The
sin unto death; Judges Chapter 16
This chapter cannot be understood in simple isolation. It is not simply the story of one who is more brawn than brains who is duped by an attractive female into giving up the secret of his strength. Neither is it some tale of magic like the liberals wish to portray, that some how the Bible shows that Samson was this guy who got his strength from his hair. The hair was not the source of Samson’s strength, it was God, and the hair was simply an external visual indicator of his Nazirite vow. Judges chapter 16 is the closing chapter in the central part of the book of Judges. This section began in chapter three, verse five. The introduction, 1:1 to 3:4, we are introduced to the major theme of the whole book of Judges: there was no king in Israel and everyone did that which was right in their own eyes. In that introduction, especially in the first part of chapter two, we are introduced to the ongoing cycle: the cycle of disobedience, discipline, and then divine deliverance that characterizes this book. The central part of the book then develops that theme in relationship to the leadership. The rest of the book from chapter seventeen to twenty-one focuses on how this theme develops among the people., how they have succumbed to relativism. And since the leadership of a nation always arises from the culture as a whole, leadership always tends to reflect the values of a culture. Therefore when we have certain leaders in our nation and wonder how in the world we ever ended up with somebody like that in public office often we only need to look at our own culture. They are reflections of who we are now. We may not like that but that is the way it is.
So
when we look at the leadership through the cycles of the Judges we see that
they exemplify the deterioration of positive volition in Israel. It is a time
of apostasy. The book of Judges is not a positive book, it is not a book that
presents these men in terms of their spiritual maturity as great heros of the
faith. The thing is that many of these men are listed in Hebrews chapter
eleven. Hebrews 11 is often called the hall of faith chapter because it
represents and presents all of the Old Testament believers because of their
doctrine, because of their faith, because of the way they trusted God. And at
the end of the list where the writer spends a lot of time developing Abraham,
Moses, the heroes of the Old Testament, he comes to the end and says, I don’t
have time to talk about Gideon and Samson and Jephthah. Of course, these are
all judges, and yet if we had seen by looking at these men they are not exactly
the picture of spiritual maturity and wisdom. They are not the kind of men that
we would desire our children to emulate as they grow up. But they did at
crucial times trust God. They exercised the faith-rest drill, they knew a
promise of God and they implemented it, and for that they are praised by God.
As we look at that as fallen creatures who are saved by grace we realize that
it is all grace. It is a tremendous book on grace orientation because it helps
us realize that it is not based on who we are or what we have done. Even the
spiritual life is not based on who we are or what we have done. And if God
could honor men like Gideon and Jephthah and Samson by placing them in Hebrews
eleven as an example of the faith-rest drill, then “Gosh, there is hope for me
too.” That is the grace of God. We look at this in terms of its expression of
God’s grace because God continues to work in the lives of the nation Israel
despite their carnality and despite their failure.
Why
is that? It is the Abrahamic covenant. God established a legal contract with
the nation Israel (with Abraham) and on the basis of that God promised that He
would bless all nations through Israel. He would give Israel a specific piece
olf real estate, and promised that there would be a seed that would come
through the nation Israel. In His integrity God is not going to go back on His
Word. He is not going to violate His promise despite the fact that Israel falls
into idolatry again and again and again. We have seen this continuous cycle,
and it is a deterioration, the increase of apostasy and reversionism from
generation to generation. It began with Othniel and it is going to end with
Samson. This chapter 16 is the last chapter in this leadership cycle. Othniel
is presented as the standard bearer of integrity of leadership at the very
beginning. There is nothing negative said about Othniel. He is a great warrior,
he exemplifies everything that the Jewish male should be at the time of the
conquest. He is trusting God to give him the land and to give him victory over
the Canaanites that are in the land and he goes forth on the basis of the
promise of God and does that. As a reward Caleb gives him his daughter Achsah
as a wife. And nothing negative is said about Achsah, she is presented as the
ideal woman, as it were.
But
things began to deteriorate and we see Ehud as the second judge, and there are
little hints that he is not quite everything that Othniel was. He is a
left-handed man, which carried certain overtones in that culture that he wasn’t
quite as open an honest as others would be. He used that to his advantage when
he assassinated Eglon, the king of Moab. Then we studied Deborah and saw that
in the midst of that apostasy of that time there were no men who were willing
to step up to the plate for leadership in the land. And so God raised up a
woman, but she is not the communicator of the Word of God. We noticed there was
a difference between a prophet who was a spokesperson for God and a teacher.
