No King in Israel (32)

Ahab listened to a lying spirit sent out from the presence of God. He consequently perished in battle. It was inevitable. The Lord had purposed to put him to death. He knew Ahab would follow the word of four hundred false prophets telling him exactly what he already wanted to hear rather than one lone man with the truth of God in his mouth.

Thus, the will of God profoundly influenced Ahab without Ahab having the slightest personal insight into it, and without him deriving any benefit from it.

As we will see, our twelfth judge had far too much in common with Ahab.

God often uses the inclinations and dispositions of men to get his work done. It is not in the least necessary that these be morally good inclinations or characteristically moral men.

II. Twelve Judges in Chronological Order (continued)

12. Samson (continued)

Judges 13:21-25 — Reasoning Faith

“The angel of the Lord appeared no more to Manoah and to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the Lord. And Manoah said to his wife, ‘We shall surely die, for we have seen God.’ But his wife said to him, ‘If the Lord had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering at our hands, or shown us all these things, or now announced to us such things as these.’ And the woman bore a son and called his name Samson. And the young man grew, and the Lord blessed him. And the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him in Mahaneh-dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.”

Manoah and Manoah’s Wife

I don’t see Manoah as faithless or unbelieving here, simply overwhelmed. As I explained in an earlier post about Gideon’s experience with the angel of the Lord, the expectation that seeing God face to face is inevitably a terminal event for a human being was not an exceptional one. Jacob thought so, and the Lord explicitly revealed this truth to Moses. Devout Israelites believed it because God said it, and because their ancestors believed and taught it. The angel of the Lord was the exception to the rule. That would have been a blessed relief to discover, but also entirely unexpected. Manoah grasped that he had seen God and lived. In the end, he had a better-than-average day.

His wife did even better. She reasoned in faith, something we also discussed here in a recent post. Faith is not a leap in the dark. It projects from facts already in evidence. Manoah’s wife followed in the grand tradition of people who reasoned their way from what they knew about God to act in faith in new situations that tested them to the limit, including Abraham, Sarah and Moses.

God Finishes What He Starts

Every Christian has to do the same about God after salvation. The new believer finds himself saved but conflicted between the promptings of the Spirit and the call of the old nature. Paul walks us through the same sort of reasoning process that guided the wisdom of Manoah’s wife: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” A God who would allow his beloved Son to suffer and die in order to redeem a people for himself is not about to cast us away just because we fail. He is as committed to seeing the process of sanctification through to the end in each of our lives as he was to making good on his promises to Manoah and his wife.

God is not arbitrary or capricious. He finishes what he starts. Faith can reason that out, but having it in writing from an apostle helps a great deal.

Called His Name Samson

The promised child was born in due course. Manoah’s wife called him Samson, which means “like the sun” or “brilliant”. It appears the Lord allowed her to choose the name herself. Perhaps she wanted to memorialize her experience with God. The parents of John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus never had to make that sort of choice; the angel Gabriel gave both explicit instructions about what to name their sons. This is the only Samson in scripture, and the name remains relatively rare.

The Spirit of the Lord

This is the fourth of seven references to the Spirit of the Lord in Judges. The Spirit had previously also come upon Othniel, Gideon and Jephthah to enable them for their victories. The final three references are all to Samson and each is associated with a display of supernatural physical strength. As we have seen from previous examples in Judges, this sort of divine enabling did not prevent them from making unwise choices or sinning in other ways. It was specific to a particular task. Nevertheless, Samson started with the Lord’s blessing.

Mahaneh-dan

Along with other Bible versions, the ESV transliterates Mahaneh-dan as if it were a place name. However, the word maḥănê simply means “camp” or “company”. Almost half the popular English translations go with something like “the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him in the camp of Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol. If the reference to “camp” seems out of place at a period in history when most Israelites were living in houses, we should remember that the tribe of Dan was uniquely unsettled. As we will see in a later chapter of Judges, they could not subdue the Canaanites in the territory assigned to them and were eventually dispossessed. In order to find an inheritance they might be able to conquer and hold for more than a generation, they later opted to move north. So then, “camp” might have described Dan’s situation during Samson’s lifetime quite well, especially outside major cities like Zorah and Eshtaol.

