The Samson Story

(avg. read time: 7–14 mins.)

I did not read the Bible all the way through until after I became a Christian at 15. But that did not mean I was unaware of it beforehand. One of the stories that drew my attention as a kid was the story of Samson, in no small part because it reminded me of the stories of Heracles/Hercules I had read back then. But as I grew older and returned to this text after my conversion, I realized that there was much more going on in this story than I recognized before and that maybe Samson was not the hero I thought he was. When I returned to this story again and again, I also realized that some Christians have a tendency to lionize him and ignore the important ways in which he is a strongly negative example. Perhaps no example is more demonstrative than the Samson movie that came out in 2018. I would like to review it one day, but for now I want to focus on the biblical story of Samson as I offer some reflections on it. In the process, I want to present the Samson story in its context of Judges, look at the Samson story proper, and then consider why he is mentioned among the list in the “Hall of Faith” in Heb 11.

First, I think Daniel Block accurately articulates the central theme of Judges as the “Canaanization of Israel.”¹ Because the Israelites forget their distinctive history, their distinctive tradition, and because they have not driven out the Canaanites, they in turn become more like the Canaanites and violate the covenant they have with God. The main narrative portion of Judges is defined by a cycle outlined in Judg 2:10–19. A leader dies and the people all too quickly forget what the Lord had done for them. Remembrance is a crucial aspect of biblical faith, and it is a recurrent emphasis in Deuteronomy in particular (Deut 5:15; 7:18; 8:2, 18; 9:7; 15:15; 16:3, 12; 24:9, 18, 22; 25:17; 32:7), a book which in turn provides a framework for the historical books of the Former Prophets. Because they forget, they lose their allegiance to YHWH and become assimilated to the surrounding culture in worshipping their gods. Then YHWH sends the surrounding nations against them, including the Arameans, Moabites, Canaanites, Midianites, Ammonites, and Philistines. After suffering oppression under these nations, the Israelites cry out to YHWH. YHWH hears them and sends them “judges” (שׁפט; pl. שׁפטים) or, more properly “deliverers.” The word is typically translated as “judge” and it is in fact related to a Hebrew word referring to justice (משׁפט), and there are occasions where it seems like adjudication was involved in the judges’ responsibilities. But in the context of Judges, and in many others, it is better to understand this term as referring to “deliverers,” as the key Judg 2:16, in particular, shows. Indeed, the role of the judge could just as well be described as restoring shalom to the nation, which is also related to משׁפט. The word in general has the basic sense of “governing,” which Block notes can be divided into sub-meanings of “to judge” (or lead in internal affairs) and “to deliver” (to lead in external affairs).² But after the judge/deliverer dies, the cycle restarts when the people forget YHWH.

Samson himself, as the last judge referenced in this book, turns out to be a rather outstanding example of both the Canaanization of Israel and the role of the judge as deliverer, although because of the mixing of these themes, he is a deliverer in a providential and incidental way, rather than purposefully. Block notes the following ways in which Samson exemplifies Israel as a whole:

Samson is a Wunderkind, miraculously born by the will of God.

Samson is called to a high life of separation and devotion to Yahweh.

Samson has a rash, opportunistic, and immature personality.

Samson is inexorably drawn to foreign women, like Israel was drawn to foreign gods (both ‘play the harlot’).

Samson experiences the bondage and oppression of the enemy.

Samson cries out to Yahweh from his oppression.

Samson is blinded (cf. 1 Sam 3:1–3).

Samson is abandoned by Yahweh and does not know it.³

That he is a deliverer in an incidental more than a purposeful way is all the more ironic when his story is framed as someone who was a Nazirite, someone who is supposed to live in a particularly purposeful manner, from birth. The word comes from נזר, which can be translated as “to dedicate” or “to consecrate.” The parameters of this consecration are laid out in Num 6:1–21. In making themselves set apart for the Lord, the Nazirite is to set aside drinking wine or strong drink, or indeed any form of product of the grapevine. Nor, of course, could they eat anything unclean (as is made explicit in Judg 13:4 and assumed in Numbers). They are not to cut their hair until the time of the vow is completed, which for Samson meant he could never cut his hair for his entire life. They are, of course, not to touch a corpse, as that was one of the most significant ways people could become unclean, but they are not even to go near a corpse. It is notable that the provision about the corpse is not repeated in Samson’s case, perhaps because he was given some leeway due to his role as deliverer and what that role entailed. But even so, because touching a corpse was more generally regarded as causing uncleanness in the ancient world, Samson probably understood well enough that returning to a corpse after he had killed someone was a different matter in this respect than simply killing them.