Deborah was not a preacher in the modern sense, or a teacher, she was a
prophet. And the role of a prophet was to communicate exactly what God said to
communicate, and there is a difference between someone who is communicating
exactly what somebody else is saying and someone who is teaching with the
natural authority that goes with teaching and an explanation of that. A prophet
is someone who is just simply a spokesperson, a mouthpiece. Deborah was a
prophet and a judge and that does not violate the mandate in the New Testament
that a woman must not teach, but men are because they are the designated
spiritual head of the home, the designated spiritual leadership in he church,
men are the ones who are to be in authority and the ones who are supposed to
communicate the Word of God. (Note: Men do not respond to the leadership of
women. When women are placed in positions of leadership the men will back off.)
So Deborah rises to the foreground and the man who is to lead the troops,
Barak, is kind of wimpy, demonstrating the fact that the men in that
apostasized generation were not willing to step to the plate. So when Deborah
says that God has already given us the victory Barak says he won’t go unless
she goes with him. So we see the increasing feminization of the male and the
masculinization of the women in society. And what goes along with that as the
paganism of the Canaanite culture around them begins to influence the thinking
of the Jews it has radical effects on all of the divine institutions. There is
the breakdown of personal responsibility, which is why they get involved in the
fertility worship. There is a breakdown of marriage and family. We see that
increasingly and by the time we get to the next judge, Gideon, Gideon has
numerous wives as well as a concubine down in Shechem. There is a breakdown in
respect for women and the role of women in society and that increases with
Jephthah, and by the time we get to Jephthah he is going to give his daughter
as a burnt offering to God as a part of a bargain he had ,made with God because
he is thinking like a pagan. He grows up in a pagan environment, his mother was
a prostitute, she remains nameless, so once again that is another negative
slant on the way women were being impacted in that Jewish culture. There was no
place for that under the Mosaic law and there was very little prostitution
going on at the time of Joshua. So Jephthah ends on a negative note, and then
we come to Samson. Samson begins to put some finishing touches on what has
happened to women in the society by this time. The interesting thing is that of
all the women in Samson’s life there is only one that has a name. The writer is
not being derogatory towards women. The writer wants us to pay attention to the
fact that because of paganism women are being treated less and less with
respect and as individuals, so that the women remain unnamed, except for one
and that is Delilah.
The
time frame here is also important to understand because it is a picture of
God’s grace from the period of the judges to the time of Samuel at the
beginning of 1 Samuel. Jephthah and Samson overlap, they are alive at the end
of the twelfth century BC. The lives of Samson and Samuel overlap, they are
contemporaries. Samuel is just seven years younger. So we look at the major
events in Israel, for example the battle of Aphek which is important as
background in Judges 16 where Samson is captured, blinded, put in the temple of
Dagon, and when he comes out for the big drunken banquet and orgy-fest, he
leans up against the pillars, prays to God and knocks the pillars down, killing
the Philistines. The battle of Aphek in 1104 BC was 20 years before Samson
dies. Samson was a judge for only 20 years, so this happens at the beginning of
his judgeship when he was stirring up all this trouble, the ark of the covenant
was captured by the Philistines and taken to the temple of Dagon where God
demonstrates that the gods of the Philistines are impotent before the God of
Israel. Even though they have defeated Israel in battle He wants to make sure
they understand that that doesn’t mean their gods are superior. But they don’t
learn. So they are going to put Samson in the temple of Dagon once again and
have more trouble.
Judges
chapter 16 is divided into two sections. The first episode covers the first
three verses. We should note that both episodes take place in Gaza. Samson is
now deep inside Philistine territory. There are a number of questions we need
to ask at the beginning of this chapter. Why does the narrator fail to mention
Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, in this episode? The story is completely
secular in tone. The amazing physical feat of Samson ripping the gates of Gaza
up from their hinges and carrying themn 38 miles to Hebron is not said to be a
movement of the Holy Spirit. There is no indication that God is at work at all,
it just seems that this is based on Samson’s natural physical ability. Remember
that this occurs at the end of the twenty years of Samson’s judgeship. We are
not told everything that went on in those 20 years but obviously he has been
stirring up a tremendous amount of trouble with the Philistines and they are
now out to get him. They want to remove this thorn in their side. The answer to
the first question is that God is not involved in a spiritual sense with what
is going on in Samson. Just like Israel Samson is in apostasy. God is working
in terms of His providential care for Israel and working out His plan despite
their carnality and failure. Much the same thing happens in our own lives when
we are out of fellowship in extended carnality and going through reversionism.
