Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
the idea of a substitute. As a punishment for taking away his wife Samson tied 300
foxes together by their tails in pairs and lit a torch between them. The foxes ran through
the corn fields of the Philistines destroying their crops.
The Philistines retaliated against Samson by burning Samsons wife and her household.
Samson singlehandedly went to war against the Philistines. We are not told how many
people Samson slew at that first battle, but apparently an impressive number. He then
retreated to a mountain.
The men of the Philistines came to take Samson by force. But the men of Israel did not
want their country destroyed because of this war. They knew the Philistines were
mightier than Israel. Therefore, 3,000 Israelites came to Samson to ask him to turn
himself in. He allowed them to bind him with ropes and deliver him to the Philistines.
When he arrived in the camp of the Philistines, Samson broke the ropes and again
fought the the men of the land. This time he battled with a donkeys jawbone. He killed
1,000 Philistines before the fight was over. But, he was dying of thirst. God provided
water for him from the jawbone.
This single-man war against the Philistines started a 20 year reign of Samson over the
Philistines. Samson did not always obey God or His plan, yet God used Samson to lead
and protect Israel. Therefore he is one of the many judges in the Bible that God used.
At one point Samson was surrounded by the Philistines in Gaza to capture him. He rose
in the middle of the night and tore the gates of the city from their hinges. Then the
Philistines plan to capture him was not accomplished.
Samson had a woman problem. The reason he was in Gaza previously was to be with a
prostitute. Later he was in the Valley of Sorek with Delilah, who was not his wife. Delilah
was a Philistine. The leaders of the land each promised to pay her 1,100 pieces of silver
for her help in discovering Samsons strength and for bringing him into captivity.
Through various attempts and pleading, which you can read about in the story of
Samson and Delilah, she was able to uncover his weakness. Samson was taken
prisoner with the help of Delilah.
Samsons hair had been cut and his eyes gouged out. He was taken to the grinding
wheel of the Philistines. Samson was publicly humiliated.Samson was placed in front of
the prison house to be humiliated once again. He asked the young boy that led him out
(presumably like a dog on a leash) to place his hands on the pillars of the building.
Though blinded and humiliated or maybe because he was finally humbled, Samson
prayed that God would allow him to do a work on behalf of Israel once again. God
granted him the strength to knock down the building. The Bible says that Samson slew
more in his death under the rubble of the building than he did in his life.
Interpretation and Understanding on Samsons life
II. Interpretation and Understanding on Samsons life
One leader who could have qualified to be a judge also owing to his superhuman gift of
physical strength is Samson. Samson, never acted as a military commander of sorts
leading his people in any campaign against the enemy. Neither did he act as a judge
trying to resolve disputes among his people. Rather, he used his superhuman strength
solely as an individual warrior carrying a more personal crusade of revenge against the
Philistines who took his wife away from him. He carried on his fight not necessarily
against an invading enemy but against a people who were representing the more
dominant and powerful group in the land. His exploits indeed reveal clearly how the
Israelites were able to manage living near the territories of the more wealthy and
civilized Philistines not without the expected border irritants and occasional violent
skirmishes.
His exploits appear to be revolving more around the theme of his fascination with
foreign women, even with harlots (16:1). The writer of his story appears to point to such
fascination as the one thing that eventually led to his own downfall and eventual death.
Such a story, especially of his falling for the charms of the beautiful Delilah may also
remind the readers in time of the writer of the same weakness Solomon manifested as a
leader. It is such weakness which the historian may be pointing out as a key to
Solomons being denounced by the historian for apostasy and which led to the eventual
division of his kingdom upon his death (cf. 1Kgs. 11:1-12). Military or even physical
power can only be used to serve and acknowledge its source and for the service of
ones own people. Once it is used to serve the ends of foreign domination and control it
is bound to be judged and terminated by the only power that gave it its original
existence.
II.
A.
Negative
1. Israels decision to change her own political system is a revolutionary
event
a. From what has been unique to itself to what has been
commonly accepted.
b. A system of tribal confederation undergirded by the tradition of
the covenant emanating from the Sinai event has made Israels
society at that time a totally unique and unprecedented one;
Israel then was to live without any human king but solely under
one ruler, Yahweh.
c. A revolutionary step towards typical nationhood, not different
from any of the nations around them, the decision to adopt the
way of nations around them by having their own king.
d. The ideal of being and living as a people uniquely set apart from
the rest of the nations with its own radical alternative mode of
B.