Judges 13

Judges 13:1-16

Subdivision 6. (Judges 13:1-25; Judges 14:1-20; Judges 15:1-20; Judges 16:1-31.)Samson and the Philistines: victory, but not rest. The story of Samson, the last of the judges in this book, is fittingly a sixth and not a seventh subdivision; nor have we a seventh. The number, we well know, to be significant of evil at its height, even though it speak also of limit set to and victory over it: and to this, in every particular, the history corresponds. It is one of strange contrasts and of apparent contradictions: one in which the grace and purpose of God, so manifest in it, seem so little fulfilled in the result; in which the consecration of the Nazarite to God has so little correspondence to any spiritual condition that all through, if we are confined to the letter, there seems scarce a gleam of comfort for the Christian heart. The failure of man is plain, whatever the circumstances in which he may be placed: the greater privileges bestowed on him, the deeper only is his fall. Samson, in this way, -by the strength of the Lord which he manifests, and his loss of it when false to his consecration, -is a lesson impossible to be mistaken as to Israel’s condition,who were themselves. thus nationally separated to God, and untrue to their separation. The Church has failed more signally, inasmuch as she has been called to, and qualified for, a higher separation.

Nor, though there have been, and may yet be, partial revivals, will there be for her any complete recovery. Her earthly history ends, as that of this book does, in Philistine captivity still in the main unbroken. The reason is obvious as to Israel: we read of fresh departure, but of no return nor cry to Jehovah. He acts toward them, indeed, in goodness, and provides a deliverer; but the deliverance itself, being still conditioned upon their repentance, cannot be effected. Samson’s victories bring about, at the most, but an alleviation of their distress; and he himself fails at the last, and dies, though slaying more of the Philistines at his death than in his life. We have seen, abundantly, what these Philistines stand for. They are the ritualistic, traditional, element in Christendom, -the Judaism in the Church, -the earthly intrusion into what is spiritual and heavenly. We have seen them as hindrances in the path of Abraham and of Isaac, and traced them from the Egyptians by Casluhim and Caphtorim, the united people settling at last on the outward border of the land to which, -Palestine from Philistine, -though never possessing but a fraction, they have given their name. So has the world-church become the “catholic” or universal church. From Philistine bondage the deliverer is a Nazarite; and thus Samuel, who completes Samson’s work, is like him iii this respect. For the Nazarite is the type of separation from the world, such as belongs to the true church, -from the intoxication of its joys and from its legal claims, as well as from its pollutions; and let this separation be lost, all strength is lost, -the conqueror becomes the slave, the clear sight of the judge becomes but blindness: the history of Samson is repeated. How many times has it been, in fact, repeated!

1. With Samson we are made to see, from the outset, the sovereign grace which prepares the deliverance. His birth is announced by the angel of the Lord, apart from any apparent seeking upon man’s part. He is the son of a woman naturally barren; and the preparation for his coming antedates his birth. In this last it is implied that there are still conditions to be conformed to in order to deliverance. (1) The predicted deliverer is of the family of Dan. Dan speaks already of the service of rule, as we have seen, -a rule which must, for blessing, be first of all over one’s self. Manoah is a man of Zorah, which reminds us of the sting of sin; while his name, “rest,” nevertheless proclaims already victory over it. The victory is in subjection: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” Here is the Danite spirit from which springs the helper. It is to the woman, however, to whom the angel first appears, and her name we have not. She is reminded of her barrenness, that God’s grace and power may the more appear. She is herself nothing, her very name without importance, and that of her husband unnoticed in the message of the angel: for all here is of God. And agreeing with this is the special emphasis laid upon the woman’s long hair of the Nazarite, to the man a shame, and the renunciation of his glory as such (1 Corinthians 11:1-34). Oh the blessing that results when all the glory is given to God, and man owns himself naturally to have forfeited all, that grace may be grace! (2) In correspondence with all this, it is the woman who receives most readily the divine communication. Manoah, pious as he is, does not feel so sure of its character and meaning. But he looks to God, and is confirmed by the angel’s second visit. This is still to the woman first, but who is permitted to call her husband, that he too may hear from the angel’s lips. But Manoah as yet recognizes only a human messenger, even while recognizing the message. The angel insists simply upon obedience to the word already given; and when Manoah desires to entertain him, refuses to receive from him as man, but bids him offer a burnt-offering to Jehovah.

