THE FAITH OF SAMSON – Hebrews 11:32c

You would not have solved my riddle!”

Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily, and he went down to Ashkelon and killed thirty of their men, took their apparel, and gave the changes of clothing to those who had explained the riddle. So his anger was aroused, and he went back up to his father’s house (vv. 18-19).

D. The wedding seemed to be off from that point. (The fact that he called the intended bride his ‘heifer’ probably didn’t help the relationship much!) But in a strange way—even through Samson’s unfaithfulness—the Spirit of God came upon him and began to use him to begin to deliver his people from the oppression of the Philistines. Surely, this must have impressed itself even upon Samson! Often, we are surprised to discover that our sovereign God uses us in spite of ourselves!

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As was the custom in such cases, Samson’s ‘wife’ was given instead to his companion, “who had been his best man” (14:20). And that leads us to another step in God’s remarkable and strange work through him …

III. HIS REVENGE ON THE PHILISTINES (15:1-20).

A. After a while, Samson went back to visit his former ‘wife-to-be’. He brought a young goat along as a gift. (That’s apparently what fellas used in those days instead of a box of chocolates.) But when he came, he was met at the door by the girl’s father and was prevented from going in to her. He said,

“I really thought that you thoroughly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister better than she? Please, take her instead.” (v. 2).

But it was “nothin’ doin’”! Samson said, “This time I shall be blameless regarding the Philistines if I harm them!” (v. 3; which leads us to wonder: Had his conscience bothered him a bit?—and did he think that his previous act against the Philistines was ‘blame-worthy’?) Samson—among his many other faults—was a head-strong and vengeful man. He used his great strength to capture 300 wild foxes (an amazing feat in and of itself!), tie their tails together, stick a burning torch between each pair, and send them—scurrying and yipping—off into the fields of the standing grain of the Philistines; along with their vineyards and olive groves. It may present a funny picture to our minds; but it was actually a devastatingly destructive act! Once the Philistines found out who did this thing, they came up and burned Samson’s former bride-to-be and her father to death by fire.

B. Which lead to yet another act of vengeance on Samson’s part. He said, “Since you would do a thing like this, I will surely take revenge on you, and after that I will cease” (v. 7). Like a one-man-army, he went and attacked them “hip and thigh with a great slaughter”; and afterward, he went and dwelt in a cleft of the rock in the wilderness. We might marvel at his passion for vengeance; but let’s also note that he had some kind of faith in the power of God at work in him—and in God’s promises about him—that he would so bravely go and attack an entire people group single-handedly!

C. This act of vengeance made more trouble for his own people, however. The Philistines responded by encamping against the people of the Tribe of Judah; and the people of Judah asked about it, they were told, “We have come up to arrest Samson, to do to him as he has done to us” (v. 10). We’re told;

Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? What is this you have done to us?” And he said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.” But they said to him, “We have come down to arrest you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines.” Then Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not kill me yourselves.” So they spoke to him, saying, “No, but we will tie you securely and deliver you into their hand; but we will surely not kill you.” And they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock (vv. 11-13).

As soon as they came to the Philistines—and the Philistines began to shout against Samson—the Spirit of the Lord once again came mightily upon him. The ropes with which they had tied him became like flax that is burned in a fire—easily broken by him; and his bonds became loose and fell from his hands. We’re told that he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey (and I have often wondered where it was that one finds a “fresh” one. Was it found in a “fresh” donkey? Or did he reach out and pull a jawbone from a dead and rotting animal—making this yet another violation of his Nazirite vow?); and with it he killed a thousand Philistines. Such a great slaughter with such a despised object must have been a great humiliation to the Philistines. Samson declared:

“With the jawbone of a donkey,

Heaps upon heaps,

With the jawbone of a donkey

I have slain a thousand men!” (v. 16).

After throwing the jawbone from his hand, he named the place Ramath Lehi; which is roughly translated “Jawbone Height”. (We might call this, ‘The Battle of Jawbone Hill’.) Verse 18-29 tell us of how he thirsted in the wilderness after this battle, cried out to God for water, and was granted water from a rock—just as in the days of Moses. Perhaps this is told to us in order to confirm to us that God, indeed, had His hand on this strange and passion-driven man. And after this, Samson judged the people of Israel for twenty years. It seems as if he was growing—somehow—to have a sense of God’s call on his life; and he stepped forward to fulfill that call.

D. Samson was a man that often operated on the feelings of the moment—sometimes sensual feelings, and sometimes vengeful feelings. He was not a man who seemed to be in control of himself. And yet, as we can see, God still used his failures and faults to bring about His promised outcome. We should never give way to our passions as Samson did. But even when we fail, God can still use us for His purposes.

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This leads us to one of his most famous failures …

IV. HIS FOLLY WITH DELILAH (16:1-21).

A. Samson was now a recognized judge of the people of God. But it’s with embarrassment that we read, “Now Samson went to Gaza and saw a harlot there, and went in to her” (v. 1). This compromising situation put him in a vulnerable position. The Gazites heard that he was with this harlot; and they surrounded the harlot’s house—waiting for daylight to come so they could gang up on him and kill him. But we’re told,

And Samson lay low till midnight; then he arose at midnight, took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two gateposts, pulled them up, bar and all, put them on his shoulders, and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron (v. 3).

In doing this, several things would have been communicated: (1) that his strength was so great that the enemies of Israel dare not trifle with him; (2) that their city was now left vulnerable and defenseless, because their city gate was gone; and (3) the land of the Jewish people, whom they had been oppressing, was exalted over them—possessing the gates of their enemies. What a lesson this should have been to them! But what a teachable moment it should have also been to Samson! His flirtation with sin had left him terribly vulnerable to the enemies of God. God, it seems, allowed him a chance to learn from his error; but sadly, he didn’t take it.

