Judges 16 - Samson’s Victory in Death
Welcome & Prayer
Intro/Setting
Every time Julia and I watch some TV series like Andor, If we don’t watch the “previously on” section that gives us the show recap, we are very confused about what is happening, and since we’re starting in “Episode 16” of Judges today, I’m going to give you that recap. (Do not take notes on this section; this is on the website if you want it.)
So, the book of Judges recounts a several-hundred-year period of time immediately after the death of Joshua where the people of Israel have been rescued from slavery in Egypt, but are still with no king, no long-term commitment to worship and life of following the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but are instead becoming more and more like the pagan nations around them —being influenced and inundated by their culture, by ignoring the one true God with whom they had a covenant and instead were engaged in a perpetual cycle of
1. sin (again they did what was evil in the sight of the Lord),
2. subjugation under enemies (punishment from God),
3. “Save Us!” (crying out to God), and
4. small “s” saviors (God raising up leaders who judge the nations that attack them — ie. Judges).
We are now at the last section of the story of the last of the 6 major Judges, who’s name is Samson. God chose Samson to be a man set apart, who would “begin to save Israel from the power of the Philistines,” and God granted Samson supernatural strength that flowed from his connection to God as a part of the Nazarite vow, which forbid Samson from drinking fruit of the vine, from coming into contact with dead bodies, and from cutting his hair. Samson had violated the first two elements of that vow on multiple occasions, but not the third; his hair remained uncut.
The Philistines (who were real mean) had been ruling over the Israelites for 40 years, but they got into an escalating conflict with Samson who was granted supernatural power from God.
This is an R-rated conflict involving threats, scheming, betrayal, sex, rage, violence, vengeance & vendettas, burning down crops, and mass murders. It makes Jurassic Park look like a fun day-trip to the zoo. And it’s just getting started.
Samson & The Prostitute
1Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute and went to bed with her.
Real quick: Gaza is a Philistine city, and to get there, Samson had to travel the entire length of Philistia. This was not an accident, or Samson just bopping over to see what was going on with the Philistines. It was an intentional of rejection of God’s call for Samson to be separated from the influence of the pagan cultures surrounding the Israelites, and instead of letting God guide his actions, he is letting his eyes and his flesh, his sexual desires overpower and override his better judgement.
2When the Gazites heard that Samson was there, they surrounded the place and waited in ambush for him all that night at the city gate. They kept quiet all night, saying, “Let’s wait until dawn; then we will kill him.”
3But Samson stayed in bed only until midnight. Then he got up, took hold of the doors of the city gate along with the two gateposts, and pulled them out, bar and all. He put them on his shoulders and took them to the top of the mountain overlooking Hebron.
So, the Gazittes try to ambush Samson, but he is not having any of that. These city gates were massive — likely two stories high, and he doesn’t just remove them. Samson wants to humiliate his enemies, so he carries their city gate almost forty miles to the top of a mountain. Samson is taunting them, he’s messing with them. And they can’t do anything about it because of his God-given strength.
Samson & Delilah
(What is love? Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me no more) Samson is untouchable…or so he thought.
4Some time later, he fell in love with a woman named Delilah, who lived in the Sorek Valley. 5The Philistine leaders went to her and said, “Persuade him to tell you where his great strength comes from, so we can overpower him, tie him up, and make him helpless. Each of us will then give you 1,100 pieces of silver.”
Delilah seems to be a Philistine woman that catches Samson’s eye, and he is lovestruck. We see this theme that women are Samson’s achilles heal, the thing that traps and ensnares him, that pulls him away from God. Samson is untouchable…except for the touch of a woman.
Samson pursues women who appear to be worldly and wily in sharp contrast to the women of faith that we have seen earlier like Samson’s mother or Deborah or Jael — women that are strong in will and faith, who show nerve in the face of dire circumstances and aren’t afraid to do what they need to with a hammer and a tent peg.
You’d think that would be right up Samson’s alley, but Samson is looking not for women of faith, but women of flesh, and he has found one in Delilah.
She is approached by the 5 Philistine leaders and offered a total bounty of 5,500 pieces of silver to give Samson up. Samson is public enemy number one for the Philistines, and they are offering a fortune: the equivalent of 34.1 million of today’s dollars.
And all she has to do is find out one little secret and betray the man who loves her.
The First Attempt
6So Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me, where does your great strength come from? How could someone tie you up and make you helpless?”
7Samson told her, “If they tie me up with seven fresh bowstrings that have not been dried, I will become weak and be like any other man.”
Now we know this dude is lovestruck because when she asks him how he can be tied up, his answer is not “uhhhh, why are you asking honey?” It’s “sure, give this a try.” But he is suspicious, so he gives a sneaky untrue reply.