Like Gideon, he is constituted thus a priest to the Lord: the unbelief of the believer is rebuked by his being brought into nearer intimacy; he is turned from man to God, and put into a place in which, in priestly fashion, he may approach God. But Manoah cannot yet understand, and would learn the name of the speaker, that when his word is fulfilled they may, as man, do him honor.

Thus the angel’s question, why he should ask after his name? -yet adding, what might well justify inquiry, that it was “Wonderful,” -a name which Isaiah afterward gives us as Immanuel’s" (Isaiah 9:6); and here, indeed, God and man are brought together in one Person. But Manoah does not yet understand. Still, obedient, he brings his kid and the meal-offering which goes with it, the blessed type of Him in whom a perfect Man would be in due time the Substitute for man, and offers it upon the rock, -no unworthy altar. Then the angel of Jehovah acts according to His name, and ascends to heaven in the altar-flame. God in His holiness is indeed that which, while it consumes the sacrifice turns it to sweet savor, in which it ascends to Him. With this flame the angel, as it were; identifies Himself, and ascends up to heaven. Thus He is revealed to Manoah; thus in the truth of what is here He is made known to every believing sinner, and takes His true and heavenly place. The woman still it is who enters into the mind of God, however; and her identification with the true Nazarite character, as in the Nazarite’s long hair, is emphasized, as well as the connection of this preparatory part with the history that follows. Her reasoning is simplicity itself, and the truth of it a demonstration. Faith is indeed always simple; unbelief laborious and roundabout, for it is the effort of human will against God, and may well be labor. 3) And now the prophecy is fulfilled, and Samson is born. The name is variously explained. While that of “sun-like” would be etymologically the most simple, and have some support from the words of Deborah’s song (Judges 5:31), yet that of Josephus, “strong,” seems rather to point to the lesson of his story.* It is the secret of strength that is shown forth in him, both in his victories and in his failure and defeat; and thus it is very far from true that (as Cassel thinks) such an explanation appears to be without historical motive.
Samson grows, and the Spirit of Jehovah begins to urge him in the camp of Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol. It had been that of the six hundred men, whose history is given us further on (ch. 18), although the occurrence was much earlier than Samson’s time, and who had gone forth, pressed by the narrow limits into which Amorites and Philistines had combined to crowd them, to found for themselves a new Dan in the north. Such a spot would naturally work upon the youthful mind of Samson, and be used of the Spirit to inspire him with eager patriotism, -a thing which in Israel had not alone nature to commend it. Israel were the people of God, the divine means of fore-ordained blessing for all the families of the earth, and to whom the revelation of God had been committed. The champion of Israel was, by this fact, and though he might have but little intelligence of the fact, the champion of the world’s salvation. 2. As Keil rightly remarks, the story of Samson’s deeds that follows is divided into two parts by the notice of his judgeship in Israel, which lasted twenty years. The first of these -the present section -gives evidently the heroic acts which win for him the place of acknowledged authority which he retains for the time; while the second shows his fall and ruin through being false to his Nazariteship, though in his death he is once more victorious. This descent and restoration, though but at the close of his career, mark the last as a true third section. The present, as Keil again points out, “includes six distinct acts, which are grouped together in twos; namely (1 and 2), the killing of the lion on the way to Timnath, and the slaughter of the thirty Philistines for the purpose of paying for the solution of his riddle with the clothes that he took from them; (3 and 4), his revenge upon the Philistines by burning their crops, because his wife had been given to a Philistine, and also by the great slaughter with which he punished them for having burned his father-in-law and wife; (5 and 6), the bursting of the cords with which his countrymen had bound him for the purpose of delivering him up to the Philistines, and the slaying of a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.” Of course it does not follow that these six acts sufficiently characterize the portions with which they stand connected; while yet, in this simple way, a numerical structure is shown to exist. This, we may be sure, must have its significance. The number 6 is itself, as we have seen, characteristic of the whole history of Samson; and this, broken up into 3 x 2, becomes the witness of the divine in the midst of all the human failure and sorrow attendant. (1) The story in all this part is a closely connected one, and all the events spring out of -what is sadly significant as to the final issue here -Samson’s attempt to connect himself with the very people from whom he is to “begin to deliver” Israel. The alliance it is that is the occasion of the conflict: the Philistine and the Nazarite cannot really unite, and the attempt to do so only brings out the essential incompatibility. The Nazarite stands for separation from the world, over which death reigns. The Philistine shows us the world brought in into the holiest things. The women stand here, as they do in the case of Sarah and Hagar, for principles by the embracing of which fruit is sought: and alas, how often do we seek to gain over the world by concessions to the world! -by the adoption of principles which compromise the whole truth of God. Timnath speaks, as we have before seen, of “apportionment,” which, if the town were Israelite, would be divine, -a lot measured out to us from God; but being Philistine, where Dagon, “increase,” has usurped His place, we have a striking confirmation of what has already been indicated as the meaning here.

