Samson was the last of the judges; the last of that dynasty, as we say, during which the Lord was proving Israel as to their ability to trust in Him for government without the intervention of any established order.
They had continually failed, and in consequence had become tributaries to those who ought to have been tributary to them. There is no neutral place for the people of God. They must either be above the world, testifying against it for God's glory, or they must be servants to it. If Israel be not sustained by God above the nations, they are led away captive by the nations: they can never exist as equals; they must be either masters or slaves. Slavery was their chastening for not retaining their rights, as masters, which could only be done by having the Lord on their side. When they departed from the Lord, they were weaker than the nations. A Christian is always weaker than the world, if he be out of communion, simply because he has lost his strength, that strength which his conscience approves of; and therefore he is easily baffled by that of the world, which assails him with all its reckless violence.
Judges were raised up by the Lord to deliver the people from their enemies, when they felt their sin in departing from Him, according as he required them to feel it.
The people of Israel, at the time of the birth of Samson, had been under the hand of the Philistines for forty years, the longest term of captivity which they endured during the time of the Judges. To deliver them from this protracted captivity, Samson is raised up; and because it was the last and the severest during this eventful period, (this period of testing the national faith and conscience, as to how far God's people would accept the government of God, as Lord and King, without the intervention of any one, whose power could be only derivative like the nations around,) it is necessary to introduce to us (as the word here does) not only the manner of the birth of the deliverer, but the mind and expectations of his parents previous to his birth.
Samson must be a “Nazarite to God from the womb.” In order to be the deliverer of the people of God from the unholy subjugation in which they are involved, he must be entirely separate from all enjoyments among them. His mother is taught this, and trains him in accordance thereto. Our early training. has a peculiar and continuous effect on us in after life, i.e., the associations which surround us. Samson was a Nazarite, but he grew up in intimacy and acquaintance with the Philistines; consequently, he never seems to be aware of the great moral contrast which should exist between a Nazarite and a Philistine. Much of this sort of ignorance or non-perception we see among Christians in our own day. There is an admission for individual Nazariteship, while there is habitual intercourse and association with the world.
Thus Samson's first act recorded is an attempt to establish a union where there could be no union. His father and mother cannot understand how, nor that this proposition “was of the Lord,” that he sought an occasion against the Philistine.
Mark! it was not the union that was of the Lord, but the intended antagonism to the Philistines—not the means, but the end. Union there could have been none. On the contrary, in any attempted union where the elements are positively antagonistic, the revulsion and intrinsic differences are the more manifestly evinced. The means Samson proposed was no divine way for the neutralization of evil forces; but the intention was divine while the means were manifestly human; and consequently the marriage never takes place; while the intention and divine desire is perfectly declared and answered. It is a great thing to start with a right intention; for if it be of God, sooner or later it must be accomplished, though necessarily at the expense of all that self which we have mixed up with it.
Moses desired to deliver his people from Egypt, but when he first attempted to ratify it, he trusted to resources of his own, and he failed, though eventually he gloriously succeeded, through the help of God. In like manner Peter was ready to die for the Lord, which he did eventually; but how much humbling and cowardice had he to pass through before he reached the realization of his desire!
The Lord teaches in such a way, and after such a manner, that the human element is eliminated and ills own power fully vindicated in us. This truth is beautifully exemplified in the page of Samson's history, which we are about to consider. “Samson went down to Timnath and came to the vineyards of Timnath, and behold a young lion roared against him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand.” Here the Lord teaches him that it is not by an unholy alliance with evil, but by downright opposition to it that he must overcome; and to this at length he practically comes in the long run.
The truth which grows out of this lesson (a “riddle” to the world) breaks up the union and sends Samson forth in open and violent hostility against the Philistines. Let us consider this discipline a little more minutely. Samson, as we have seen, starts with a right intention; but, in consequence of natural association with the Philistines, from which he judicially suffered, he attempts to marry a daughter of these uncircumcised people; but just as he reaches the place where he is to consummate his plan, a young lion roars against him. And God in this way appears to teach him that God's Spirit can enable him to overcome the direct foe, without any intervention, for he had “nothing in his hand,” much more without any human plan of unsanctified union. Unaided, Samson confronts this terrible foe and succeeds so completely, that through God he “rent him as he would have rent a kid.” What a moment that was! A moment when the soul is in the balance—in the struggle for life or death! How necessary for the heart to be educated in the power of the life-giving God in the dark valley of death to know His power in delivering us from the jaws of the lion! Such a scene and such education ought to have been to Samson a vision of the character and nature of his mission, as the vision of Damascus was to Paul all his life long; fir he was to be a minister and a witness of the things which he had seen. The nature of our first acquaintance with God properly indicates the line He desires to sustain us in, in our course down here; therefore it is well worthy of consideration.
