The history of Samson is surprising even in an extraordinary age. In several particulars he was the most distinguished of the Hebrew judges. And though never at the head of an army, nor on a throne, nor prime minister to any earthly potentate, it were difficult, perhaps impossible, to name another Hebrew that loved his country with more fervid devotion, or served it with a more hearty good will, or who was a greater terror to its enemies. I know not that there is any biography so completely characteristic or more tragical than his. It is full of stirring incidents and most marvellous achievements. He seems to us like a volcano, continually struggling for an eruption. In him we have all the elements of an epic: love, adventure, heroism, tragedy. Nor am I aware that any Bible character has lent to modern literature a greater amount of metaphor and comparison than the story of Samson. The “Samson Agonistes” of Milton has been pronounced by the highest authority to be “one of the noblest dramas in the English language.” It reminds us of the mystic touches and shadowy grandeur of Rembrandt, while Rembrandt himself and Rubens, Guido, David, and Martin are indebted to this heroic judge for several of their immortal pieces. I am aware that some look upon Samson merely as a strong man. They do not consider that the moving of the Spirit of Jehovah gave extraordinary strength to Samson for special purposes. His peculiarities are not remarkable, because of anything that we perceive foreign to fallen humanity in the kind or composition of his passions and besetting sins, but in the fierceness and greatness of their strength. Ordinary men now have the same besetting sins--passions of the same character, but they are diminutive in comparison with him, and are without his supernatural strength. It must be confessed in the outset that Samson’s spiritual history is very skeleton-like. We have only a few time-worn fragments out of which to construct his inner man. Now and then, and sometimes after long and dreary intervals, and from out of heavy clouds and thick darkness, we catch a few rays of hope, and rejoice in some signs of a reviving conscience and of the presence of God’s Spirit. “His character is indeed dark and almost inexplicable. By none of the judges of Israel did God work so many miracles, and yet by none were so many faults committed.” As an old writer has said, he must be looked upon as “rathera rough believer.” I like not to dwell on Samson as a type of Christ. We must at least guard against removing him so far from us by reason of his uniqueness of character as to forget that he was a man of like passions with ourselves. We must carefully discriminate in his life between what God moved him to do and what his sinful passions moved him to. The Lord raised up this heroic Israelite for us. He threw into him a miraculous composition of strength and energy of passion, and called them forth in such a way as to make him our teacher. And besides being a hero, he was a believer. God raised him up for our learning, and made him, as it were, “a mirror or molten looking-glass,” in which we may see some of our own leading features truthfully portrayed, only on an enlarged scale. (W. A. Scott, D. D.)
The place of Samson in Jewish history
1. Two things stand out in the narrative of Samson’s career, as compared with the history of at least the majority of the other judges.
(1) The other judges fight God’s battles with the people at their backs. They simply give aid and point to a sense of rising strength, of impatience of subjection, of reviving national pride and religious zeal in the Hebrew people. Samson, on the contrary, stands utterly alone, fights his battle single-handed, is supported by no enthusiasm for the national cause, and not even by common loyalty on the part of his own comrades.
(2) The other judges are chosen to their office as mature men, but Samson is set apart to his career as an unborn child. From his very infancy the sense of his vocation takes possession of him; as child and boy and youth it is making and moulding him, and preparing him for what he is to be. The explanation of these two characteristic features of his history, which distinguish it from that of the other judges, lies in this, that Samson’s lot in life fell upon a period of utter national demoralisation. Israel had elapsed into subjection to the despised, uncircumcised Philistines. All national spirit was dying out, and the prestige of Jehovah was giving way before the prestige of Dagon. Now the only hope for the redemption of a society that has fallen into a condition of such lassitude, mental and moral, lies in the creation of a fresh and powerful personality.
2. How, humanly speaking, was Samson prepared for his work?
(1) To begin with, God made a cradle and a home for him. Samson’s mother was a woman with a great soul and a large heart, to whom God was a reality; a woman who could not indeed fight God’s battles and deliver God’s people, but who lived with the upper storeys of her being in the unseen, and was possessed with a tremendous longing that there should be deliverance for Israel, that something heroic should appear in history, and that God should vindicate His might and grandeur above the heathen gods. Samson was born to a mother that longed for a boy, not that he might rise to comfort and ease, but that he might be lofty and heroic, and fight and, if need be, die for God and God’s kingdom. To her son she transmits her hope, faith, and enthusiasm.