When we measure things by results, these must be, of course, palpable results: those divinely ordained are apt to be too far off, too slow in development, not to say too purely spiritual also, to admit of present discernment and of right appraisal. Thus one Nazarite in desire may be led by an impetuous longing for gains capable of speedy realization, to take up with methods which are worldly and carnal (Philistine), but which, on that very account, yield present fruit. How many souls, in fact, and these often the strongest and most earnest, are thus seduced into Timnathite marriages! How good to remember here the “long patience” needed by the husbandman in order to garner the precious grain; and that duty is ours, results are to be left with God, as they may be safely left. A Timnathite woman may “please” even a Samson “well,” and elder Israelites be overborne, if not deceived, into acquiescence, as were Manoah and his wife; none the less is she Philistine, -the whole thing, indeed, tending directly to the snare of Dagon-worship. Let those who would be helpers in the deliverance of Israel beware of this. It is quite natural that the Timnathite vineyards should contain lions also. Satan is here in this among his many forms; and the seduction may lead into the ambush, and so the open assault. But here he is to be less feared than elsewhere. The soldier of Christ is more easily lulled to sleep than overcome in battle. The Spirit of Jehovah at once comes upon Samson, and he awakes to his strength, gaining thus a personal experience which is to be fruitful for him afterwards. He rends the lion without a weapon in his hand, and as easily as one would a kid.

It is the power of God, but realized in the living energy of man, stripped and bare of all other assistance. With such help the mightiest foe is as easily vanquished as the feeblest. No need to measure difficulties, save only to assure one’s self that the greatest opposition means the greatest triumph; and again, it is the glory of the earthen vessel that the excellency of the power should be of God and not of us. Yet, after all, spite of this display of strength, Samson is not right with God; and his history is most sadly instructive in this respect. He slays the open foe, and is deceived into the Philistine alliance; and how many are like him today. People can quote the heroism, and use it to set off the Timnathite’s son-in-law: God uses it in the end to break off the alliance. He is bringing the blind by a way he sees not. But he comes to take the woman that pleases him, and a new experience awaits him on the road. A swarm of bees had hived in the sun-dried carcass of the lion. Death had made room for multitudinous life, and abundant and ordered* activities; and as the product of this there is the honey that, with milk, gave a special character to the land of Canaan. Thus “out of the eater had come forth meat, and out of the strong sweetness.” Out of the power that was against us, met and subdued by the mightier power of God, comes ever sweetness and refreshment for the people of God: and this because of life that has come in in the place of death, and order that has arisen out of the hold of corruption. And this is true Nazarite experience of the transforming power of God, by which that which is contrary to us becomes ever for us. On the cross this was most gloriously manifest, where power was shown in weakness; and in the worst act of rebellion that the world has seen, grace came in to subdue and sanctify to God.