Now, we often picture Samson as this mega-buff, viking-warrior-like mammoth-of-a-man, but if his great strength came from his great size and physique, the Philistines would not have had to ask where his strength came from — it would have been obvious. They recognized that his strength was some supernatural thing, and they sought out the source of this otherworldly empowerment.
So instead of looking like the big green Hulk, he’s looking more like little green Link from The Legend of Zelda, frolicking around Hyrule with the body parts of his hundreds of slain enemies in tow.
8The Philistine leaders brought her seven fresh bowstrings that had not been dried, and she tied him up with them.
9While the men in ambush were waiting in her room, she called out to him, “Samson, the Philistines are here!” But he snapped the bowstrings as a strand of yarn snaps when it touches fire. The secret of his strength remained unknown.
The Second Attempt
That doesn’t work, but we’re talking about 34 million on the line, so Delilah gives it another go:
10Then Delilah said to Samson, “You have mocked me and told me lies! Won’t you please tell me how you can be tied up?”
11He told her, “If they tie me up with new ropes that have never been used, I will become weak and be like any other man.”
12Delilah took new ropes, tied him up with them, and shouted, “Samson, the Philistines are here!” But while the men in ambush were waiting in her room, he snapped the ropes off his arms like a thread.
The Third Attempt
That doesn’t work, but maybe third time’s the charm:
13Then Delilah said to Samson, “You have mocked me all along and told me lies! Tell me how you can be tied up.” He told her, “If you weave the seven braids on my head into the fabric on a loom—”
14She fastened the braids with a pin and called to him, “Samson, the Philistines are here!” He awoke from his sleep and pulled out the pin, with the loom and the web.
Now, this time, Samson doesn’t give up his secret, but he’s getting dangerously close. Maybe he’s having his will broken slowly or he’s becoming overconfident, but he does reveal that his hair is involved in this.
The Final Attempt
15 “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ ” she told him, “when your heart is not with me? This is the third time you have mocked me and not told me what makes your strength so great!”
16 Because she nagged him day after day and pleaded with him until she wore him out, 17 he told her the whole truth and said to her, “My hair has never been cut, because I am a Nazirite to God from birth. If I am shaved, my strength will leave me, and I will become weak and be like any other man.”
Delilah is not giving up until Samson gives in, and she is going to use every tool at her disposal. She calls into question Samson’s love for her. She blames him. She begs him.
She comes at him day after day after day after day. She just won’t stop. And she get’s closer and closer and closer to wearing him down
This is the part of the story where if we were watching a movie, our skin would be crawling and we would want to scream out “don’t do it!”
It’s important to remember that this is not Samson’s wife — this is a woman that clearly does not have his best interest in mind, that has lied to him and has already betrayed him 3 times, that is not showing real love to him.
But he has fallen head over heels for her. He has given his heart to her instead of God. He keeps coming back to her time and time again, giving her space and influence in his life. He has given himself up in the snare. He has taken the bait.
How does he arrive at this position? The text literally means he was “sick to the point of death” of her nagging, of her persistence, and this would eventually lead to his death.
18When Delilah realized that he had told her the whole truth, she sent this message to the Philistine leaders: “Come one more time, for he has told me the whole truth.” The Philistine leaders came to her and brought the silver with them.
19Then she let him fall asleep on her lap and called a man to shave off the seven braids on his head. In this way, she made him helpless, and his strength left him.
20Then she cried, “Samson, the Philistines are here!” When he awoke from his sleep, he said, “I will escape as I did before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him.
You have to imagine the tension hanging in air in this moment.
You have Samson who is so incredibly confident that he is invincible, that he will be able to break himself free just like always. He lived his life like a superhero. He experienced nothing but victory, complete physical domination over his enemies.
Even though he had revealed the secret symbol of his strength (his long hair), he forgot about the source of his strength — the God of his Nazarite vow.
He became complacent, he had already violated the other two components of his Nazarite vow, and mistakenly arrived at the belief that his strength laid not in God, but in himself.
He thought he didn’t need God anymore, and when Samson’s hair was cut off, his connection to and strength from God was also cut off (and this is made clear by the fact that when he gets in trouble here, he does not cry out to God for help — he didn’t even consider the fact that he was being helped by God all along).
You can imagine the panic that set in during that moment, when he realized he messed up, and was now at the mercy of his brutal enemies whom he had provoked to the max.
You can also imagine the fear and trepidation of the ambushers standing in front of the god-like enemy that I’m sure they had heard story after story about — the man who singlehandedly razed their crops, tore down their gates, and killed a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey.
