with a huge oak beam set into iron brackets (the “bar” referred to here). The gate posts would have been set into the walls themselves, and the entire structure was designed to withstand a besieging army and its battering rams. There was simply no possibility that one man could have ripped those gates out of the walls. Yet Samson ripped them down, hoisted them onto his shoulders—a mass of architecture more than ten feet tall and weighing several tons—and carried them to the hill facing Hebron, a city that was some thirty-eight miles away uphill!
ENTER DELILAH: Samson’s fleshly indulgences finally bring him into contact with Delilah, who works for the Philistines. It will lead to Samson’s downfall.
4. DELILAH: Delilah was probably a Philistine. She was certainly not a Hebrew, and Samson had no business becoming involved with her. She is renowned in literature and art as a deadly seductress, but the fault of Samson’s fate lay more with Samson than with her.
5. FIND OUT WHERE HIS GREAT STRENGTH LIES: The world marveled at the superhuman feats Samson had performed, and evidently only Samson recognized that the power came directly from God. Yet, as we will see, even Samson did not fully comprehend these miracles, as he attributed God’s indwelling to some mystical connection with his long hair—the one stipulation of his Nazirite vow that he had not yet disobeyed.
6. PLEASE TELL ME WHERE YOUR GREAT STRENGTH LIES: Thus began the tragic downfall of Samson, as Delilah repeatedly questioned him and he repeatedly deceived her. It seems incredible that a man of his stature would fail to recognize that she was in the service of the Philistine lords, and was trying to seduce his secret for his own destruction. Yet Samson’s life had not been characterized by wisdom; he had repeatedly violated the word of God and had used the Lord’s great gifts for his own purposes. A lifetime of folly will lead one to ever greater folly, even to the point of self-destruction.
9. THE SECRET OF HIS STRENGTH WAS NOT KNOWN: The interesting thing is that so far as we know, the Lord never instructed Samson to keep his strength a secret. The Lord filled Samson with His Holy Spirit specifically so Samson might bring to deliverance to God’s people, and it would have been far more effective if Samson had publicly proclaimed that his great strength came directly from the Spirit of God. But, as we have seen, Samson was more interested in using that gift to gratify his own desires.
16. HIS SOUL WAS VEXED TO DEATH: The sequence of seduction apparently continued for some time, perhaps over many months. Samson had placed himself in the power of the enemy by involving himself in an immoral relationship with Delilah, which gave her the ability to nag him, goad him, and seduce him until he couldn’t stand to hear it any longer. His only hope was to repent of his sinful habits, abandon Delilah, and purify his life—but he failed to do that, and ultimately his spiritual strength wore out. His physical strength followed close behind.
17. THEN MY STRENGTH WILL LEAVE ME: There is no indication that Samson’s strength was directly tied to his long hair. Rather, his hair was an outward symbol of his own submission to the Spirit of God. The one element of Samson’s statement that is accurate is his comment that he would “be like any other man” if his hair were cut, as it would represent his final act of rebellion against God’s commands.
HE DID NOT KNOW THAT THE LORD HAD DEPARTED: Samson makes his final choice to betray his Nazirite vows, and the Spirit of God leaves him. But not forever.
20. HE DID NOT KNOW THAT THE LORD HAD DEPARTED: This is one of the saddest statements in Scripture. It indicates Samson had taken the Lord’s presence for granted and had no intimate relationship with the God of Israel. He was not even aware when God’s Spirit had left.
22. THE HAIR OF HIS HEAD BEGAN TO GROW AGAIN: This should not be construed to mean that as Samson’s hair grew, so did his miraculous physical strength. During his time in prison, Samson evidently had time to reflect on his life and his divine calling.
25. BETWEEN THE PILLARS: Archeologists have unearthed Philistine temples that were similar to the one in Gaza. They were constructed with two major pillars near the center, which bore most of the weight. The temple in Gaza evidently included an open courtyard surrounded by a multi-storied temple. The lords and ladies, comfortably seated in surrounding balconies, watched Samson perform like a trained circus animal in the courtyard.
28. SAMSON CALLED TO THE LORD: In this brief prayer, Samson referred to the Lord by three different names: Adonai, Yahweh, and Elohim. This suggests he had come to a fuller appreciation of God’s character during his time of imprisonment and had fully repented of his sins. Ironically, he needed to have his physical eyes gouged out to open his spiritual eyes.
UNLEASHING THE TEXT
1) How would you characterize Samson’s life? What were his great strengths? What were his great weaknesses?
[Your Response]
2) Why did the Lord empower Samson to slaughter three thousand Philistines? Why did He enable him to tear the gates from Gaza? What was He working to accomplish?
