Samson

Boyd’s Bible Dictionary:

(sunlike). Son of Manoah, of Dan, and judge of Israel for 20 years (Judg. 13:3-25³And the angel of the Lord appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not: but thou shalt conceive, and bear a son. ⁴Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing: ⁵For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines. ⁶Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, A man of God came unto me, and his countenance was like the countenance of an angel of God, very terrible: but I asked him not whence he was, neither told he me his name: ⁷But he said unto me, Behold, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and now drink no wine nor strong drink, neither eat any unclean thing: for the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb to the day of his death. ⁸Then Manoah entreated the Lord, and said, O my Lord, let the man of God which thou didst send come again unto us, and teach us what we shall do unto the child that shall be born. ⁹And God hearkened to the voice of Manoah; and the angel of God came again unto the woman as she sat in the field: but Manoah her husband was not with her. ¹⁰And the woman made haste, and ran, and showed her husband, and said unto him, Behold, the man hath appeared unto me, that came unto me the other day. ¹¹And Manoah arose, and went after his wife, and came to the man, and said unto him, Art thou the man that spakest unto the woman? And he said, I am. ¹²And Manoah said, Now let thy words come to pass. How shall we order the child, and how shall we do unto him? ¹³And the angel of the Lord said unto Manoah, Of all that I said unto the woman let her beware. ¹⁴She may not eat of any thing that cometh of the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing: all that I commanded her let her observe. ¹⁵And Manoah said unto the angel of the Lord, I pray thee, let us detain thee, until we shall have made ready a kid for thee. ¹⁶And the angel of the Lord said unto Manoah, Though thou detain me, I will not eat of thy bread: and if thou wilt offer a burnt offering, thou must offer it unto the Lord. For Manoah knew not that he was an angel of the Lord. ¹⁷And Manoah said unto the angel of the Lord, What is thy name, that when thy sayings come to pass we may do thee honor? ¹⁸And the angel of the Lord said unto him, Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret? ¹⁹So Manoah took a kid with a meat offering, and offered it upon a rock unto the Lord: and the angel did wondrously; and Manoah and his wife looked on. ²⁰For it came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar. And Manoah and his wife looked on it, and fell on their faces to the ground. ²¹But the angel of the Lord did no more appear to Manoah and to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was an angel of the Lord. ²²And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God. ²³But his wife said unto him, If the Lord were pleased to kill us, he would not have received a burnt offering and a meat offering at our hands, neither would he have showed us all these things, nor would as at this time have told us such things as these. ²⁴And the woman bare a son, and called his name Samson: and the child grew, and the Lord blessed him. ²⁵And the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol. (Judges 13:3‑25)). Noted for his great strength, marvelous exploits, and moral weakness. Contrary to the wishes of his parents, and to the law as laid down in Exodus 34:16¹⁶And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods. (Exodus 34:16), Deuteronomy 7:3³Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. (Deuteronomy 7:3), he married a Philistine woman of Timnath, whom he deserted on account of her treachery (Judg. 14). Wishing to return to her, and finding her given to another, he wreaked his vengeance on the Philistines by burning their crops and slaughtering great numbers of them (Judg. 15:1-8¹But it came to pass within a while after, in the time of wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid; and he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber. But her father would not suffer him to go in. ²And her father said, I verily thought that thou hadst utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to thy companion: is not her younger sister fairer than she? take her, I pray thee, instead of her. ³And Samson said concerning them, Now shall I be more blameless than the Philistines, though I do them a displeasure. ⁴And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails. ⁵And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives. ⁶Then the Philistines said, Who hath done this? And they answered, Samson, the son in law of the Timnite, because he had taken his wife, and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire. ⁷And Samson said unto them, Though ye have done this, yet will I be avenged of you, and after that I will cease. ⁸And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and dwelt in the top of the rock Etam. (Judges 15:1‑8)). He was surrounded by 3000 of his enemies, while he dwelt on the rock Etam, and surrendered to them, but burst his bands, and routed them with great slaughter (Judg. 15:9-19⁹Then the Philistines went up, and pitched in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. ¹⁰And the men of Judah said, Why are ye come up against us? And they answered, To bind Samson are we come up, to do to him as he hath done to us. ¹¹Then 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? what is this that thou hast done unto us? And he said unto them, As they did unto me, so have I done unto them. ¹²And they said unto him, We are come down to bind thee, that we may deliver thee into the hand of the Philistines. And Samson said unto them, Swear unto me, that ye will not fall upon me yourselves. ¹³And they spake unto him, saying, No; but we will bind thee fast, and deliver thee into their hand: but surely we will not kill thee. And they bound him with two new cords, and brought him up from the rock. ¹⁴And when he came unto Lehi, 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. ¹⁵And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. ¹⁶And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men. ¹⁷And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramath-lehi. ¹⁸And he was sore athirst, and called on the Lord, and said, Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised? ¹⁹But God clave an hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water thereout; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: wherefore he called the name thereof En-hakkore, which is in Lehi unto this day. (Judges 15:9‑19)). Again he was surrounded by enemies in Gaza, but escaped by carrying away the gates of the city. The secret of his strength was finally detected by Delilah, and he was imprisoned and made blind. He finally killed himself and numerous enemies by pulling down the pillars of the house in which they were feasting (Judg. 16).

