Samson Wasn't the Hero God Wanted

Note: there are references to sexual violence in this blog. Please take care of yourself and avoid reading if it could trigger trauma for you.

 The Lord’s messenger appeared to the woman and said to her, “Even though you’ve been unable to become pregnant and haven’t given birth, you are now pregnant and will give birth to a son! Now be careful not to drink wine or brandy or to eat anything that is ritually unclean,  because you are pregnant and will give birth to a son. Don’t allow a razor to shave his head, because the boy is going to be a nazirite for God from birth. He’ll be the one who begins Israel’s rescue from the power of the Philistines.” (Judges 13:3-5)

In this grand experiment of asking a congregation to read the Bible in a year, we have made it through Paul’s letters, Revelation (we started in Matthew), Leviticus, and Numbers.  All of those came with some grumbles. But I thought I was going to lose everyone when we hit Judges.

“What is the point of this book? Why is it in the Bible? It is awful.”

Those were the objections I confronted, and they are valid objections. They had read of a woman who drove a tent peg through the head of a sleeping man, a father who sacrificed his virgin daughter, and most horribly, a civil war started after a woman was dismembered and sent like a brutal Fed-Ex to all the tribes demanding justice for her rape and murder, even as that justice was less about avenging her and more about making up for a man who was insulted. So while they were asking questions about the book, at the heart of all of this was the undercurrent question:

Where is God in all this horror?

We are going to get to that question, but we are going to approach it through probably the best known story of Judges, that of Samson. We are not going at it by swallowing whole the idea that Samson is a great hero. Quite the opposite, in fact. And to do that, we are going to start with the words quoted above, words spoken by the Lord’s messenger to Samson’s mother.

These words are important, because they are the rare example when the Lord’s messenger actually shows up to say something in Judges. Otherwise, there are many things credited to God as what God has said. But did God say those things? Or, as I have pointed out to my people, are they just instances like when the winning football team claims that God is with them because they won? People have always, and will always, lay claim to God being behind them to justify what they are doing. But that does not mean that God does endorse their actions, and certainly doesn’t mean that is what God wants from them. I have no doubt that God loves them. But I do know we can all and we do all make choices that are outside of what God wants for us.

Samson is a prime example of someone who does not become who God most wanted him to be. Yet I have to believe God’s grace is with him anyway.

The Lord’s messenger shows up and tells Samson’s mother that this child is to be a Nazirite.  And it is so important that the messenger requires the mother to honor the vows too. What are these vows? The instructions for a Nazirite are in Numbers 6, and basically include 3 main instructions:

1.       Do not consume anything made of grape, from wine, brandy, vinegar, or even the actual grape. 

2.       Do not touch a dead body, even if that body is your mother or father.

3.       Do not cut your hair, unless someone has died nearby (no instructions on how close nearby is) and then it needs to be ritually shaved, or when the Nazirite term has been fulfilled and then the hair is shaved and offered to the Lord.

There are also special offerings that a Nazirite must bring to the Temple depending on particular points in the person’s journey. What is not shared is when the end of the Nazirite term is reached (except that Samson is to abide them for his entire life – he apparently needs a long lesson). All that is given is the ritual to undergo when that moment is reached, and that is when the hair is offered on the altar, along with animal sacrifices.  Apparently, Samson never reached the end of that Nazirite vow because he never ritually brought his hair to the altar of God.

But then, arguably Samson was never a Nazirite, because he did not truly honor any of the requirements of the Nazirite. You might think he honors that requirement not to cut his hair, but let’s look at that as we look at the other two things Samson doesn’t do.

First, Samson doesn’t avoid wine. Does the Scripture explicitly say that is the case? No. However, when he decides he wants to marry the Philistine woman, he throws a feast. In Hebrew, this is misteh, and is also sometimes translated as banquet. This particular word implies a great celebration in which wine would be abundant. Samson, as the host, assuredly would have partaken of the wine. But we don’t even have to do that deep exegesis, because just prior to this, he is walking in the vineyards! He is not to have anything to do with grapes. Walking in vineyards is to walk among the grapes.

And that vineyard moment also brings up his second violation.  Not only does he touch the carcass of a lion, he kills the lion! And then he eats honey out of the carcass!  This dude is not avoiding touching dead things. And he not only touches carcasses, he creates them!  The amount of death he brings to God’s animals and to people is astounding, bragged about even, and yet not in the designs God had for Samson.

So you may say that he kept his vow of not shaving his hair. It was only when he was “tricked” that he finally did it.  The problem here is that the point of the long hair is to have it to shave off and give to the Lord!  That is the power in the long hair.  Plus, again, he didn’t shave it off when he was in the vicinity of dead people, dead people he created!

So now let’s turn back to the man God wanted Samson to be. God wanted Samson to be a man who avoided grape products (probably especially alcohol), a man who was never in the vicinity of death, and a man who shaved his hair off as an offering to God. But wait, aren’t we also told that the Lord’s spirit rushed over him, and that his strength came from his long hair?  Doesn’t that imply that God wanted this strong man?

Well, now we go back to this tension in Judges between when God actually shows up, and when people attribute things to God. What if the story of Samson is really to show us how often we stray from the person God calls us to be, and shows us our tendency to justify horrendous behavior (violent, misogynistic, murderous behavior) by crediting it to God’s will?

The story tells us God wants Samson to be a Nazirite and he will be the one who rescues Israel from Philistine power. What the messenger of the Lord does not tell us, however, is how Samson is supposed to be part of that rescue. Outside of killing a bunch of Philistines, particularly in his death, it doesn’t seem like ultimately he does much to end the hostilities between the two cultures. He may, in fact, just amp up the animosity.

But what if Samson had avoided alcohol? In his case he likely drank to excess instead of moderation – he doesn’t seem like a guy for whom moderation has meaning. And what if he had cut his hair and offered it to the Lord, setting aside his violent power and bringing it to the altar? And what if he hadn’t killed practically everything and everyone he touched?  Perhaps he would have been a compelling agent of peace instead. Someone strong in weakness and wisdom. A level head amidst tense circumstances. One who was willing to sacrifice of himself for the good of others.

But that’s not the Samson we got.

What Samson did leave us, though, is the space to ask tough questions. We get to face the reality that God gives us freewill to choose who we will be. We get to ask when is something God’s will and for God’s glory, and when is it for my will and my glory? And when do I credit things to God because they give me a sense of power, when God so often is about setting aside power for self-discipline?

And when we ask where is God in all of this, we can affirm God is in the desperate call to try to get us to be the people of peace.

Samson is not a hero. Samson is a human. So are all of us. Yet God still seeks us out anyway. God still calls to us and invites us into a life of peace. And God still shows up in our stories, even when we choose to write our own chapters. What a gracious God. And what a people in need of such grace.

Image by Dustin Humes at Unsplash.com