Wasting the gift: A meditation on the life and death of Samson

“...but the Angel said to her '...you will soon conceive and have a son!...for he shall be...a special servant of God from the time of his birth; and he will begin to rescue Israel...'” Judges 13:3-5, LB

30 “Don’t be frightened...” the angel told her, “for God has decided to wonderfully bless you! 31 Very soon now, you will become pregnant and have a baby boy...32 He shall be very great and...And he shall reign over Israel forever...'” Luke 2:30-32, LB

My devotions this year have come out of my meditative reading of the Book of Judges and recently I was struck by the fact that of all the leaders named and talked about in this volume, only Samson

has a story about his birth. In fact, the Samson cycle is four chapters long (Judges 13-16 - pretty long as stories go in that book) and one quarter of it alone (chapter 13) concerns how he came to be.

Samson as a baby boy?

His parents, Manoah and Mrs (only Delilah gets named in his story; all the other women – including his mother – are simply referred to impersonally as in “the woman”) live on the frontier of western Judah within shouting distance of the hated Philistine hostiles that live in the coastal region. Though they've been married for sometime they have no children and to be barren in those days was a curse. And then one day all that changes. Expectantly, while going about her housework, the woman is met by an angel who shares with her remarkable news: she was going to be a mother. In fact, she was already with child. Her only son was destined for greatness (so the angel said) and therefore his whole life he was to live the Nazirite way.

Did Samson have dreds?

In those days, if someone wanted to dedicate himself to God for a certain season of time, he would inform the priest and this would be the terms of his consecration: he was to drink nothing with alcohol in it, remain ritually pure by steering clear of anything dead and refrain from cutting his hair. It was the hair cut (or lack thereof) that would give you away to be a Nazirite, a separated one. This kind of vow could not be demanded. It was totally voluntary except in Samson's case: the angel told the woman he was to be a Nazirite his entire life, consecrated and set-apart for a special purpose. These were the terms of his extraordinary life. In fact, later when the angel returns and speaks to Manoah who wanted both confirmation as well as further instructions all the angel will offer is what he commanded the first time: he was to be a Nazirite for always. He would be God's chosen tool to begin to deliver his people from the domination by the Philistines.

The bad guys of Judges, Samuel and Kings

Hundreds of years before under Joshua's leadership, the Israelites had entered the land and had begun the process of evicting the Canaanites. God's instructions delivered by Moses had been very clear: everyone must go. No one who did not embrace the leadership of Yahweh as it was spelled out to Moses on Sinai was to remain in the land. If they did in time, they would “turn your sons away from me to serve other gods and the Lord's anger will burn against you and quickly destroy you” (Deut 7:4). Initially they had experienced impressive victories – Jericho, Ai, Gibeon – but at the time of Joshua's retirement there were still pockets of resistance of Canaanites who stubbornly remained in the land of Promise. What the Book of Judges records is what happens to God's people when they do not heed God's command: like a cancer the attraction to the world – at least, the world of their Canaanite neighbors – spreads insidiously among them and over a long period of time they eventually become indistinguishable from them. By the time Samson is born they've conformed so much to the worldly ways of the Canaanites that they've nearly forgotten their unique identity as a “people holy to the Lord your God” (Deut 7:6). This stokes God's ire and if they will not resist the Philistines and their growing cultural influence, he will.

Samson's life, so the angel said, was the first salvo of deliverance from Philistine domination. Later Saul would contend with them rigorously and David would do clean-up. After King David's rule, the Philistines pretty much vanish as a foil to God's people. But during Samson's lifetime they are a prevalent menace that no Israelite will do anything about.

Unselfconsciously, simply by being his impulsive, willful, selfish self, denying totally the consecrated life he was destined to live, he becomes a wrecking ball to Philistine hegemony. By the end of his short life, as the Philistine body count mounts he literally pulls the house down on top of their leaders, their priests and their god (see Judges 16). But even as the dust settles I can't get around the fact that his life was pretty much a train wreck that leaves me wondering what could have been had he tried to live the set-apart life he was called to live.

In my previous readings of Samson I've read the end of his story as almost like a “thief-on-the-cross” moment – a guy who realizes too late that he's squandered the gift God had given him but now requests one more opportunity to glorify God before his life is over. But that's not what the narrator tells us. Yes, his hair begins to grow again (16:22) (did none of the guys who captured him tell their boss what Delilah had learned about his hair?) Was nobody paying attention when following his “performance” (could it have been feats of strength?) he asked to be put between the pillars that “hold the temple up”? (v. 27) But the nature of his final prayer reveals the soul of the man. Here was no penitent thief on the cross- kind of prayer, i.e., “Lord, remember me when you enter your kingdom” but “Oh, please, give strength yet once more. God! With one avenging blow let me be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes!” (v. 28). No contrition here. There is nothing but a desire for revenge and with one mighty shove he dies with those he had lived and contended with for much of his life.

Reading his story again during Advent I couldn't help but hear echos of the Nativity story that we read again at this time of year:

• Like Jesus, the angel announced to his mother who was barren that she would give birth to a son.

• Like Jesus, the angel shared with her knowledge that he was being consecrated for a special purpose.

• Like Jesus, Samson was born to two parents living on the outskirts of wherever the action was (e.g., he was not born in Shiloh where the Tabernacle resided).

• Like Jesus, he was rejected by his own people and turned over to Gentile overlords (Judges 15).

• And like Jesus, his delivering-work that he was born to do was consummated in his death.

But for all that Samson was nothing like Jesus. As one man puts it aptly:

He is one of the most narcissistic persons in all the Bible. Self-gratification is what drives this man. Never in the Samson narrative does he operate in anyone's interest but his own. He does not care about God's plan or any of the divine standards of either his place as an Israelite or his Nazirite status. He does not care about the will of his parents or the hearts of his “lovers” with whom he consorts. All are to be manipulated for his sake...Very simply, Samson is not a type of Christ...Instead, if anything, Samson is a foil to Christ. Yes, there are similarities, but the contrasts are much greater. The similarities only heighten the contrasts all the more.

(NIV Application Commentary on Judges by K. Lawson Younger, Jr pp. 327-28)

How vastly different is the Savior that we welcome at his birth every December 25.

"He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion." Philippians 2:5-8, Msg

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV

At the credits roll on Samson's story the narrator adds, “He had led

Israel twenty years.” I haven't really figured out yet what that means. I mean for the bulk of his story he's living in a cave by himself or going into some Philistine town for a night of fornicating with some of their women. What we're told of him is that he's ruled by his glands and his passions. If that's leadership it certainly it's lowest form of it and his style is not to be envied or copied. In movies, he's commonly portrayed like a version of The Rock, a he-man with abs of steel. But if that's so why are the Philistines willing to pay Delilah $15 million in today's dollars (16:5) to find out his secret? What if he was just a guy who looked like an otherwise normal Hebrew until his life was threatened and then the Spirit of God would rush upon him and he would be unstoppable? The incredible hulk but just not green or muscle-bound?

This is how I usually imagine Samson

But what if he looked more like Mark Ruffalo than Dwayne Johnson?

Regardless, his legacy is tragic. Sure, he killed a lot of Philistines before his death but he frittered away his life and the awesome God-given potential that he had been born with. It provokes me to not be like him. To not live only for myself and my own version of success as we define it around here. To live, rather, obediently and faithfully and aspire to follow the path that Christ himself took all the way to Golgotha, if that is what is required of me.