It is not that God leaves us or forgets about us, He is still involved, still
indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit still functions but not in the
sense of the filling ministry of God the Holy Spirit. He is still functioning
in trying to recognize that we are out of fellowship and in carnality. God is
disciplining us and trying to get our attention and He is still working to
protect us as well as to bring discipline into our lives to get us to turn back
to Him, confess sin and move forward again. This is the emphasis of this
chapter.
The
second question: Why does the narrator refuse to interfere with the plot? The
narrator completely removes himself from this whole episode, he just tells the
story and that is it.
Third
question: Why is the story so enigmatic? Chapter 14 was the chapter of riddles.
The writer wants us to pay attention to the fact that this represents the fact
that what is going on in Israel is a riddle to the people. God has become
inegmatic to the people because of their carnality. So this is just another way
in which this writer is just a master of literary plot and story telling, and
the way he weaves together so many different features and chooses his words in
such a way as to bring different things to the reader’s mind. We miss most of
this in English because we don’t have those word associations that would be
there for a Jewish reader, but he is loading everything he says with a
connotation to cause them to think about the spiritual condition of the nation
and its failure.
Fourth
question: Verses 1 & 2. Notice in the English translation of v. 2 [NASB]
the word “the place” is in italics. That means that there was no Hebrew word
there in the original text. It just says “they surrounded.” They surrounded what? We are just left to
guess, so we are not sure exactly where they were located. If they were lying
in wait around the city gate, that raises another question: How did Samuel get
past them, and what happened to them? We are not told.
Another
question that is raised: Why did Samson carry the gates 38 miles to a hill
outside of Hebron? We are not told.
Another
question that is raised: Why did Samson carry the gates 38 miles to a hill
outside of Hebron? We are not told. So there are a lot of puzzling things here.
There are three reasons for these verses. First of all, the writer wants us to
understand that Samson, after twenty years, is still as apostate and even more
so, than he was before. He still has a problem with the sexual lust of his sin
nature, he still has a problem with women, and what we are to infer from that
is that as at the beginning of his operation as a judge, his adolescence all
the way through to maturity, he probably had problems with women again and
again and again. The second thing that we are to pay attention to is that the
Philistines are now out to get him. They are really angry and aggravated by
Samson, he has been a continuous source of irritation and problems throughout
this twenty years. The third reason that we are told in these three verses of
what happens in Gaza is that it shifts our attention to Gaza, which is where
the final episode in Samson’s life takes place. It also emphasizes the fact
that just as Samson is now completely surrounded by the Philistines and that he
is living and operating deep inside their territory it also emphasizes the fact
that the Jews are in apostasy. Their thinking has become completely surrounded
by pagan thought. They are thinking on the basis of human viewpoint and have
succumbed to the idolatry and all of the religious practices and thinking of
the Philistines.
So
they lie in wait and set an ambush for him at the gate of the city. They are
out to kill him. Thee were three guard rooms on each side of these ancient type
gates and each guard room would hold up to ten guards. So there could be as
many as sixty or seventy men hiding in these guard rooms waiting to ambush
Samson as he left. The gates of the city of Gaza were made of metal. Samson
grabs the whole assembly, he doesn’t just take the doors off. They are made out
of bronze probably so they are tremendously heavy, and he doesn’t just pull the
gate off the hinges, he pulls the gates and the posts that are set deep in the
ground—remember this is a defensive fortification—and it would have weighed
many hundreds of pounds. He puts them on his shoulders and carries them up to
the top of the mountain which is opposite Hebron. Hebron is in Judah in the
southern part of Israel, thirty-eight miles from Gaza, uphill! (From Gaza to
Hebron is uphill) Why? We don’t know. This is just another picture of the
riddle that Samson presents to us. Here he has all of this grace blessing in
his life and yet he continuously rejects it. Many times we wonder, Why do they
reject God with all the blessing God has given them, with all the opportunities
they have for doctrine? Why is it that they continue to not apply it? Why do
they continue to get involved with everything else in life other than doctrine?
Why isn’t it clear to them? It is an enigma to us, but it is a result of their
own negative volition. What Samson did is just another indication of the
tremendous physical strength that Samson had and another reason that these
verses are included here is to remind the reader of how powerful Samson is and
it is just another hint of what a cause of trouble he was to the Philistines.