But it is notable how utterly transgressive Samson’s story is. First, he tries to marry a Philistine woman (14:1–15:6), but while the narrator informs us that this was part of God’s providence (14:4), this is not the reason Samson pursues her. Rather, as is manifested at multiple times in this story, Samson has a weakness in his desire for women (14:1–4, 16–17; 16:1, 4–20). He is not intentionally pursuing the will of God here; he simply happens to follow it. In the course of this story, Samson receives power from the Spirit coming upon him to rip a lion apart (14:5–6), but then he will return to this lion’s carcass to take honey from it (14:8–9), thus making himself unclean. This story precedes Samson being in a feast that would have involved him drinking wine (cf. the same word in 1 Sam 25:36; Esth 1:3–9; 5:4–6; 7:2–8; Dan 1:5, 8–10, 16). It is ambiguous as to whether Samson killing the thirty Philistines to take their garments to settle a wager in which he was tricked (14:19), but he did make himself unclean in using a donkey’s jawbone to kill 1,000 Philistines (15:14–16). In both of these cases, it is made clear that the power comes from the Spirit rushing upon him. He acts a deliverer incidentally because God incorporates his life into his plan, not because he has an inherent power or even the will to act as a deliverer. In fact, the first time he calls upon the Lord in Judges is immediately after killing the 1,000 Philistines (15:18–19). While he acknowledges that God has given him the victory, he also complains that he cannot find anything to drink, but then God provides him with water.

His twenty years as a judge are glanced over, and the narration has a fixation on his interactions with the Philistines. In terms of what is narrated, not necessarily in terms of time implied by the story itself, Samson spends much more of his time as a judge among the Philistines than among the Israelites. He goes back among the Israelites for refuge after he burned Philistine fields after catching 300 jackals or foxes (15:4–5), which also involved him slaughtering those who killed the family that would have been his wife and in-laws. Likewise, when he escapes Gaza, he carries its gate to the vicinity of Hebron (16:3), approximately forty miles away with ~3,000 feet of change in elevation. It is interesting to note that in both this case and in the case where he is ultimately captured (16:15–21), the implication is that a peculiarly deep sleep has come on the people involved, and this seems to be a passive indication that the sleep is divinely induced in both cases.

He is ultimately captured because he has fallen in love with another Philistine woman named Delilah. He is apparently so blinded by his desire for her that he does not realize again and again that she has become part of a conspiracy to capture him. On one level, this story resembles the cycle Israel goes through in the Book of Judges, failing to realize again and again what leads them into suffering under the nations and failing to remember the YHWH is their God and they are YHWH’s people, instead frequently returning to the foreign idols. On the level of this particular story, this failure will lead to Samson breaking the last piece of the Nazirite vow he has not broken yet in letting his hair be cut, which only happened because he told Delilah that cutting it would sap him of his strength. His failure to live up to his vow is now complete. But that is not the end of his story.

The last episode of Samson’s story narrates his death and draws attention to a conflict of YHWH and Dagon (16:23–31) that frames this story and will continue to frame stories in the opening chapters of 1 Samuel. One who was thought to be the champion of YHWH is now brought to be put on display for the entertainment of the Philistines during a sacrifice for Dagon at Gaza. In this story, after he has reached his lowest point, he calls upon the Lord for the second time (16:28–30). He realizes that his strength comes from God, but he again prays for self-centered ends, paying the Philistines back for his eyes, not for what they have done to his people. He even wishes to die with them. And so he does, while taking 3,000 Philistines with him when the great house he is in collapses from him pushing down its pillars. Block says of Samson’s final words, “With this utterance Samson declares his total and final identification with the enemy. What a tragic inversion of the office to which he had been called! The Nazirite, set apart for the service of God, wants to die with the uncircumcised Philistines.”⁴ I think this is overstating the point, not least because he is not identifying with them by dying with them, any more than a soldier who sacrifices his life to take out the enemy is identifying with them in his death. Given his situation, it is not as if he has many options of what can happen when the house comes down; he simply does not ask to be saved from the destruction. But the point remains that Samson’s death is another case of him serving his purpose incidentally and providentially.