(2) From a little child Samson felt something mysterious stirring in his soul, ay, and in his physical nature. Samson needed extraordinary gifts for extraordinary work. He had, single-handed, by his own solitary prowess, to cow the Philistines and reanimate the courage of the Hebrews.
Two things were needful for him:
(1) extraordinary strength,
(2) inextinguishable joyousness.
To hold his own amid the abject depression of the people round about him it was essential that he should be possessed of exuberant mirth and jollity. It is the men that do the most serious and earnest work that can play and romp and laugh with their children. That is not the noisy laughter of the fool.
(3) Once again; it may be that asceticism is demanded for our age, just as Nazaritism was for Samson’s. But that, remember, is the bad remedy of a still worse evil. Jesus Christ wasno ascetic, else His enemies would not have published, as the likeliest scandal about Him, that He was a wine-bibber. (Professor W. G. Elmslie.)
Samson: inferior influences over large minds
1. The Book of Judges is full of expressions of singular beauty. The springs of human action are bared and revealed to view with wonderful power.
2. Samson was inspired and sent forth with a heavenly mission. Yet second motive was the frequent spring of his actions.
3. There is a vigour, width, and absence of detail or accurate plan about his proceedings which stamp him still more as a man of genius and bold conception.
4. But there is a further remarkable feature in Samson’s case. He became the slave of his wife. The same mind around which a mother wound the soft coils of maternal and home influences a wife bound round with the adamantine chains of female plot and management.
5. But we have to account for this and see its force.
(1) In ordinary terms Samson was a man of genius. Genius is a more direct gift from God than the ordinary power of man. It is a species of inspiration. It sees the means of deliverance from an evil without having to wade through the tortuous windings of the labyrinth of hard-worked, plans and schemes.
(2) The man of genius is left with the simplicity of a child from never having commenced his hard task in the school of experience and difficulty. He leans with the trust of infancy on the natural stays and supports of life. Men of genius will be subject to the tyranny as well as consolations of inferior influences; and will often become the slaves and victims of female narrowness andpunctilio. Their dependence on natural affections is accounted for by the same cause which accounts for their sometimes unaccountably sinking under the extravagant exercise of that influence. Not having had the need to manage others by elaborate plans, they are duped by overmanagement, and not having been called on to work out schemes, they fall the ready and easy victims to those devised by others.
6. We are often startled by inconsistencies in Samson’s history. They may be accounted for by the same reason--genius. The man of genius is not therefore of necessity a man of personal holiness. The glass tube may be the medium of streams of water, yet not one drop will imbue the substance forming the channel that conveys the fertilising drops from one spot to another. The eternal truth which a man speaks, the holiness he may bear witness to, the warnings he may proclaim, may all be declared with the utmost efficiency, and yet not influence him who is the medium. (E. Monro, M. A.)
The Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times.
Man under the influence of the Divine Spirit
Our knowledge of that mysterious power called the Spirit has been assisted by the well-known comparison of it with the wind, whose effects we may see, but whose rise and courses we cannot trace. “The wind bloweth where it listeth,” etc. There will, therefore, be in human life occurrences that we can only refer to this source, which will defy scientific rules and be beyond calculation. But though we may not search out the way of the Spirit, we may inquire when His motions are most generally first felt. Is there any limit of age at which His visits begin or end? Are we to wait till riper years, when knowledge is matured and the passions subdued to reason, before we can entertain them, or may we expect this power of God to approach us early, and move us almost as soon as the age of consciousness begins? So much more receptive is the earlier part of a man’s life that I have heard experienced preachers allege that no conversions take place after twenty-five; but while objecting to such a limit, or indeed any limit, I would maintain that in the young rather than in the old there is the best hope of feeling this power and becoming obedient to it. We may take Samson’s life as evidence of what a man can dare and do under the influence of the Spirit. His strength was not his own, it was “hung in his hair,” in the seven mysterious locks in his head, which would be to him of sacramental character, outward signs of an invisible gift. The Spirit really in him accomplished his feats. When the lion roared against him, it was “the Spirit of the Lord” that came mightily upon him; when he finds himself among his enemies bound with two new cords, at their shout “the Spirit of the Lord” again came mightily upon him, and he burst the cords which became as “flax which was burnt in the fire,” and on this occasion he slew a thousand men. The view I take, then, of Samson’s life is, that it was a witness to God’s Spirit from the beginning to the end. We should lose much of the teaching of it if we believed that such a career is altogether out of date. I do not mean, of course, that the same feats of strength will be witnessed again, but I assert that heroic feats of physical courage will be done, greater feats, too, of moral courage; and some such it will be good to put before you for imitation. In every generation they are to be found, and in our own not less than others. And for such an illustration in our own day one naturally turns to our latest modern hero, Gordon, whose life is almost