The long-haired, long-time enemy who now stood before them like a sheered sheep. You can feel the tension in that moment where they had to find out “did it work? … or is he going to tear us apart limb from limb?”
They held their breath as they approached him, and eventually found him not a mighty warrior, but a humbled has-been antihero.
Samson Seized
21The Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles, and he was forced to grind grain in the prison.
22But his hair began to grow back after it had been shaved.
In an act of poetic justice, the Philistines force the one who burned their grain to now do the humiliating work of grinding it. And Samson’s eyes which had led him astray have now been taken away. He is a humbled, weak man. But verse 22 hints that the story is not over yet.
23 Now the Philistine leaders gathered together to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon. They rejoiced and said:
Our god has handed over
our enemy Samson to us.
24 When the people saw him, they praised their god and said:
Our god has handed over to us
our enemy who destroyed our land
and who multiplied our dead.
The Philistines put together a worship service for one of their gods named Dagon — their god of grain. Samson had burned down their crops, and so they worshipped their god of crops. But what they didn’t realize is that Samson was not delivered over to them by the presence of Dagon, but rather by the absence of Yahweh, the God of Israel.
In the context of the fuller narrative found in Judges, we are meant to note the dramatic tension of this moment. Remember that this book traces 6 major judges, and they occur in parallel cycles of 3. The end of the first cycle concludes with Israel’s victory over the Canaanites and the victory song from Deborah.
Now, at the end of the second cycle of 3, with the final Judge Samson, we see the victory song coming not from the Israelites, but from their enemies. It appears as if their enemies have wrestled back the power, that all the Israelites had fought and worked for was now lost, as if their God was no longer with them, and had faced defeat from their enemies.
It’s the classic trilogy: in the first one the good guys win and have new hope, then in the middle the bad guys strike back and everything appears lost, but things aren’t over just yet. The return is coming.
The Final Scene
25 When they were in good spirits, they said, “Bring Samson here to entertain us.” So they brought Samson from prison, and he entertained them. They had him stand between the pillars.
Samson has been brought low. The Philistines have captured their enemy’s champion, seemingly stripped him of all his power, have leashed him like a dog, and are now parading him out in front of them all to mock him as he performs party tricks. But it wasn’t over yet.
26 Samson said to the young man who was leading him by the hand, “Lead me where I can feel the pillars supporting the temple, so I can lean against them.” 27 The temple was full of men and women; all the leaders of the Philistines were there, and about three thousand men and women were on the roof watching Samson entertain them.
So they are in this massive temple where thousands have gathered to worship and celebrate what they believe to be Dagon’s victory, and they are all high up looking down on Samson (literally and figuratively).
28 He called out to the Lord, “Lord God, please remember me. Strengthen me, God, just once more. With one act of vengeance, let me pay back the Philistines for my two eyes.”
It has taken a season of Samson being ridiculously humbled for him to come to terms with his need for God to accomplish anything. Notice multiple times he addresses God’s name, and he begins calling out “My Lord Yahweh.” God is referred to in many ways in the Bible, but this name is particularly associated with God’s deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt and God’s covenant with them made at Mt Sinai.
He is calling back and calling out to God the Rescuer, to God the Covenant Maker, to the God who brought him into this world against all odds, to the God who called him out as a Nazarite from birth, to the God who gave him unfathomable strength, even though he had squandered that strength for personal gain and personal vengeance instead of God’s intended purpose — the rescue of His people from the hands of the Philistines.
And even now, even though he is finally calling out to God, Samson’s motives are still impure. He still selfishly seeks personal retaliation. Yet, in the midst of this, God is still able to work His purposes.
29 Samson took hold of the two middle pillars supporting the temple and leaned against them, one on his right hand and the other on his left. 30 Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines.” He pushed with all his might, and the temple fell on the leaders and all the people in it. And those he killed at his death were more than those he had killed in his life.
31 Then his brothers and his father’s whole family came down, carried him back, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. So he judged Israel twenty years.
The time has finally come, and Samson is ready to pay the price — the price of his very life. In fact, maybe he doesn’t want to live with himself anymore with all that he has done wrong and with all the humiliation he has endured (much of it the result of his poor choices).
With one final act of God-granted strength, Samson deals a fatal blow to all of the Philistine leaders and thousands of their people. In this celebration of the so-called victory of the god Dagon, his temple is toppled by the One True God, Yahweh.
This is the moment that was prophesied to his parents, the moment that the entire book of Judges has been working towards, the moment in which Samson begins to save Israel from the power of the Philistines.
Our Response
So where does this leave us? What are we meant to take from this strange, true story?