Judges 14:1-3 — Right in My Eyes

“Samson went down to Timnah, and at Timnah he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines. Then he came up and told his father and mother, ‘I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah. Now get her for me as my wife.’ But his father and mother said to him, ‘Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives, or among all our people, that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?’ But Samson said to his father, ‘Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes.’ ”

The word “right” in the phrase “right in my eyes” simply means “pleasing”. Samson’s aesthetic faculties were firing on all cylinders, but there’s no indication his spiritual faculties were engaged. The writer’s word choice is almost surely intended to call us back to the theme verse of Judges and our excuse for the title of this series from 21:25 and elsewhere: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” That included Samson, despite the fact that he was a Nazirite from the womb and the Spirit of the Lord was stirring in him.

I find it interesting that despite their experience with the angel of the Lord and the revelation that he would begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines, Manoah and his wife did not catch on that an incident was brewing. They had perfectly ordinary parental aspirations for their son, as many Christian parents do, and rightly so. They recognized that it was wrong for the people of God to marry their pagan neighbors. Their appeal to him not to act on his passions would almost surely have been ineffective regardless, but we cannot help noting it was also weak. Logic and tradition do not have the same authority as the word of the Lord encoded in Israel’s law. That’s really what Samson was contemplating breaking by marrying outside his people.

Judges 14:4 — From the Lord

“His father and mother did not know that it was from the Lord, for he was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines. At that time the Philistines ruled over Israel.”

Concerning this, John Gill comments:

“[Samson] perceived it was the mind and will of God that he should take such a person to wife, by the impulse of the Spirit of God upon him, pointing it, unto him, inclining and urging him to it, suggesting the end and design of it, and the opportunity it would give him of quarrelling with the Philistines, and taking vengeance on them; but this his parents were ignorant of, nor did he let them know that this was of God.”

So Samson was more spiritually discerning than his carnal parents? I think Gill’s scenario staggeringly unlikely. He is giving Samson way too much credit. I also think it was the Lord, not Samson, who was consciously seeking the opportunity against the Philistines. That seems to be the sense in which “from the Lord” is used here, as it is elsewhere.

Samson Perceived?

We have already noted the Spirit of the Lord was present with these judges to enable them for service. In Samson’s case, that meant he had supernatural strength (at specific times) and a divinely fueled animus against Philistines. That was really the extent of it. What the judges (or, later, King Saul) experienced when the Spirit stirred them was not the sort of indwelling moral presence common to Church Age believers, in which the Spirit constantly conflicts with our natural inclinations, warning us against evil and troubling us when we engage in it. Nor did the Spirit make any judge expect perhaps Deborah especially discerning. (She was a prophetess, and that comes with the territory.) Generally speaking, the Spirit’s role in the lives of Old Testament leaders was not providing discernment (Solomon being the exception), revealing the will of God (that was the Urim and Thummim, or occasionally an ephod) or informing the conscience. Judges did not have the “mind of Christ” as believers do.

Was Samson aware of all the possibilities marriage to a Philistine might give him to stir up trouble with Israel’s oppressors? Possibly. But was he cunningly planning his first provocation by feigning love for one of their daughters? Surely not. The evidence will come shortly. Why would he strike down thirty men and go back to his father’s house in hot anger when his wife-to-be told them the answer to his riddle if, by doing so, she had just given him the opening he was looking for to start a conflict with Israel’s oppressor? If the entire wedding was a ruse to give him an excuse for a fight, he would rather have been rubbing his hands together with glee.

A Hothead Infatuated

No, I firmly believe Samson was just a hothead infatuated with the wrong girl at the right place and time. The Lord was using him not because of his great discernment or planning skills, but very much in spite of them. This is hardly a unique situation in scripture. When the Old Testament historians say something is “from the Lord”, it need not be understood by the person so used or afflicted, and it need not be a good thing for the person involved.

An example: Saul’s harmful spirit was “from the Lord” too, resulting in him trying to pin David to the wall with a spear. That may have been the Lord’s sovereign will for David’s ultimate spiritual development and his circumstantial will for the kingdom of Israel, but it was surely not his moral will for Saul. Like Ahab, the Lord was using Saul’s innate sinfulness to accomplish his purposes, but Saul got no benefit from the exercise and certainly had no insight into what was happening.

Likewise, Samson’s lust accomplished God’s purposes, but it was no credit to Samson. You will search his history in vain for any evidence of special cunning or spiritual intuition.