But Samson was slow to learn; and untaught by this marvelous instruction, he pursues his own plan, enters into a contract, and in due time returns for the purpose of ratifying it. But in doing so, he must re-pass the spot where he had known such signal deliverance, and which was to yield still further instruction for him, if he would but give heed to it. Turning aside to contemplate his conquered foe, he finds honey in the carcass of the lion and shares it with his parents who knew not from whence it came. This gives rise to the riddle which Samson knew, but could not apply to his own circumstances. Alas! how often is this the case with us, and how much sorrow and willfulness do we entail on ourselves because we do not receive it in faith, so as to grasp it in its entire adaptability to ourselves; for it is evident that we never adopt any truth we know practically, unless we are convinced of its suitability to our own circumstances; nor, I believe, does the Lord intend us to use it until we are thus convinced. And this explains why we are so often permitted to persist in our own plans, after we have learned truth which, if properly applied, would supersede dim altogether by casting us more consciously and distinctly on God. The secret of our strength with God must ever be a riddle to nature, for it is in a state of hostility to the new nature, as much as the Philistine was to Israel, or to Samson, as representative of that people.
Samson propounding his riddle, showed that there was a great interval and uncongeniality of mind between the Philistine and himself, and his intended wife is in the same moral distance. A union attempted under such circumstances must issue, as it does here, in the cause of the Philistine being preferred to her acknowledged lord. Her devotion to him dissolves before the fear of her own people, who threaten her with ruin unless she betrays him. Had she but clung to him as she ought to have done in true devotion, he would inevitably have saved her from the catastrophe she dreaded; but failing to do this, she betrays and compromises the one she ought to have suffered for. A sad and true picture of Christendom, and with a moral voice to each of us! Samson is betrayed by the one whom he most trusted, and where he naturally expected least treachery; but the Lord turns it into blessing, and the projected union is broken off. He must relinquish it in order to pay the penalty to which he had subjected himself by revealing his secret to the Philistine. Thus the conflict with the lion in the way had at last worked out what God had purposed it should, with regard to Samson, who had been so slow to learn it, when he ought to have done so. The riddle of the eater producing meat—i.e., the truth revealed to Samson through that conflict—was the eventual cause of his unholy alliance being broken off, while the divine intention which he had thereby proposed to himself was ratified, the rupture of the union becoming an occasion for its exercise. The Philistines now use the knowledge they have acquired through Samson's betrayal of God's secret, in contravention to all that is sacred between man and man. And their violent injustice authorizes him, as invested with the Spirit of the Lord, to render a righteous recompense to them. Before grace came, righteousness was God's rule of action for His people toward man in general; though He Himself was ever in grace toward any soul that owned His righteousness in blood-shedding. But the Philistines were no subjects for grace; and he wreaks on them a double vengeance. First, he goes down to Ashkelon, slays thirty of them, takes the spoil, and gives the promised change of garments to those who had expounded the riddle. And afterward, in consequence of their unjust disposal of his wife, he lets loose three hundred foxes with firebrands in their tails, and burns up all the standing corn, the vineyards, and the olives. The first of these exploits unfolds gracious discipline on God's part to Samson. His mistakes are mercifully counteracted, and true service vouchsafed to him. The debt, which the Philistines had made him liable to by unrighteous means, is paid by retribution on themselves. So should it be now with the servant of Christ. If Christendom has unrighteously acquired his divine secret, and asserts a claim on him therefrom, he should avenge, in true, spiritual, uncompromising conflict, all false acquisitions in position or doctrine which the worldly mind seeks to make use of in a carnal sense. I feel that this is very peculiar and mysterious discipline. The servant finds himself in association with Christendom outwardly, but in possession of God's truth and power, which, to the natural man, is a riddle, but sought by him for carnal purposes, and used as a claim on those who possess the reality. But by means of this very truth, the true servant not only discharges his debt to his oppressors, but works a way of deliverance out of them, and involves them in signal confusion.
The second exploit, occasioned by Samson's wife being given to his friend, excites the Philistines to greater violence, and they wreak their vengeance, not on Samson, but on the one who had betrayed him and her father's house, which they burn with fire—the very fate which she had so feared, and the threat of which had caused her to act unfaithfully to Samson; teaching us that whatever we seek to escape from, through unbelief and unrighteousness, is sure to be our eventual doom. We may escape from it for a moment, but our escape is, after all, the sure road to it. This act, however, increases Samson's right of vengeance, and we read, he “smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; and he went down and dwelt in the top of the rock Etam.”
