Once again, we find the Israelites doing evil in the sight of the Lord. It's starting to get boring, and more than a little frustrating. I find myself wanting to grab hold of the Israelites and shake some sense into them. Why do you keep doing this? I want to cry. Why can't you learn from the past and stop screwing everything up? But of course the answer is obvious. Because they're human, and they're on much the same journey as the rest of us. Half the time we don't learn anything at all and the rest of the time, we learn enough to avoid the quicksand and walk straight into the bear pit. We're always going to make mistakes and I think that to some degree we have to accept that. Of course we should be trying to avoid as many pitfalls and wrong turnings as possible, but we also need to recognise that we won't escape them all. That way, when we do fall, we're already prepared to pick ourselves back up again, brush ourselves off, and put things right.
But the Israelites don't just fall, they take a running jump of a cliff. They know the rules but they break them anyway. Maybe they think God's rules are too boring or too restrictive. Maybe they think they can have more fun or live easier lives if they do things their own way. You see, there are the mistakes we make because we don't know any better, and then there are the mistakes we make because we think we know better but don't. You could put the former down to a lack of knowledge and the latter down to a lack of wisdom. I think it's important that we know what kind of mistakes we're making, so we can know how we can avoid them in the future. Do we need to learn the rules, or do we need to better understand why and how to apply them?
And another point. Having read it many times now, that phrase "in the sight of the Lord" strikes me as rather interesting. It tells us that it is God who judges the Israelites' behaviour, and that it is God's morality that is the measure here. That such a point should need to be made explicit suggests that there are other moralities, other measures of good and evil. To some extent that is true. We make our own rules and decide for ourselves what is good and evil, and in this postmodern world where truth is subjective, we think that is our responsibility and our right. Ultimately though, it is up to God to judge our behaviour and it is his moral standard that must guide us. If we're going to avoid the pitfalls and the traps, we'll need a map. We'll need God.
As a result of the Israelites' disobedience, God delivers them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years. After this time, the angel of the Lord appears to the wife of a man named Manoah. This woman is barren and childless, but the angel of the Lord tells her that she will conceive and give birth to a son. He instructs her not to drink alcohol or eat any unclean thing, and tells her that the boy's hair must not be cut because he will be a Nazarite, set apart for God to begin the deliverance of Israel. Maybe this woman has heard the stories of Sarah and Rachel, because she does not laugh or protest that this is impossible, but instead goes to tell her husband the good news. Manoah doesn't question this declaration either, but straightaway asks the Lord to send the man of God again to tell them how to raise their promised son. It is is easy to read that that Israelites did evil and think the whole nation has gone bad, but of course things are never that simple. Here we find at least two people who have not lost their way, who show that it possible to be good even in an evil place and an evil time, who challenge us and give us hope.
The angel of the Lord appears again to Manoah's wife, and she rushes to fetch her husband. Manoah asks what must be the rule for the boy's life and work, and the angel of the Lord simply says that his wife must do as she has been instructed. It feels a little like Manoah has tried to play the Alpha male and take control of the situation, only to be told that he must leave it to his wife. It must dent his pride somewhat, but he doesn't push it any further, instead offering his guest some food. The angel of the Lord says that he will not eat, but suggests that Manoah might prepare an offering to the Lord. It is only at this point in the conversation that Manoah asks his guest's name, so that he may honour him when his word is proved true, and it becomes apparent that he does not realise who it is he's speaking to. Presumably he has mistaken him for a prophet. The angel of the Lord says that his name is beyond understanding, and then when Manoah makes his burnt offering, he ascends in the flame. And at last Manoah and his wife understand. Manoah is terrified, thinking they will die because they have seen God, but his wife remains a little more level headed, reassuring him that God would not have accepted their offering or promised them a son if he intended to kill them. I discussed the identity of the angel of the Lord in an earlier post, and it is interesting to add that here Manoah clearly identifies the figure he has seen with God himself, adding weight to the supposition that the angel of the Lord is in some sense a manifestation or presence of the Lord.
So, Manoah and his wife are not struck down, and the words of the angel of the Lord are proved true when Manoah's wife gives birth to a boy who they name Samson. We are told that God blesses the child and the Spirit of God moves in him, but we learn nothing more of him until he is a grown man of marrying age. One day Samson sees a young Philistine woman and declares that he wishes to marry her. His parents are dubious as she is a foreigner, but Samson insists and we are here told that his passion was from the Lord, who was looking for an excuse to confront the Philistines. His parents relent and he returns to the town where he saw this young woman in order to speak with her. On the way, a lion attacks him and tears the lion apart with his bare hands. When he returns again, he sees a swarm of bees and some honey in the lion's carcass and takes some to eat. It's an odd little episode, but it will make sense later. Sort of.