1. Beware the Pull of Your Flesh
The Bible expresses this instruction in a variety of ways:
- Be sober-minded, be alert, resist Satan (1 Peter 5:8-9)
- Detest what is evil (Rom 12:1,2,9)
- Be careful, especially if you think you’re standing strong (1 Cor 10:12-13)
We see warnings throughout Scripture that make it seem like we’re marching through a minefield. And this is what we can learn from Samson:
Don’t get too comfortable.
Beware of thinking that you are past the potential for sin in your life, that you are above temptation, that you are too good for trials.
The strongest man on the planet (Samson) can still be weakened in the smallest of moments by letting his love for God be overpowered by his love for companionship.
Another champion of Israel, etching his permanent place in lore by defeating the giant with five smooth stones, a man after God‘s own heart, writing the heartbeat of Gods people in the nation’s songbook, in the next moment is looking down off his roof at a pretty girl, and falling into adultery and murdering to cover it up.
The bravest, boldest disciple (Peter), who in one moment is declaring his unfailing fealty to Jesus, ready to go to war for the one he has followed for years, is in the next moment cowering in fear, denying he even knows that his faithful friend exists.
You are never so close to God that you are immune from the pull of the flesh, and if you are sitting here right now, thinking “I’m glad everyone around me is hearing this, they all really need it” — then you are the one I am talking to right now.
Pride comes before the fall, and the Fall has made us all proud.
But how do we avoid sin?
- Do we shut ourselves away?
- Do we hide from the world avoid all things, protect ourselves?
- Bar the gates board the doors and windows prepare for the inevitable storm that we can’t withstand?
The Problem
Here’s the problem: when we block out everyone else — the world and everything in it — we’re still left alone in a room with the most dangerous thing on the planet: ourselves.
Left alone, on our own, our minds are darkened, and our hearts are depraved. Whether it’s Lord of the Flies or Lord of the Rings, the recurring story all humanity cries out (because it rings true) is the overwhelming pull towards selfish power, towards vengeance over valor, towards comfort over care for others.
The Bible makes this clear, and if you did your homework from Brad from last week, you will have studied and memorized the passage I am going to, and may even be able to say it along with me:
Ephesians 2:1–3 (CSB)
1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins 2 in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. 3 We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.
Jesus said in John 15 “apart from me, you can do nothing.” On our own, we have no hope of success, we have only the inevitability of failure in this prison of our own making. But God has not left us alone.
Not Alone [How?]
Here is how we avoid the snare of sin, and access the
supernatural,
otherworldly,
God-glorifying,
awe-inspiring
strength of God that can defeat
any enemy outside or within,
or win any battle we have been facing for years or that we just met for the very first time.
A strength that can
pull us out of the deepest pit of shame or sadness.
A strength that can
empower us to walk-through the darkest, scariest valley of the shadow of death that we never dreamed of.
A strength that can
heal the deepest wounds, the most calloused scars, the most hardened hearts
A hope and peace that can break through
the most grievous losses,
the most pain-stricken, unmet desires,
that can hold off the fires of death and hell itself.
This is the power we have access to. This is the strength of our God. And this is how we find it:
2. Keep Your Eyes on Jesus
Samson previews it,
Jesus accomplishes it, and
Hebrews explains it.
Hebrews 12:1–3 (CSB)
1let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. [Here’s how we do that:] Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, 2 keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, so that you won’t grow weary and give up.
Let me show you the connection here.
Samson was an unexpected baby called to the Nazarite vow who would begin saving Israel from their enemies.
Jesus was preceded by an unexpected baby called to the Nazarite vow who would make way for the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world. (John the Baptist)
Samson was betrayed and abandoned by the one he loved (Delilah) and handed over for silver to his enemies to be paraded in front of, brought low, and mocked. Jesus experienced the same.
Samson, seemingly powerless and abandoned by his God, hair cut and sheered like a sheep, but under the strength God provided, gave himself up to death to defeat the enemies of God’s people as they looked down on him.
Jesus, seemingly powerless and abandoned by His God, like a lamb led to the slaughter, but under the strength God provided, even as he was brought low, was raised up on the cross and gave himself up to death to defeat the greatest enemy of all people: death.
Samson’s very imperfect obedience to God’s calling as an imperfect judge brought temporary rescue and rest to the nation of Israel.
But Jesus’s completely perfect obedience to God’s calling now sits enthroned as the perfect judge, bringing eternal rescue to all who call on the name of Jesus as we turn to the spotless, slain Lamb.
The way that we protect against the sin that lurks around every corner, is to keep our eyes on Jesus,
the one who endured far more than we ever will,
who took on the punishment that we deserved,
who keeps our faith,
and who will be with us to the very end.
Beware the pull of your flesh by keeping your eyes on Jesus.
Prayer
Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
Resource Info