Samson had now, after varied exercises and trying services, risen to such eminence as a determined foe to the Philistines, that they muster their forces and demand his life. When the servant of God will give no quarter to the world, and they can in nowise circumvent him, then their open hostility will burst forth. The same spirit that in all its malignity cried against the Lord, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” now in the Philistines seeks the life of Samson: and Judah, that tribe from which Shiloh should come, manifests toward him the same feebleness of godly principle which afterward characterized them when they delivered the Lord Jesus to Pilate. Three thousand men of Judah went to the top of the rock Etam, and said to Samson, “Knowest thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us, and what is this thou hast done unto us?” “And they said unto him, we are come down to bind thee, that we may deliver thee into the hand of the Philistines.” What a trying moment to Samson I His purposes and acts so little appreciated by his own people on whose behalf he had fought. How similar (only in untold moral distance) to Him of whom it is said, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not!” What peculiar sorrow must the true servant endure from those he is serving in the most earnest and perfect manner! To be disowned and condemned as useless after having wrought the most distinguished service, is a bitter trial; but Samson is equal to it. And still further, in the power of the strength and the gentleness of God, he will not touch his own people, however ungracious to him, and therefore he engages them solemnly that they will not fall upon him themselves. Notwithstanding this, they bind him and bring him down from the rock. And the Philistines shouted against him, and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands. And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and he took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.
Now, mark! Samson had been delivered from both association with, and subjection to, the Philistines, and had retreated to the rock Etam in Judah, as at once Israel's deliverer, and the Philistines' terror; but Judah is unbelieving, and delivers him over to the enemy. This leads to the manifestation of Samson's power, and his right or title to judge Israel, which is noted in the last verse of this chapter. He has now reached the position which he was appointed to fill, and which the Spirit in him was leading him through many exercises to occupy. We must not omit to notice the conclusion of the above manifestation and victory. After he had, by means of a jawbone, laid heaps upon heaps, and sung in ecstasy of soul after his work, he threw away the jawbone, and then his own personal wants afflict him. “He was sore athirst.” Great services for others will not supply the soul's necessities, which can only be supplied from the Lord. However brilliant our services, our own souls will famish unless directly sustained by the Lord, for mere service never sustains. On the contrary, the fresher the service, the more shall we be conscious of our own necessity and dependence on God for personal support. No great deliverance vouchsafed will supply one drop of relief to the weary soul. From God alone must that come. And thus, in answer to Samson's cry, God relieves him, and he calls the name of the place En-hakkore, “the well of him that called.” He commemorates, not his service, but his dependence on God; and established now in this dependence, as well as practical ability, it is recorded that Samson judged Israel twenty years.
We may now pause in the narrative to review this early stage of Samson's history in the double light which it appears to me to bear. We have said that his projected union with a Philistine was an unholy alliance, and that God had to discipline him, in order to teach him its unsuitability; and we have traced the discipline. This is true regarding him as a Israelite and a Nazarite; but I think the action also bears another aspect, which appears in the words “they knew not that it was of the Lord,” that is, that it was almost a necessary consequence of the judicial position to which he was born liable, even that of subjection to, and association with, the uncircumcised. Though a Nazarite, and a separate man, he was, on account of the condition of the nation, exposed to this corrupt association, and was responsible for it; and while, on the one hand, he is taught to deliver himself therefrom, on the other, he is allowed to propose a union which was an admission of the liability entailed on him, but which he personally had no manner of part in creating. This union was not allowed to be consummated, because in itself unholy; but the proposition answers the double purpose in the instruction of God, on the one hand, being an admission of the consequences of the nation's sin, and on the other, an opportunity for Samson, through God's power and training, to extricate himself therefrom, and to become the deliverer of His people. In the same sense, a man is born into the world liable to the penalty of Adam's sin before he has committed any act of sin. So in Israel. So in the church. A unit of each, in entering into membership, was necessarily liable to all the forfeitures and penalties as well as the privileges attaching thereto, and he cannot assume the privileges without discharging the liabilities which are the real impediments to the enjoyment of the privileges. Cain is an example of this, assuming by a meat offering the position of a man acceptable to God, before he had answered to the penalties due to him because of sin. So in the church. We must own its ruin before we can assume its privileges and dignities. But the man of strength must not he under these consequences without an effort to retrieve his position and extricate himself, his kindred, and his people. He repudiates nothing to which he is justly liable, but neither does he increase the embarrassments by contributing personally to the moral debts of his people. Consequently, Samson was a Nazarite from his birth, and for that very reason was the only one suited to undertake the place of liquidator and deliverer. In a word, while personally separate, he admitted the pernicious and judicial alliance between Israel and the Philistines, by proposing affinity with one of their nation. Incongruous it was, but so much is first allowed in order that Samson, the man of strength, might avow Israel's humiliated position, and no more is necessary or sanctioned in the counsels of God. A righteous ground is soon found for preventing the alliance and emancipating the people from the bondage of their oppressors. By fair conflict he reaches the rock Etam, and there established as deliverer of the people, he judges them twenty years.