as strange and eventful as that of any of the heroes of Hebrew history, and none the less inspired. He himself traced his superhuman faith and energy to this source, to God working in him, enabling him to attempt any venture in His service and cheerfully to die for Him. What a victory is scored to faith, for however eccentric his conduct may be thought, plainly he has demonstrated that there are unseen powers that sway a man’s heart much more forcibly than any motives of the world. Such men almost equal Samson in the apparent inadequacy of their equipment and neglect of means. But no doubt they fortify themselves with the argument that God loves to use trivial means to effect great ends--a small pebble in David’s hand to bring down a giant, an ox-goad in Shamgar’s hand to work a national deliverance, a stone, rough from the mountains, to overthrow Nebuchadnezzar’s Colossus; and, thus encouraged, without scientific weapons, such as our theological armouries supply, they have gone forth strong in faith alone. I am led on to commend as a priceless possession the gift of an independent spirit in thinking and acting, such as the Judge in Israel always displayed among his fellow-men. For this is a servile age in which we live--albeit declared to be one of liberty and progress. Yet tending, as everything does, to democracy and equality, few men have the courage of their opinions, few that are not ready to make a surrender of their intelligence and conscience at the bidding of others. Where are the strong men who will act independently according to really patriotic or godly motives, and not put up their principles to a bidding? Who now in England is “valiant for the truth”? Who is upholding it before the people? Hitherto the grander part of Samson’s character has occupied us, but there was a weak side whenthe strong man was brought low through a temptation that has cast down many strong men. The prison house, with the fallen hero, deprived of sight, shorn of his noble locks, grinding as a slave, the scoff of the enemies of God, is an obvious allegory that hardly needs an interpretation, for it is alas! a picture of every day’s experience when a spiritual man yields to those lusts which war within him, and enslave him if they prevail against him. (C. E. Searle, M. A.)
Samson, the Judge
It was a dark time with Israel when the boon of the future Danite judge was vouchsafed to the prayers of the long barren mother. It seems not unlikely that this may have been a part of that evil time when the ark of God itself fell into the hands of the hosts of Philistia. But there was a dawning of the coming day, and from this utter subjection God was about ere long to deliver His people. Samson was to be a first instrument in this work--he was to “begin to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines” (Jdg_13:5). To enable him to fulfil this peculiar ministry, the possession of extraordinary physical strength, accompanied by an unequalled daring, were the special gifts bestowed upon him. These began early to manifest themselves. From the first they are traced back in the sacred record to the working of that exceptional influence which rested upon him as a “Nazarite unto God.” In spite of actions which seem at a first glance to us Christians irreconcilable with such a spiritual relation, the occurrence of his name under the dictation of the Spirit in the catalogue of worthies “who through faith subdued kingdoms, stopped themouths of lions, escaped the edge of the sword, waxed valiant in fight, and turned to flight the armies of aliens” (Heb_11:32-34), establishes beyond a doubt the fact that he was essentially a faithful man. As we look closer, we may see that passing signs of such an inward vitality break forth from time to time along the ruder outlines of his half-barbarous course. Surely there is written large upon the grave of the Nazarite judge, “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.” There are those in whom, in spite of remaining infirmities, there is a manifest indwelling and inworking of God the Holy Ghost--men whose lives are rich with the golden fruit of His inward life. Their life, without a word spoken, has an untold influence upon others. Be they young or old, they are God’s witnesses, God’s workmen. Far outside these is another circle. These are men of whom it is not possible to doubt that the Spirit of God “has begun to move them at times.” There are plain marks of a hard struggle going on within them; more or less they are conscious of it themselves. The good they would they do not, the evil they would not that they too often do. Perhaps their youth is stained with something of the waywardness, the sensuality, and disorder which marked that of the Nazarite Samson; and yet there is another Spirit striving within them. What a strife it is! with what risks, with what issues! The master temptation of one may be to yield the Nazarite locks of the purity of a Christian soul to the Philistine razor of sensual appetite; to another it may be to surrender to the fair speeches, or perhaps the taunts, of some intellectual Delilah, the faith which grew up early in his heart; his simple trust in God’s Word, in creeds, in prayers, in Christ Incarnate. “Trust to me,” the tempter whispers, “this secret of thy strength, and I will let thee rest at peace and enjoy thy life in victorious possession of all that thy mind lusteth after.” It is the old promise, broken as of old. Beyond that yielding what is there for him but mockery and chains, eyelessness and death? And yet, once again, another class is visible. There are those who, though the Nazarite life is theirs, show to the keenest searching of the longing eye no token of any moving by the blessed Spirit. In some it is as if there had never been so much as a first awakening of the Spirit’s life. In others there is that which we can scarcely doubt is indeed present, active, conscious resistance to the Holy One. This is the darkest, dreariest, most terrible apparition which this world can show. Here, then, are our conclusions.
