Hey, I'm back!  It was a strange week, and sort of sad.  We lost a foster dog to illness, and have been been busy doing foster type things. It's been busy, but I don't feel like I've done much of anything.  The last time we were together, I was talking about Samson as an everyman blessed by the Spirit of God.  Let's get to the part of the story everyone knows...or do they?

So far, Samson has broken most of his Nazirite vow with one exception: he still has his long hair.  By the anointing of God's Spirit, Samson has embarassed and humiliated the Philistines at every turn.  He has tricked them, killed thousands of their mighty men, and even escaped capture. 

Judges 16:4 - Afterward it happened that he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.

Ah, amore'...but here's the rub: Delilah was a plant.  (not a vegetable, a spy)

Judges 16:5 - And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to 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."

Samson's weakness for women was well known to his enemies. This is important, guys:  our Enemy knows us better than we know ourselves, he know just how and where to strike us.  Samson liked women, and he wasn't able to keep a poker face very long.  The trap was set.  Delilah started in on him, nagging him day and night.  He was able to keep up the poker face through three rounds.

First, he told her that fresh bowstrings would bind him so that he could not break free.  Strike one  Delilah pestered him more.  Then, he said that new ropes would bind him.  Strike two. 

The next story was closer to the truth.  Samson tells his mistress that if his hair is braided into a loom, he would not be able to break free. 

Judges 16:13, 14 - 13

Delilah said to Samson, "Until now you have mocked me and told me lies. Tell me what you may be bound with." And he said to her, "If you weave the seven locks of my head into the web of the loom"- 
So she wove it tightly with the batten of the loom, and said to him, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson!" But he awoke from his sleep, and pulled out the batten and the web from the loom.

Strike three, but Samson's not out yet.  It's at this point in the story that it becomes apparent that Samson is not the brightest bulb in the box.  Some men might wonder why the girl he shacks up with keeps asking him how he might be bound.  This isn't kinky pillow talk, she wants him captured and has tried three times already.  Time to break it off and leave, right? 

Well...as we've seen, Samson, aside from being rather dull was not one to give up a hot woman, even one who seemed interested in getting him captured and killed by his enemies. The Philistines had once before used Samson's wife against him.  Some might say that Samson was using Delilah, playing a cat-and-mouse game.  Maybe he thought that as long as he worked against the Philistines he would remain in God's favour.

If Samson was that arrogant, then he deserved what happened next. God had allowed Samson to bend the rules for obedience in the most basic part of the Nazirite vow. 

Judges 16:16,17,19,20 -  And it came to pass, when she pestered him daily with her words and pressed him, so that his soul was vexed to death, that he told her all his heart, and said to her, "No razor has ever come upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother's womb. If I am shaven, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man."

Then she lulled him to sleep on her knees, and called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him, and his strength left him.

And she said, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson!" So he awoke from his sleep, and said, "I will go out as before, at other times, and shake myself free!" But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him.

Samson's arrogance came to roost.  The Phillistines captured him, gouged out his eyes, and put him to work grinding grain in a mill. We're not told how long Samson was held prisoner, probably more than five years, but we do know it was long enough for his hair to grow long again. 

It was apparently long enough for Samson to grow one more thing; a healthy dose of humility.  "How could I have been so stupid?"  might have been a much repeated question in the man's mind. Day and night, month after month, going in circles, with regret and shame.  If we learn something from Samson's fall, let it be that we know Who gives us our power. 

Without God, Samson was a puny little fool who thought only about himself when he wasn't lusting after a woman.   Without God's grace and presence, we aren't much better.  As Christians, we have a new heart, but we can still let control go, for a time, to our sinful old selves.  When we give in to temptation, we're like a shaved Samson, open to attack, even ones we might have overcome before, when we were in tune with God. 

The humiliation of Samson, thankfully, is not the end of the story.  Samson's hair grows back just in time for the Philistines to hold a festival to their fish-god, Dagon.  He is put on display like a performing ape or a bear on a unicycle.  Dependant upon a servant boy, he asks to be led to the pillars that hold up the second level of the temple.  Samson's moment of redemption goes like this:

Judges 16: 28-30 - Then Samson called to the Lord, saying, "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!" 
And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars which supported the temple, and he braced himself against them, one on his right and the other on his left. 
Then Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines!" And he pushed with all his might, and the temple fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So the dead that he killed at his death were more than he had killed in his life.

I think too many people glaze over the story of Samson as a morality tale, 'loose lips sink ships', that type of thing.  Or they take it as a children's bedtime story about a strong man who did mighty deeds, leaving out the messy parts of Samson's life.  I have not yet heard a sermon on Samson, an everyman touched by the Spirit of God.

Thanks again for reading, and God bless.