This is the first point or epoch in Samson's history. The second is, how he again became mixed up with the Philistines on a lower level, and how he suffered for it. In the first, we have seen how he sought an alliance only for an occasion, and how wondrously he was helped, and raised up to be judge of the people; but now, seeking for association from mere natural desire, although his strength acts when he repents, yet he never afterward resumes his position at Etam, as judge of Israel; and this has a distinct voice to us. If we own the ruin of the Church, in order to set ourselves to the discharge of the liabilities thereby saddled on us, we shall be helped righteously to exonerate ourselves from them; but if we return to the association of “the great house,” for which we have felt irresponsible, and for which we have answered, we are sure to be involved therein, and however we may do individual acts of valor, yet we never again shall be able to resume the position of witness for God or deliverer of His people.
Samson went down to Gaza, (chap. xvi.) and saw there a harlot, and went in unto her. Here he renews his unholy association, and yet he is made aware of the Philistines' machinations against him, and is enabled, in a marvelous way, to defeat them, for “he arose at midnight, and took the doors and gate of the city, and went away with them, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of the hill which is before Hebron.” Surely this was a warning to Samson, though with a marked deliverance. How often does the soul recover from the first step backwards in a very remarkable manner, with great evidence of strength, though it be only a midnight; this is, there may not be so much testimony as manifest power and a glorious deliverance. Paul's going to Jerusalem, is an example of such a retrograde step; and at midnight, too, escorted by Roman soldiers, he outwits and escapes his enemies. Blessed indeed when such discipline leads the soul (as it did with Paul) to avoid such association again! But Samson refused to learn; and we next read, “he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, and her name was Delilah.” This introduces us to the most pitiable and humiliating incident in the life of any of God's servants. No amount of treachery on the part of Delilah (who is the world in type—a combination of allurement and malice) can awaken Samson to the real character of her to whom he has allied himself. Where must have been his sensibilities when he could keep up the closest intimacy with one who plied his confidence in order to work his ruin? At first he does not confide in her, and while he retains his reserve and keeps his divine secret, he is safe; however humbling his position as a mighty man, to be in the hands of a false woman. Truly, when we thus see how the strongest may be deceived, and so far that the most palpable proofs will not disabuse their minds of the fearful spell, we may say, “let no man glory in his strength.” Great is the mercy of our God, who, even in a downward course, guards us to the furthest possible point. Samson is always victorious until he communicates the secret of his strength—the mark of his Nazariteship and separation to God; but the moment he betrays this he has relinquished the source of his strength, he has lost his mark as God's servant—one that it was not for uncircumcised ears to know of. If he loses this, this owning of God demonstratively, there is no outward evidence of any distinction between him and other men. As long as this mark remained, God succored and honored him. Often do we find that God supports his servant who retains the mark of separation. Even though he, in the spirit of his mind, engrossed by natural attractions, may have very grievously departed from Him; but when the mark is relinquished, He can succor no longer. There is but a small step between the allurements of the world and its deadly wrong. And so was it with Samson. Yielding first to allurement, he next surrenders the mark of separation, and is finally delivered into the hands of the Philistines, and his eyes put out. What a picture of every servant of God who pursues a like course, and thus becomes a “withered branch,” and a prey to the ungodly world! What bitter, painful discipline Samson must now undergo! Bound in fetters of brass, he “grinds in the prison house” —the effects of his own self will, and surrender of his true place of dignity. In the prison his hair begins to grow again; the mark of separation is renewed, but his eyes are gone! Morally, the sight is never restored, when the light once given is lost. A solemn truth for us! The mark is restored and strength is active, but only in death is its power seen.
Even as practically by the death of Christ, all foes of every shade were overcome, so the death-scene alone remains as a place of testimony for a strong servant who has taken the high place of Nazariteship like Samson, but who has sunk with eyes open, as we may say, into the unholy association which he, once in the zenith of his history, so much opposed and renounced. Samson died with the wicked, but in the last fearful struggle that terrible judgment laid on man because of sin—Samson glorified God, for he “slew more in his death than in his life.” A true epitome this of every soul which has learned the power of Christ's death; for the one who conquers therein overcomes every foe, even him who has the power of death, to the praise and glory of God; and teaches us that death alone can deliver the strongest man from the place of temptation and failure.
Such is the end of Samson. A man unequaled in strength and most valiant in using it: an end, humbling indeed to the flesh, but glorifying to God as vindicating His unerring wisdom and discipline with His servants. May we all learn to walk more separate; to preserve our Nazariteship, if we would be witnesses for our Lord, and preserved from the oppression of the world! And may we learn from Samson's history, on the one hand, how easily we are led to surrender it when we once fall into moral declension and association with the world; and, on the other, how, though our testimony may be marred, we may yet glorify God in the calmness and assurance by which we rise above every tie here, and plainly avow, “to depart and be with Christ is far better!” Amen.