1. Let us use, simply and earnestly, our present opportunities, such as daily prayer. Let us regularly practise it, in spite of any difficulties. Let us watch over ourselves in little things even more carefully than in those which seem great.
2. Let us guard against all that grieves Him.
3. Letus each one seek from Him a thorough conversion. In this thoroughness is everything--is the giving the heart up to God, is the subduing the life to His law, is all the peace of regulated passions, all the brightness of a purified imagination. (Bp. S. Wilberforce.)
Samson
Of Samson it may be said that he stands alone in the whole round of Scripture characters. The gift of supernatural bodily strength was bestowed on no other of God’s servants. In this respect he is interesting, as furnishing one of the many varieties of form in which God, who spoke to the fathers at sundry times and in divers manners, sought to impress upon them the great lessons of His will. Like Jonah, Samson was a sign to Israel. His life was a sort of parable, exhibiting in a strange but striking form what would have been their experience if they had been faithful. Like the nation of Israel, Samson was consecrated to God. The remarkable thing in his experience was, that while he continued faithful to his consecration he enjoyed such wonderful bodily strength, but the moment that the Nazarite law was broken, he became weak as other men. The nation was taught, symbolically, what wonderful strength would be theirs if they should be faithful to their covenant. On the other hand, the life of Samson set forth with equal clearness, what would be the consequences to Israel of their neglecting their consecration or treating lightly its marks and tokens. There was, however, a third point in which Samson was a type for Israel. Great though the judgment was that punished his neglect, he was not quite abandoned in his captivity. The hair of his head began to grow. The outward tokens of his consecration began to reappear. It was thus indicated to Israel that if, in the midst of judgment and tribulation, they should bethink them of the covenant God and seek to return to Him, He would in mercy return to them, and grant them some tokens of His former blessing. In these respects the career of Samson was peculiar. In addition to this, we are perhaps to view him, in common with the other judges, as typically setting forth the great Deliverer--the Lion of the tribe of Judah. In one respect Samson was quite specially a type of Christ. He was the first of the Hebrew worthies who deliberately gave his life for his country. Many risked their lives, but he actually, and on purpose, gave his, that his country might reap the benefit. Only here, too, we must remark an obvious difference. Both achieved salvation by dying, but in very different ways. Samson saved inspiteof his death, Jesus by His death. Let us now glance at the salient points of his career. In his early training he presented a great contrast to Jephthah. In a very special sense he was a gift of God to his family and his nation; and the gift was made in a very solemn manner, and under the express condition that he was to be trained to live not for himself or for his family, but for God, to whom he was consecrated from his mother’s womb. And no doubt he was brought up with the strictest regard to the rules of the Nazarites. Yet we may see, what was probably very common in these cases, that while he was rigidly attentive to the external rules, he failed to carry out, in some very essential respects, the spirit of the transaction. In heart he was not so consecrated as in outward habit. The self-pleasing spirit, against which the vow of the Nazarite was designed to bear, appeared very conspicuously in his choice of a wife. “Get her for me,” he said to his father, “for she pleaseth me.” The thought of her nation, of her connections, of her religion, was overborne by the one consideration, “she pleaseth me.” This does not look like one trained in all things to follow the will of God, and to keep the sensual part of his nature in strictest subjection to the spiritual. True, it is said, “the thing was of the Lord “; but this does not imply that it carried His approval. It entered as