The time for Samson's wedding comes and he makes a feast and is given thirty companions from his wife's town. He says to these men that if they can solve a riddle within seven days of the feast, he will give them thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes. However, if they fail, they must give him the same. The riddle is Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something to eat. Things starting to fall into place now? Of course the companions don't get it, and after three days of trying to puzzle it out, they give in and resort to some good old fashioned arm twisting. They go to Samson's wife and tell her that if she does not get the answer out of her husband, they will burn her and her father's household to death. She throws herself on Samson, sobbing and complaining that he can't love her if he hasn't told her the answer. He says he hasn't told his parents, so there's no reason he should tell her, but after three days of her crying, he gives in and tells her the answer. She then tells the men of the town, who go to Samson with the answer. He knows where they've got the answer from and is absolutely furious. The Spirit of the Lord comes upon him and he keeps his word by killing thirty men and giving their clothes to the thirty companions, then returns to his father's house. And so the deliverance of Israel begins in deceit and manipulation and anger and violence. There must be another way.
But this is the way things have begun, and this is the way they will continue. Once Samson has calmed down, he goes to visit his wife, only to learn that her father has given her to someone else because he thought that Samson hated her. The father offers Samson his younger daughter (this whole idea of women being treated like commodities still makes me sick) but he clearly isn't happy with this proposal because he declares that this time he will really hurt the Philistines. He catches three hundred foxes, ties them in pairs by their tails, then ties burning torches to their tails (thus raising a rather serious animal cruelty issue) and lets them loose in the cornfields. When the Philistines see that their crop has been destroyed, and learn that it happened because Samson's wife was given away, the Philistine's burn his wife and her father to death. The vicious circle continues, as Samson responds with even greater fury, slaughtering many of them. After this, he hides in a cave until three thousand men of Judah come to hand him over to the Philistines, in order to prevent any reprisals against themselves. They tie Samson up, but as they approach the Philistines, the Spirit of the Lord comes up on him and he breaks his binds. He grabs the jawbone of a donkey and kills a thousand men with it. He's like a Biblical superhero After such exertion, he is naturally rather thirsty, and so he cries out to God who opens a spring for him so that he may drink. It's not really all that surprising that after this, the Israelites make Samson their leader. He rules for twenty years, but these are still the days of the Philistines, and so it seems that he while he may have begun the deliverance of Israel, the people are not free yet. Perhaps muscle isn't everything.
Like every superhero, Samson has a fatal weakness. Women. First his marriage causes great death and devastation, then he is almost killed while visiting a prostitute, and then finally there is Delilah. Samson falls in love with Delilah, and the Philistines spy an opportunity. They bribe her into agreeing to discover the secret of Samson's strength and learn how to overpower him, and so she sets to work. She asks him how he may be tied up, and he tells her that if he is tied with seven fresh thongs, he will become as weak as any other man. And so she hides men in the house and ties him with seven fresh thongs, but when she calls to say that the Philistines are upon him, he snaps the thongs and Delilah realises that he has fooled her. She decides to try again, and this time he tells her that if he can be overpowered if he is tied with new ropes that have never been used, but again this is proved false. And then he tells her that he will be weakened if his hair is woven into the loom, and yet again this is shown to be a lie. And so Delilah resorts to the ultimate weapon, the power of the nag. She finally wears him down and he tells her the truth, that his strength wold leave him if his head was shaved. And so that night she puts him to sleep and calls a man to cut his hair. When he wakes, the Philistines seize him, bind him and gouge out his eyes.
Surely Samson must have realised that it was Delilah that kept tying him up. And surely he must have worked out that she was trying to overpower him. So why on earth did he tell her the truth? All brawn and no brains, it seems. It is interesting that it is said not that his strength left him, but that the Lord left him. It's a reminder that Samson's strength was not his own but the Lord's. It's also a reminder of the consequences of treating the gifts God gives us lightly. Samson was told not to cut his hair but he disobeyed, and it was his disobedience that cost him his strength. When God blesses us, we have a duty to take care of those gifts and to be honouring and obedient to God in the way we use them, or we risk losing them.
The Philistines put Samson in prison and gather to offer a sacrifice to their god in celebration. They bring Samson out to entertain them, and in what must have been the ultimate act of humiliation, he performs for them. They place him among the pillars and he asks to stand close enough to lean on them. His hair has been growing back ever since it was cut off, and now Samson prays that God will remember him and grant him strength one more time in order to get revenge on the Philistines for his eyes. He braces himself against the two central pillars, with one hand on each, then pushes with all his might. The temple falls down on the rulers and the many people gathered there, and so Samson dies with his enemies and kills more in the process than he did when he lived. And thus ends the story of Samson, a cautionary tale about the dangers of taking our gifts for granted and valuing strength above all else.
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