So
that sets the stage for the fall of Samson, beginning in verse 4. This verse
introduces us to Delilah and sets the stage for Samson’s fall and his death. It
contains only nine words in the Hebrew text. It is an economy of words there,
we would think there would be more, we would expect more, we would anticipate a
little juicy gossip about Delilah perhaps, and it is just not there. “After
this it came about.” In the Hebrew it just is a temporal indicator that
sometime later “he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek.” This is Samson’s
problem. He loved many women. He couldn’t get his emotions as far as women were
concerned under control. Over and over again Samson is going to be led around
by his lust pattern and he has no concern at all for spiritual things. What we
see here is that over the period of twenty years this has become so dominant
that now he has lost all sense of discernment, all sense of warning. When we
look at what happens in the episode when Delilah entices him we wonder how in
the world he could be so stupid. Yet that is exactly what happens in carnality
under the influence of the sin nature, and under the tenacity of arrogance what
happens is that again and again we make the same stupid decisions even though
we know better. And before long we no longer think of them as stupid. Our
values become reversed toward the end of reversionism and what we begin to do
is do things that we know are wrong, and now we call them right. There is a
complete reversal of our value system. As a result of that we lose all common
sense, so to speak. We learn all sense of right and wrong and we begin to think
that we can sin with impunity and God will not discipline us or deal with us.
There
is also a hint here that the riddle he gave the Philistines back in 14:18 finds
its answer. The riddle there was, What is sweeter than honey and stronger than
a lion? The answer is Samson’s lust pattern and it overwhelms him every single
time. As already noted, for the first time we are told the name of a woman in
Samson’s life. Even the name itself becomes another riddle. We are not sure
exactly what the etymology of the word means but it very possibly comes from a
word that is related to an Arabic word, dalah, which means to flirt. So
there are those who think that Delilah was just a name for flirting. She was
flirtatious, indicating her character. But the name may also be a pun on the
combination of the letter D and the Hebrew word lilah, which means
night. Under this view her name would mean “of the night,” so she would be a
woman of the night plying her trade. Her name indicates the character, so what
we’ve seen here is that Samson is not attracted by the women of Israel, he is
attracted by the foreign women. And this is a violation of the Mosaic law
because they are forbidden to marry a non-believing Gentile. But Samson is
constantly seeking the satisfaction of his lust from Gentile women.
Another
thing that is interesting and we will see it again and again. We see four verbs
that are important. The first is to discover or to see. They are words of
knowledge. The Philistines want to discover where his great strength lies. This
is the objective that they want to present so that they can overpower him and
bind him and they want to torture him. Verse 5 – “entice him,” lay a trap for
him, “and see where his great strength lies.”
They want to torture him and extract revenge on him for all that he has
done.
Then
they give her a price: 1100 pieces of silver. Notice: “we will each give you
1100 pieces of silver.” How much was that? That is a total of fifty-five
hundred shekels of silver. We will find out that Delilah was enticed because
this was going to set her up for life. Although the value of silver varies in
the ancient world like it does today we can gain some concept of what this was
related to. This is three times the weight of the gold that was given to Gideon
after the victory over the Midianite kings. That was, in today’s dollars, worth
well over a million dollars. We could also compare this to the 400 shekels of
silver that Abraham paid to purchase a burial plot for his wife. David paid 50
shekels for the oxen and threshing floor which was later the place where the
temple was built, 2 Samuel 24:24. Jeremiah paid 17 shekels to purchase a field
(Jeremiah 32:9), and 30 shekels was the price of a slave in the Mosaic law
(Exodus 21:32). A modern equivalent of 1100 shekels would probably be between US$175,000—200,000.
So multiply that by five and she has quite a nest egg here. The liberals think
that this is just too much, there must be some mistake. But when you look at
the text you just can’t do that. They are extremely concerned, he has cost them
mightily because of all of his activity. Their whole economy is being shut
down. They are suffering economically, they are suffering agriculturally, and
it is worth every penny for them to be rid of this problem.