an element into God’s providential plans, and was “of the Lord” only in the sense in which God makes the devices of men to work out the counsel of His sovereign will. Yielding at the outset of his life, and in a most vital manner, to an impulse which should have met with firm resistance, Samson became the husband of this Philistine stranger. But it was not long ere he found out his lamentable error. The shallow qualities that had taken his fancy only covered a faithless heart; she abused his confidence and proved a traitor. And after he had had experience of her treachery he did not cast her off but after a time sought her company, and it was only when he learned that she had been given to another, that he dashed into a wild scheme of revenge--catching the two hundred foxes, and setting fire to the growing corn. Whatever we may say of this proceeding, it showed unmistakably a very fearless spirit. The neighbouring tribe of Judah was horrified at the thought of the exasperation the Philistines would feel and the retribution they would inflict, and meanly sought to surrender Samson into their hands. Then came Samson’s greatest achievement, well fitted to cow thePhilistines if they should be thinking of reprisals--the slaughter of the thousand men with the jaw-bone of an ass. Like one inspired, Samson moved alone against a whole nation, strong in the conviction that God was with him, and that in serving Him there could be no ground for fear. But the old weakness returned again. The lust of the flesh was the unguarded avenue to Samson’s heart, and despite previous warnings, the foe once more found entrance here. It is a lust that when it has gained force has a peculiar tendency to blind and fascinate, and urge a man onwards, though ruin stares him in the face. Other lusts, as covetousness or ambition, or the thirst of gold, are for the most part susceptible of control; but let a sensual lust once prevail, control by human means becomes impossible. It dashes on like a scared horse, and neither bridle, nor cries, nor efforts of any kind, can avail to arrest its course. So it proved in the case of Samson. He seemed to rush into the very jaws of destruction. How sad to see a grand nature drawn to destruction by so coarse a bait!--to see a wonderful Divine gift fallen into the hands of the enemy, only to be made their sport. Sad and lamentable fall it was! Not merely a great hero reduced to a slave, not merely one who had rejoiced in his strength afflicted by blindness, the very symbol of weakness, but the champion of his nation prostrate, the champion of his nation’s faith in the dust! It would seem that his affliction was useful to Samson in the highest sense. With the growth of his hair, the higher principles that came from above grew and strengthened in him too. He remembered the destiny for which he had been designed, but which appeared to have been defeated. He was humbled at the thought of the triumph of the uncircumcised, a triumph in which the honour of God was concerned, for the Philistines were praising their god and saying, “Our god hath delivered our enemy into our hands.” Oh, if he could yet but fulfil his destiny! It was to vindicate the God of his fathers, to save the honour of his people, and to secure to coming generations the freedom and happiness which he himself could never know, that he laid himself on the altar and died a miserable death. Thus it appears that Samson was worthy of place among those who, forgetful of self, gave themselves for the deliverance of their country. Let the young be induced to aim at steady, uniform, consistent service. It is awful work when the servants of God get entangled in the toils of the tempter. It is humbling to have but a blotted and mutilated service to render to God. Happy they who are enabled to present the offering of a pure life, a childhood succeeded by a noble youth, and youth by a consistent manhood, and manhood by a mellow and fragrant old age. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.
“Root, and stem, and blossom undefiled.”
Samson shows us with painful clearness what havoc and misery may flow from a single form of sinful indulgence, from one root of bitterness left in the soil. (W. G. Blaikie, D. D.)