B. We’re told next that he fell in love with a woman (another!) in the Valley of Sorek whose name was Delilah. She has gone down in history as an example of the way the devil can use a sinful woman to rope in an instrument of God—driven and carried along by his own sinful lust—and bring him down to destruction! She became a puppet of the Philistine leaders who told her;

“Entice him, and find out where his great strength lies, and by what means we may overpower him, that we may bind him to afflict him; and every one of us will give you eleven hundred pieces of silver” (v. 7).

A shekel would have been around 28 lbs.; and based on contemporary prices (around $14.50 per ounce), 1,100 shekels of silver multiplied five times would be worth roughly $33,500 (although it may be that the value would have been much greater than that in those days). The amount offered to her would have been very significant; which gives us an indication of how much they wanted to be rid of Samson. And it was apparently a sufficient motive for Delilah to betray her boyfriend.

C. What follows is a pathetic comedy—and perhaps involved a campaign of deceit that took weeks to pull off. As Philistine men stood in hiding in her home, she tried to woo out of Samson the secret of his strength. But he toyed with her and frustrated the Philistines each time. First, he lied to her and told he that he could be overpowered with ‘seven fresh bowstrings, not yet dried’ (vv. 6-9). Then he told her that it was ‘new ropes that have never been used’ (vv. 10-12). Then it was that if the seven locks of his hair be woven into a loom and tightened into the batten, he would be as weak as any man (vv. 13-14). Each time, she complained that she had been deceived by him; and the Philistines dared not to come out of hiding to take him—already fearing his great strength. Finally, “when she pestered him daily with her words and pressed him, so that his soul was vexed to death” (v. 16; see also 14:17), he told her that he was a Nazirite to God from his mother’s womb (v. 17); and that if he was shaven, then his strength would be gone. There was a sense in which this also was untrue. The secret to his strength wasn’t in his hair; but in the power of God upon him because of his calling as a Nazirite. But that hair was a symbol of his consecration unto God; and having allowed himself to be caught up in his sin, he lost his hair—and without his knowing it, he also lost the hand of God upon him (vv. 18-20).

D. What a terrible sense of betrayal he must have felt from Delilah! But more, what a horror it must have been to know that God had finally left him to the consequences of his sin! The Philistines wasted no time. They took him and gouged out his eyes (so that he could no longer see in order to harm them), took him to Gaza, bound him in fetters, and forced him to grind grain in prison like an animal! (v. 21). If he could slay a 1,000 of their men with the jawbone of a donkey, then he would be made by them to do the labors of a donkey. “[B]e sure”, the Bible tells us, “your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23); and what a startling example of this principle Samson’s sad condition became!

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Samson suffered the ultimate indignity because of his constant flirtation with sin. And yet, we note that his hair began to grow over what must have been several months of torment (v. 22). Perhaps, during those many months, he remembered the promises of God that his parents had passed on to him, and his heart broke in repentance before God. This leads us, finally, to …

V. HIS RESTORATION AND FINAL ACT (16:22-31).

A. God had departed from Samson for a time. But it was not in the sense that He had ‘left’ the man He had called; and His departure was not permanent. And Samson himself shows this in the fact that he finally cries out to God from the midst of his failure. At a boastful feast to their false god Dagon, the Philistine leaders—along with about three-thousand men and women—rejoice and praised their vile false god for their victory over Samson (vv. 23-24); and in their high spirits, they called for Samson to come out to the court and perform for them as they sat high in the temple (v. 25).

B. Samson’s hair had grown back; and thus the sign of his devotion to God had been restored. (Apparently the Philistines didn’t think ahead enough to give him regular haircuts!) And Samson positioned himself between the two great pillars of the temple and gave them all a show that would never be repeated! He called upon God and said,

“O Lord God, remember me, I pray! Strengthen me, I pray, just this once, O God, that I may with one blow take vengeance on the Philistines for my two eyes!” (v. 28).

He pushed against the pillars and brought the temple down upon himself and the Philistines (vv. 29-30)—thus killing more Philistines in his death than in his life. God had called Samson for a purpose; and the reliability of that calling was not up to Samson, but—ultimately—up to the One who called him. God’s purpose for him—that is, that he would “begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines” (13:5)—would still be accomplished, in spite of his many flaws and failures.

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And now; what do we do with the story of a man like Samson? How is it that he an illustration to us of faith? Perhaps this would be best understood in how—in spite of all his many failures—he was still used by God. And he proved to have faith in God in the end—in spite of all the embarrassing imperfections of his life. He thus becomes a great example to us who—ourselves—terribly imperfect in our obedience to God.

It was not he who was faithful, but rather God. And he became faithful to the degree that he believed God’s promises. Perhaps our own ‘faithfulness’ is best shown in that we look to the faithfulness of God instead of to ourselves. As it says in Psalm 106;

We have sinned with our fathers,

We have committed iniquity,

We have done wickedly.

Our fathers in Egypt did not understand Your wonders;

They did not remember the multitude of Your mercies,

But rebelled by the sea—the Red Sea.

Nevertheless He saved them for His name’s sake,

That He might make His mighty power known.

He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it dried up;

So He led them through the depths,

As through the wilderness.

He saved them from the hand of him who hated them,

And redeemed them from the hand of the enemy.

The waters covered their enemies;

There was not one of them left.

Then they believed His words;

They sang His praise (Psalm 106:7-12)