So
Delilah is going to set her trap, starting in verse 6. There are going to be
three attempts to get Samson. They are covered in 16:6-9, the first attempt. In
verses 10-12 we have the second attempt, and then in verses 13 & 14 the
third attempt. Delilah said to Samson in verse 6, “Tell me where you great
strength is.” You can just imagine the setup here: feeds him a good meal, gives
him some wine which we know Samson was drinking despite his Nazirite vow, and
gets him to relax before she began whispering in his ear. Verse 7, “If they
bind me with seven fresh cords.” This is interesting. It is not literally seven
fresh cords, it is seven sinews in the Hebrew. What does a sinew come from? It
comes from a corpse. Remember that as a Nazirite he was not allowed to touch a
corpse. So he is beginning to play with the real issue of his strength, and
that is his relationship to God. So he is in dangerous territory.
Verse
10, the second attempt. Once again we would think that he would be warned. He
should know better but, you see, arrogance is deceptive. It destroys our
judgment, eradicates our objectivity, and when you’re operating on the lust
pattern of the soul in extreme reversionism then it is almost as if you can’t
resist it any more because it is such an ingrained habit pattern that you just
don’t have the strength any more to resist in carnality. The only way to resist
is if you are recovering and restored to fellowship.
Verse
13, the third attempt. Once again it doesn’t work.
Verse 15, “If you really love me.” When
someone says that, run as fast as you can! Now she is nagging him over and over
again until finally he just gives in to her. He is self-deceived. Arrogance is
self-deceptive. He has convinced himself he is really spiritual. This is the
problem with a lot of people in carnality, they think they are really okay, and
somehow they manage to justify all their carnality. And in Samson’s mind he
thinks he has fulfilled the vow. “I have been a Nazirite to God from my
mother’s womb.” No he hasn’t, he has violated it again and again. “If I am shaved
...” Now he has finally told the truth and she can tell he has finally been
honest with her. Verse 18, she tells the Philistines to come up at once. She is
not even going to set the trap. She cuts his hair and now he is as weak as a
kitten. He did not know that the Lord had departed from him. That is the issue.
It is not his hair, it is at this stage of his carnality he is under the sin
unto death. This is going to be the ultimate end in Samson’s life. The Lord was
his source of strength, not his natural ability, not the hair, it never was.
Verse
21, he was a grinder in the prison. We are not sure what that means at all but
apparently it had something to do with cleaning up the prison, the lowest
drudgery around the prison. Then in verse 22 we have the first editorial in the
chapter: “Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again after he was
shaven.” A little hint. Something is going to happen.
Verses
23-25, the Philistines are going to have a great feast and praise to their god,
and Samson is going to be the central show piece. Verse 26— “It happened when
they were in high spirits” really means when they were drunk. In verse 28
Samson said, “O Lord God.” This is the first use of the word Yahweh in a
positive sense in this text, so apparently it tells us there has been some
confession by Samson at this point and he is crying out to God to remember him
and to give him strength. But even in this, typical of a carnal believer, there
is a mixed attitude here. Notice the emphasis on the first person: “Give me
strength so that I can avenge myself on my enemies.” That is the thrust. He is
more concerned for himself and his own vengeance than God. So it is like a
Christian who has confessed his sin and then within a microsecond he is sinning
again. This is typical of someone coming out of reversionism. Nevertheless God
is gracious because God has His plan. He is going to do this not because of
Samson, not because of Samson’s prayer, but because this fits in with God’s
plan to destroy the Philistines and to protect the nation Israel. His plan for
Israel is greater than Samson’s carnality or the carnality of the nation. He is
going to answer Samson’s prayer despite the fact that Samson is in reversionism
and this will be the cause of Samson’s death as he goes out under the sin unto
death.
Verse
31, that is the end of the cycle of the leadership.
Summary
Samson
happens to be a target for the so-called evangelical Christian feminists
because they say this is just another example of how the Bible promotes
patriarchy and how evil patriarchy is, how men just continually destroy culture
and women really should be the ones in leadership and the ones who ought to
provide stability for a nation. The trouble is, matriarchy has never worked in
any culture in all of history. The problem is it is a caricature of patriarchy.
The Bible presents the male as the leader in the home, but that leadership is
presented always under the image of a servant where the leader operates on
genuine humility, seeking the best for those whom he leads. That is the
function of the male in the family. But what happens in human viewpoint
paganism is that it is perverted into an abusive authoritarian totalitarian
relationship that seeks to dominate and control. What the human viewpoint of
our day does is set up two poles: the human viewpoint abusive relationship
which is totalitarianism or the extreme authority view with the opposite pole
which is always anarchy. Human viewpoint paganism always swings between these
two poles. Only on a biblical basis do you have a view of authority that is
healthy and balanced.