Concise Bible Dictionary:

Son of Manoah, of the tribe of Dan. His birth had been pre-announced by an angel to his mother, who had long been childless. The angel told his parents that he was to be a Nazarite (that is, a separated one) from his birth. When Israel was in bondage to the Philistines, the internal enemies of God’s people, a Nazarite had to be raised up by God to work out their deliverance. The statement that “he judged Israel twenty years,” doubtless signifies the south-west parts of the land near the country of the Philistines. It was said of Samson before his birth: “He shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.”

His marriage with a woman of Timnath was so far “of the Lord” that it became in the ways of God an occasion against the Philistines to whom he had allied himself. His going down to her was the occasion of his killing a lion; this led to Samson’s riddle, and the riddle to his slaying thirty of the Philistines. Then, his wife being given to another man, Samson burned up their corn, their vineyards, and their olives, and smote the Philistines with “a great slaughter.”

When the Philistines gathered themselves together to arrest Samson, the men of Judah would not defend him, but, owning their bondage, said, “Knowest thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us?” and three thousand of Judah bound Samson and delivered him to the Philistines. Thus Samson, through God’s inscrutable ways, was separated from his own people: they delivered him up, as afterward the people of Judah delivered up the Lord Jesus, the true Nazarite, who came to save them.

When in the hands of his enemies, he was mightily moved by the Spirit, and with the jaw-bone of an ass slew a thousand of the Philistines. After this great victory he fainted for water, and cried unto the Lord, who clave a hollow place in the rock [also called lehi, “a jaw-bone”] and gave him drink.

His humiliating end was brought about through his lust after strange women. It was extreme folly to make known the secret of his strength to Delilah when he knew she would betray him. It is a striking instance of the foolish things a Nazarite (and all Christians are morally Nazarites) may do if he gets out of communion with the Lord. The strong man was blinded and made to grind in a dungeon for his enemies.

But God had not forsaken him, and his hair began to grow again. The Philistines offered a great sacrifice to their god Dagon, and they praised their god, and said it was he that had delivered Samson into their hands. Then they sent for him to make sport before them; but he cried unto the Lord, and asked Him to strengthen him this once, that he might be avenged on the Philistines for the loss of his two eyes. God strengthened him, and he pulled down the house, on the roof of which there were about three thousand souls, and thus he slew at his death more than he had slain in his life.

Notwithstanding the failures of Samson, God accomplished the purpose for which He had raised him up in subduing the Philistines; but it was only accomplished in his own death. Among the cloud of witnesses who “obtained a good report through faith,” Samson is named, but his acts are not there recorded (Heb. 11:32³²And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: (Hebrews 11:32)). His history is given in Judges 13-16.

Strong’s Dictionary of Greek Words:

Number:

4546 (find all occurrences in KJV Bible)

Greek:

Σαμψών

Transliteration:

Sampson

Phonic:

samp-sone’

Meaning:

of Hebrew origin (8123); Sampson (i.e. Shimshon), an Israelite

KJV Usage:

Samson

Jackson’s Dictionary of Scripture Proper Names:

little sun (?)

Potts’ Bible Proper Names:

Distinguished sun; sunlight; his service:―son of Manoah, Heb. 11:32. {Sol eximius}