So in measure it is in every defeat of the enemy, where the Spirit of God works in the living energy of the saint of God -the Nazarite. The battle-field becomes a banqueting-house; the table is furnished not only “in the presence of our enemies,” but from that which they have provided. But this is the personal experience of faith, -a secret hidden from all but those who have the experience.
And this leads on to that which follows, in which the fundamental lack of fellowship between Nazarite and Philistine comes clearly out, and the inevitable strife begins. Samson goes on to accomplish his marriage; makes a feast, according to the custom; and receives thirty companions, all Philistines, to be with him. He who is contracting a life-union with a woman of this people cannot refuse a wider connection. Immediately we find the riddle proposed, -a thing common enough in those days, as a test of wisdom; and which, we have to remember, as in Scripture not simply what the world counts such, but what is such before God. The riddle, in its spiritual meaning, is a true test of this; and it is not to be imagined that a Philistine can explain it. Samson has no such thought: but if they can do this, then they shall have each one a change of garments: for he that can penetrate the secrets of a life with God must have “habits” changed in accordance with it.

They could not penetrate it: by dishonest practicing on the Philistine wife they learn it, and are repaid with Philistine garments from Ashkelon, the “fire of infamy.” Thus they are suitably arrayed, and with their own shame; and so the necessary strife commences. The marriage is broken off; and Samson goes up to his father’s house. (2) The second part of this story now begins, in which Samson is in open conflict with the Philistines all through. At first, indeed, he goes to visit his wife with a kid, ignorant of what has taken place, and finds she has been given to the one who had acted as his “friend,” -the “friend of the bridegroom”: a custom to which afterwards the Baptist makes well-known allusion (John 3:29). His wrath breaks out, not as private vengeance against the Timnathite, however, but against the Philistines as a whole. He catches three hundred jackals, and joining them in couples by the tails, with a lighted torch between the tails, he lets go the terrified animals into the cornfields and olive-yards, just at the time of harvest. The destruction must have been immense; and the terror of Samson had already become so great, that, instead of revenging it upon the Israelite enemy, they take cowardly vengeance upon those that had provoked his wrath, and burn the Timnathite and her father with fire. But this does the very opposite of appeasing him. He smites them hip and thigh with a great slaughter. The spiritual meaning of all this is more difficult than in the last case. The jackal we have seen elsewhere (Joshua, p. 98) to be the type of a nature that burrows in the earth, and feeds upon corruption. The fire behind might well represent the terror of divine wrath when breaking in upon such natures, working upon them, not to conversion and blessing, -mere wrath never does, -but to madness: in which the desire to escape only spreads abroad in a general devastation what they would escape from. The torches, though here very differently used, remind us of those in the hands of Gideon’s men, which wrought the destruction of the Midianites, and would show us this wrath as what is proclaimed in the testimony of living men. Times of widespread alarm in this way have been known in the history of the external church: panics which have been but disaster, and the anticipation of sure coming doom. Something akin to this seems to be shadowed here, though it may be hard to follow it into details; nor can we speak with any distinctness of the slaughter which ensues. But we may notice that Samson in his proper position of hostility to the power to which Israel is captive is never defeated; nor does he need alliances, or subtlety, or human wisdom, in any way. Alone, and unassisted by human arm, he is ever victorious, as leaning upon almighty power. The lesson of divine sufficiency is complete in him; his very enemies have to recognize it. And this, in its principle, is not an exception to the ways of God. It is only the universal rule written large that we may the more plainly see it: to make an exception of it is to lose the lesson. (3) The third stage of this strange history is that in which Samson sinks to the lowest, as rejected and bound by his own people; and then rises, through a wonderful victory, to be ruler amongst them. The Philistines, now thoroughly roused by the blows he has inflicted upon them, invade Judah with a host, and pitch in Lehi. The place is named, in anticipation, from the “jaw” which he uses to discomfit them; and it becomes to them a place of crushing defeat. But Judah is completely spiritless and cast down. Almost as much afraid of their God-sent deliverer as of the people under whom they are in bondage, they go down, to the number of three thousand, to the cleft of the rock of Etam, where he had withdrawn, as it would seem, just from such danger, to bind and deliver him into the enemy’s hand. Things are thus with him at the lowest point, while, on the other hand, the grace on his part is beautiful.