Samson’s gift
I. Here was a man of surpassing physical strength. His distinction was, that in splendour of muscle and sinew none could approach him, and hence his popularity and the high position he acquired. In a later age and a more advanced state of society it would not have enthroned him thus. But these are the earliest masters, these are the primitive heroes, the men who can do great things with their limbs. Afterwards, the dominion is taken from them and given to the largest brains. Now, Samson was simply mighty in muscle and sinew. Unlike most of the other judges he does not appear to have possessed the slightest military genius or enterprise, nor any power of combining his countrymen in opposition to their enemies, or inspiring them with spirit and desire to fight for liberty. There was no generalship in him, and no gift for leading. He had but massive, magnificent limbs, and went in, straightway, for applying them to the help of Israel without caring or aiming to be more and other than heaven had qualified him to be. Is it not a grand thing always to perceive the line along which we can minister, and to be willing to pursue it, and able to keep to it, however narrow or relatively inferior it may be. Not a few would be more successful and more useful than they are were they but more bravely content to be themselves--did they but accept more unreservedly the talent committed to them, and study more simply and independently to be faithful to it. Samson’s gift was not much, was not of the highest kind. It was far below that of other judges in Israel, nor did it produce any great results. Is it not possible that the reported mighty deeds of the redoubtable Nazarite of Dan had something to do in moving Hannah to set apart her boy, the boy for whom she had prayed, to be a Nazarite from his birth? Samson may have contributed to give to Israel the greater Samuel. “I, too,” he had stirred the woman in Mount Ephraim to say to herself--“I too, would fain have a son devoted to work wonders in the cause of God’s people; let me make sacred for the purpose this new-born babe of mine!” and out of that came, not a mere repetition of the same wonder-working strength, but something infinitely superior--even the wisest, noblest, and most powerful judge the land had ever seen. And so, often, they who are doing faithfully, in quite a small way, on quite a small scale, may be secretly conducive to the awakening and inspiring of grander actors than themselves. There are those who, with their rough and crude performances, with their honest yet blundering attempts, with their dim guesses and half-discoveries, do prepare the way, and furnish the clue for subsequent splendid successes on the part of some who come after them.
II. But observe what Samson’s countrymen thought of his amazing physical strength, and how it impressed and affected them. They ascribed it to the Spirit of the Lord: “The Spirit of the Lord came upon him.” That was how they looked at it. Their mountains were to them more than mountains, they were the mountains of the Lord, and the might of their mighty men was the might of the Lord. It is worth cherishing, this old Hebrew sense of the sacredness of things; it helps to make the world a grander place, and to enhance and elevate one’s enjoyment of all skills and powers displayed by men. Samson’s chief value lay, perhaps, after all, in the one inspiring thought which his prowess awakened--the thought that God was there; for it is a blessed thing to be the means of starting in any sluggish, despondent, or earth-bound human breast some inspiring thought. Good work it is, and great, to be the instrument of putting another, for a while, into a better and holier frame, of leading him to be more tender, more patient, more finely sympathetic, or more believing in the Divine government of things, and in the reality of the kingdom of God. (S. A. Tipple.)
Samson
AllScripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. Especially God teaches us by recording lives of men and women like ourselves, and leaving them there with their lessons staring us in the face.
I. Consider, then, how low God’s people had fallen through their unfaithfulness to Him, and their many departures, though they had only been a short time ago brought into a land flowing with milk and honey. Ammon, Midian, and Moab had all conquered them in turn. Now it was the Philistines, with a little country bordering on the sea coast, and with five chief cities, and yet they oppressed God’s people! They would not let them have any weapons, and their very ploughs had to be sharpened at a Philistine forge. They constantly made raids upon them. It was a sore humiliation when Germany marched right up to Paris, dictated terms to the conquered in their own great Palace at Versailles, and made them pay heavily before they would go home. But suppose it had been Belgium! And yet Philistia answered somewhat to that: so low and weak do men become when they depart from the living God. But then it was that the Lord in wrath remembered mercy, and sent them Samson, a mighty deliverer. Deborah and Barak had delivered them before. Gideon and Jephthah had kept up the bright succession, and now Samson entered into it, and for a long time made the Philistines tremble. Never were such wonders known as he wrought, and the oppressions of the Philistines soon came to an end. O sunny, strong, stout-hearted Samson, how much good you might have done if you could have ruled yourself as well as conquering your foes! But there he failed, and so all was a failure. He was a Nazarite, and so never took any wine, according to the Nazarite vow, and yet he was completely overcome by the lusts of the flesh. It was not in vain that the net had been spread in the sight of the bird. He had seen the wicked Delilah and the savage Philistines spreading it together, and had been taken in it just the same. The same razor that cut his hair, the sign of his strength, could have cut his throat at any time. But for a few months he lingered on in penitence and prayer, whilst his hair grew once more--the sign, though not the source, of his strength. And then came a great day in Gaza, when they gathered to glorify their god Dagon in thousands. So with one tremendous effort of his new-found strength down came the columns, and down came the temple, and down came the people, and “the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.” So when they thought themselves most secure their sport was turned to woe, and in an hour when they looked not for it their destruction came,