Thus it can certainly come as a surprise when a man who exhibited no virtue in his story should come to be named among the examples of faith in Israel’s history in Heb 11. The author does not explain what it is about Samson that merits mention here, but he appears among a group of names including Gideon, Barak, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets. We need to consider the connections of these people with the programmatic statements about faith in Heb 11:1–2. Gideon is probably listed because of his defeat of a much superior Midian army. While there is a sense in which Gideon operated by sight, as he asked for signs on three separate occasions, when it came time to act on the command of God to attack the Midianites with an army of only 300, Gideon acted loyally. Indeed, at this critical point, Gideon acted faithfully in spite of what he saw (namely, the army of 135,000; Judg 8:10). Barak likewise obeyed God’s commands and believed in God’s promises to him in spite of what he had seen of Jabin’s and Sisera’s seemingly unstoppable army of chariots (4:6–7). Again, he was not perfect in this regard either, as he said that he would not go as God commanded unless Deborah the prophetess, through whom God’s command and promise came, went with him. While their key moments were acting on promises of unseen things, both Gideon and Barak still wanted visible signs and totems as a surety.

Interestingly, faith plays no clear role in the story of Samson. In fact, of all the judges—it is unclear if Abimelech should be counted, since different terminology is applied to his rule—Samson is the worst example of faithful conduct. He only invokes God twice in his story (15:18; 16:28), despite the amount of attention devoted to him, and in one other case he mentions that he is a Nazirite to God (16:17), but he focuses on his hair’s relation to his strength rather than noting that the Spirit of God would leave him if he broke the one part of his Nazirite vow that he had not violated to that point (16:20). Of these events, the most likely event that the author could have interpreted as one of faith is his final act, when he calls upon God to strengthen him so that he may take vengeance on the Philistines for his eyes (rather than for what they had done to his people, since he was meant to be the deliverer of his people). The faith element—according to the paradigm that we have seen in the rest of the chapter to this point—would be in Samson’s reliance on God to strengthen him, not operating by sight—which he literally could not do at that time in his life—but by trust. His motives were not pure, but by this point he had been humbled and did not simply worship at the altar of his own desires anymore. He still achieved the purposes of God for his life by beginning the deliverance from the Philistines, even if it was often by selfish means.

On the other side of the reference to Samson, we see that Jephthah also is a complicated example, given his rash vow at the cost of his daughter and his massacre by Shibboleth. Still, he shows faith by an important means in the history of Israel. One of the important features that the history of Israel highlights about various figures from Moses to Joshua to Samuel to Solomon (at least partly) to Josiah is their knowledge of the story of Israel. Having the scene in 11:12–28 with the exchange between the Ammonite king and Jephthah is not strictly necessary to the plot, especially since the king pays no attention to what Jephthah says. It does however say something important about Jephthah. He possesses a certain pious knowledge of Israel’s story and how God has acted in it. Because he knows this story, he is able to establish Israel’s claim on the land, since it was given to them by God. And based on his knowledge of this history, although not knowing Israel’s future, he trusts that God will deliver the Ammonites into his hands (11:23–27), even if he added a vow to God to this trust. David and Samuel are more obvious examples of faith, so I will not dwell on them here, even though the former is another complicated example. The prophets likewise abound and, like the author himself, I can only say that time would fail me to tell about them.

Of note for my interest in Samson is that while some of the acts of faith by people mentioned to this point were in extraordinary circumstances, these acts were not done by people who were so much better than the average faithful Christian. In fact, many of them, including Samson, have left legacies including acts of remarkable unfaithfulness. Yet they are still remembered for their faith and testify as examples of what it means to have faith to we who are their heirs. And considering that they were before the climax of history in Jesus, there were even more promises of God that they did not see come to pass and they still had to act on what was available to them. For all his failings, Samson was among them and there is an element of faith to consider in his story, as I note above. We should be more upfront about his failings, but more importantly we should note how God can take even a single act of faith and make an important legacy, how God uses people like him, and how God is faithful even when we are faithless.

1. Daniel I. Block, Judges, Ruth, NAC 6 (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1999), 57–59.

2. Block, Judges, 24.

3. Block, Judges, 392.

4. Block, Judges, 469.