[Your Response]
3) What was the “secret” of Samson’s great strength? What does this teach you about God’s involvement in the lives of His people?
[Your Response]
4) Why did Samson tell Delilah how to enslave him? What led him to that point? Why did he not foresee what would happen?
[Your Response]
EXPLORING THE MEANING
The Lord does not abandon us when we sin, but sin can ruin our lives. It is somewhat surprising to read about the life of Samson, so plagued with fleshly indulgence, and realize the Spirit of God continued to use him in mighty ways. He appears to have spent much of his life consorting with the enemies of his people. He indulged in wine despite his Nazirite vow to refrain from it. He married a Canaanite woman, which was forbidden of God’s people. He even hired prostitutes and carried on an immoral relationship with Delilah. Yet the Lord used him to begin the overthrow of the Philistines.
The sad fact is that Samson’s effectiveness was greatly limited by his own sin and selfishness. Instead of being both a political leader and a spiritual example in Israel, he was a moral failure who accomplished far less than his potential. Although Samson would make a dent in Philistine control over Israel, they would not be entirely defeated until a man named David appeared who had a whole heart for God. The Lord used Samson to accomplish a small part of His plan, but his sinful habits prevented him from accomplishing much more.
The Lord does not abandon His children when we sin, but our sinful habits can severely interfere with our effectiveness in His service. Our sin grieves the Holy Spirit and quenches His power in our lives. When we walk in ungodliness, we risk ending in tragedy, just as Samson did.
The Lord restores those who repent. Samson lived his life indulging every desire of his flesh, with no apparent remorse. He squandered his great gift of strength in many ways, using it for personal revenge and to get himself out of scrapes. He ignored his great calling to lead Israel out of bondage, and as far as we know he never made any attempt to lead the men of Judah into battle. He violated his Nazirite vows and flagrantly disobeyed many of the Lord’s injunctions against immoral behavior.
Yet at the end of his life, he repented and turned back to the Lord—and the Lord used him for the mightiest and most dramatic accomplishment of all. Samson had tragically lost many opportunities to accomplish great deeds for the Lord, but that did not prevent the Lord from restoring him to service.
This is the good news that follows the bad news in our previous principle. Sin can damage our lives and limit our effectiveness in God’s service. But that does not mean God has washed His hands of us—the Lord is always at work to bring us back into full fellowship with Him, making us fit vessels for His service. As long as we have the breath of life, we have the opportunity to make ourselves right with God. He will always restore those who genuinely repent of sin, and He will use us for His glory. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
Christians have the Spirit of God living within them. Samson believed his great strength came from some magical effect of never cutting his hair. He did not seem to understand that his power came from the Spirit of God, who had chosen to indwell him. When he unintentionally permitted Delilah to cut his hair, he was making a public statement repudiating his Nazirite vows and declaring that the God of Israel was not his Lord. His life was ruled by his own passions.
The same Holy Spirit who empowered Samson also indwells every Christian. The Holy Spirit, of course, is not an impersonal force. Rather, He is a divine Person, who as the third member of the Trinity is coequal and consubstantial with the Father and the Son. The Bible teaches that the Spirit has all of the attributes of personality and deity, including intellect, emotions, volition, eternality, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, and truthfulness. In the church age, which began on the day of Pentecost recorded in Acts 2, the Spirit indwells believers, having regenerated them from sin and sealed them for future glory.
The Spirit also sanctifies, instructs, illuminates, and empowers believers for spiritual service. He enables them to be obedient to the truth. When we walk in accord with the Word of God, which the Holy Spirit inspired, we walk according to the Spirit and thereby exhibit the fruit of the Spirit. On the flip side, when we gratify the desires of our sinful nature (as Samson did), we quench the Spirit and exhibit the fruit of the flesh (see Galatians 5:16–25).
REFLECTING ON THE TEXT
5) Why did God continue to use Samson through so many years of disobedience? Why did the Spirit leave Samson when he cut his hair?
[Your Response]
6) Why is Samson listed among the great heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11? What does this suggest about the grace of God?
[Your Response]
7) How do you think Samson’s life might have been different if he had walked in godliness?
[Your Response]
8) What principles of the conflict between flesh and spirit are illustrated in Samson’s life? What principles of God’s love are illustrated?
[Your Response]
PERSONAL RESPONSE
9) Is there an area of sin in your life that is hindering your walk with the Lord? What will you do about it this week?
[Your Response]
10) How is the Spirit of God at work in your life at present? How will you submit yourself to His Word this week?
[Your Response]