II. But now let us look at some of the lessons which this remarkable story is designed to teach.
1. And the obvious one on the face of the whole narrative is the poor figure that mere physical strength cuts. There are three sorts of strength--physical, intellectual, and spiritual--and the greatest of these is spiritual. If this be lacking, the other two are of little use. Later on, Solomon was an example of how mental power is of little worth without true godliness. Samson is an example of great strength of body, but he becomes the fool and the plaything of wicked women. There is a great deal of attention paid to physical strength to-day, but it is a poor thing at the best. “Bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness is profitable unto all things.” We may have very strong muscles and very weak resolutions, and when the greatest strength is secured it is very inferior to that of the gorilla. God only “began” to deliver Israel in Samson’s day, it is significantly said. The real and effective deliverance came later on, when Samuel, the wise and the good, judged Israel for a long time, and David carried on his moral and spiritual reformation.
2. But, further, let us never rely on certain moralities if we are failing in obedience to God. Samson was not devoid of all spiritual strength. He was a Nazarite from his birth, and the vow of the Nazarite, of which he is the first example, included abstinence from wine and all similar drinks. There is a false sympathy as well as a true, and its influence is to misinterpret and condone evil. So we are perpetually told by a certain class of writers that Charles I. may have been a great public sinner, but he had excellent private virtues. He may have been, as declared in his sentence, “a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy,” but he was a good husband and a good father. He broke his coronation oath a hundred times, but then he always kept his marriage vow. He was an awful tyrant, but he took his little son on his knee and kissed him. He was a dreadful liar, but he went to the prayers in his chapel sometimes at six in the morning. So, well may Lord Macaulay exclaim, “If in the most important things we find him to have been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we will take the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of all his temperance at table and all his regularity at chapel.”
3. Let us remember that the badge of our consecration is largely the pledge of our strength.
4. Yea, let the very Dagon worshippers teach us some such lesson. When Samson was caught, like some wild beast, they all gathered together to do honour to their fish-god Dagon. It was nothing to do with Dagon, but instead of honouring Delilah and the lords of the Philistines who had enticed her, they had a great assembly to do honour to their god. They said, when they saw Samson, “Our god hath delivered into our hands our enemy, and the destroyer of our country, which slew many of us.” There was not quite enough of this in Samson, even when he had his strength. When he slew his thousand Philistines it was, “I have done it.” Yes, we may often learn from those that have not our light. The Mohammedans believe many a lie and strong delusion, but this is what Mr. Wilson says of them in “Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan”: “These Arabs are most regular in performing their devotions, even on the march. I noticed frequently sand on their foreheads, chins, and noses, from their prostrations during prayers. The sand is never wiped off, as it is considered a mark of honour on a believer’s face.” Oh, let us keep before us the true mercies and blessings of the true God, and pay our vows unto the Most High!(W. J. Heaton.)
From weakness to strength
That child was a dedicated child. Could any parent have a child, and not dedicate it? Could that parent be a Christian? Deal with that little child not as a plaything, but as a holy thing given you of God, and which you have given back to Him. Remember it, my children! You are God’s child. Your body, your mind, and your soul belong to God. Remember it in your play, in your studies, when you get up in the morning. This “child” was still a growing child, when “the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times.” God takes the initiative with us in everything; and there is no age so tender, and no thought or feeling so simple, but the Holy Spirit may be there. Is there a boy or a girl who could not say that they have thoughts, whispers, little inward voices, drawings of heart, which they have felt and knew to be of God? You will observe that “the moving of the Spirit“ is placed immediately after “and the Lord blessed him.” The “moving” is the “blessing.” We should do well if we always looked at a good thought when it comes and say, “This is God blessing me. This thought is a benediction.” You may notice that “the moving“ was not only dated as to time, but dated as respects the exact place. So important a “moving” is, in God’s sight. “The Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol.” How precise! If we could see that register in heaven, we should find them all there in distinct order--the exact when, and the exact where, the Holy Spirit comes to us. It would be a solemn thing to confront that register. Have you kept any account? We often try; but the number wilt outstretch all our arithmetic! Doubtless it was “strength” which the “moving of the Spirit” gave to the young Samson. Strength is a special gift of the Holy Ghost. His operations are always strengthening. It is what we all, in our great weakness, particularly want; and therefore He particularly supplies. For we have to deal with very strong things--a strong will; a strong besetting sin; a strong tide of evil in us and about us; a strong invisible foe! We have to be very thankful that He who said, “Be strong!” has placed it among the offices of the Holy Ghost to “stablish, strengthen, settle” us. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