With the consciousness of divinely-given strength upon him, he cannot use it against the people whom he is called to deliver, but quietly submits to be bound in order to being handed over to the Philistines. It is Judah, the lion-tribe, which thus is seen in lowest humiliation. When the Philistines shout in triumph, the Spirit of Jehovah once more comes upon Samson, and the new cords are but as flax in the fire: with one effort he is free. Once free, the jawbone of an ass arms him for the fight; and with this he slays a thousand men. He who had used before the mouth of a living ass to rebuke the madness of a prophet, uses now the jaw of a dead one as a weapon to defeat an army. The song of deliverance emphasizes this: — “With the jaw of an ass I have made asses of them;* With the jaw of an ass I have smitten a thousand men.”
The ass is not, in Scripture, the expression of stupidity, as with us; but, generally, of intractability under the yoke: and so it seems here. The easy victory showed them to be rebellious to the yoke of divine sovereignty, -which, after all, it was bootless to resist. The mouth of the ass had rebuked the prophet, more stubborn than itself: his mouth had uttered rebellion, and by a beast’s mouth was reproved. Here, where rebellion had been more open and utter, a beast’s jawbone is used to smite it down. Here, indeed, is a folly that is made manifest to all. He casts the instrument of destruction out of his hand, and calls the place the “Jawbone Height.” The lesson is worthy of preservation in the name. But God, who cares for his poor servant, must make him realize his own need of the same lesson. The heat and fatigue of the encounter affect him with a mortal thirst; and he who had been dealing death to others realizes a danger from which his own hand is powerless to deliver him. He can only cry to Jehovah, and plead with Him His recent interposition on his behalf as argument for a new one. A good argument it is with the Unchangeable One, who is not a man that He should repent: yea, “with whom is no variableness, nor shadow of turning.” The lesson, too, must be complete to be a lesson; and He who has just delivered Samson from the hands of the uncircumcised cannot possibly allow him now to fall into them. God, therefore, answers by cleaving the “Bruising place that is in Lehi,” so that water conies out of it, and he revives.

The likeness to the rock cleft in the wilderness can hardly -is surely not intended to -escape us. The cross and its results for us are needed to be held in constant remembrance; and the place of bruising -machtesh, the “mortar” -is not likely to make the reference here less plain.

The connection with the scene that has just been before us is also evident: so plain that our common version speaks of it as the hollow place" -“socket” it might mean -“that was in the jaw.” That this is not right, the fact of its being “in Lehi unto this day” is sufficient witness: but the connection is also clear. And the bruising-place that is in Lehi reminds us surely of the Philistine defeat. Yet the spring of water is in marked contrast. Not by “bruising,” but by being “bruised for our iniquity,” did the Lord of glory bring forth living water for our death-faint souls; and here the soldiers of the cross find continually their admonition and refreshment. Here, too, is the secret of how alone Satan is bruised, and every enemy succumbs in turn. How necessary a lesson for God’s Nazarites, if they are to know and preserve the secret of strength! Samson is now ready for the judgeship; and he judges Israel twenty years. 3. We now come to the final section of the story, in which we find a rapid descent on Samson’s part to utter destruction, as far as he can accomplish it. Indeed, although recovered by divine grace, it is only by death that he breaks the bonds by which he has bound himself. His life goes out in one last victory, in which he perishes with the Philistines, -the link that he had forged with them still prevailing even over his recovered strength. While, on their part, as it has been ever with the enemies of the people of God, the victory of the Philistines over him becomes their worst defeat at last. In this last section, Gaza, the place of their “strength,” is the witness of their double defeat. The strength of God, which alone Samson’s is, measures itself with that of the enemy, and prevails, spite of the mortal weakness found in the vessel of it. It is only thus the more manifested as divine; and in holiness also against sin wherever found: the lust which is the lawlessness of a heart away from God, and the pride which would pervert His grace into a shelter for such license. (1) In the first part of what we have here, -the divine gift of strength in Samson, so far from being recalled, is displayed in a way so signal as at first sight to obscure the evidence of the decline which has begun, and which is so soon to make itself disastrously apparent. For the moment he gains another brilliant triumph, as would appear, in the very presence of the enemy, appalled to utter inaction by the contemptuous daring of the Israelite. He walks into the place of strength, and breaks his way out of it again, leaving it dismantled, like a conquered city. He carries the gates in a direction pointing significantly enough toward Israelitish territory; and then drops them, with equal insult, where they can find them, -as if, after all, there were no need to deprive them of defenses so insignificant as they had proved. Even the moral decline which his presence there had demonstrated, and which (whatever their heathen manners might be), they could realize, no doubt, in a follower of Jehovah, seemed to have no effect in diminishing that wonderful strength which had long before carried shame and ruin into the midst of their broken ranks. All this, for them, was a warning they would have done well to listen to, and did not; and the last blow came upon them unawares. But for Samson, also, there was a warning to which he listened no more than they. True, God had not left him to the consequences of his pride and lust, and the strength of the Nazarite had not deserted him. But while he had splendidly insulted the enemy, he had not harmed him; and the strength which should have delivered Israel had, in this case, been put forth only to deliver himself. He had been forced to flee, and not the Philistines. He had shown his strength, but gained no dignity. As between them and him God might still act for him, help him to escape by night even from the house of shame which he had entered, was there no warning for him as to that besetting sin of his which might yet make this gateless Gaza a steel trap to hold him? Oh, that he had heard! Oh, that men did hear! From the first, the snare for the Nazarite had been a Philistine alliance. Then he had openly, and, in a sense, honorably, courted it. It was to be a marriage. The matured man seeks this no more; but alas, cannot restrain his lusts, though plainly unlawful. He can no more vindicate indulgence, but he can yield to it. How often is this, too, today the pit into which fall God’s Nazarite strong men! Principles with which open alliance is refused are toyed with, and courted dishonorably, embraced and thrown off at will. Yet, for a while strength may still be shown and exploits done, the enemy’s stronghold be dismantled, and the gates carried away to an indefinite somewhere, facing toward Hebron. This they never reach, nor do we find there Samson either. (2) Grace resisted hardens the heart, and Samson, with his lesson all unlearned, is found now in the vale of Sorek, “entanglement?” No strong city is here to keep him in, -nothing but a weak woman’s arms, and they are stronger than the gates of Gaza. Delilah means “exhausted, weak”; and it is by that which appears to us such we are often overcome: for in this respect, at least, we credit ourselves with strength, and do not find it. The blindness induced by sin is wonderful, and Samson here wonderfully illustrates it. He takes one step after another, drawing nearer and nearer to the precipice into which at last he plunges recklessly. Each step taken makes the next easier. With each his eyes are more completely sealed.

Then,when his ruin is complete, he is unconscious of it until the consequences overtake him. The details are here exceptionally hard to translate into spiritual meaning, while we need not be less assured that such there is all through. On the other band, it scarcely needs to moralize where moralizing is so easy. Such is the fatal power, -the hardening through the deceitfulness of sin! (3) The Philistines make it the triumph of their god that Samson is delivered into their hands, and thus it is needful that Jehovah manifest Himself. Samson also, blinded, begins to see more clearly than when the lust of his eyes enthralled him. His bonds set him free; his darkness enlightens him. The goodness of God it is that thus leaves His people to the consequences of their sins, that the bitter fruit may condemn the tree; and they may, by experience, however painfully, find fellowship with Him. How much better, indeed, to learn by His word through faith! And this should be our profit from these sad and shameful histories. Still, if the Father’s chastenings are needed, it is what must not be denied us: “He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.” The application made by some of this history of Samson to the Lord seems too partial, too much contradicted by other parts, too little in harmony with the character of the book, and with its place in the book, to be accepted with any satisfaction. Partial applications of this nature are easy to be made, but tend to confusion of all interpretation, and have been the reproach of the allegorical, especially. Even although we can put nothing better in their place, it becomes our duty to reject them in the interest of clear and consistent exposition of the word of God. The close of Samson’s history is a most solemn one; and at the end of this series of declensions and revivals, comes in a most solemn place. We must leave it for the prayerful examination of the Lord’s people, and as what calls for exercise of heart as well as for searching of Scripture. To introduce here a representation of the Lord’s blessed work would seem to take the edge from the admonition it should convey to us, if at least this should be assumed to be the real object here of the Spirit of God. If it be simply meant as the suggestion by the history of the failed Nazarite of that true and perfect One who alone has never failed, this is no longer typical interpretation, and does not fall within the compass of these brief outline notes. Judges F. W. Grant.