No King in Israel (38)

Abraham gave Isaac to God and ended up the father of eight sons by three different women. He received Isaac back as well. Hannah dedicated Samuel to God, afterwards conceiving three more sons as well as two daughters. Rebekah was barren until her husband prayed for her, after which she conceived not one son but two, both of whom became fathers of nations. Mary said, “Let it be to me according to your word”, and conceived not only the Lord Jesus but also four other sons and unnumbered sisters.

Short version, you cannot out-give the Lord. We will see that again shortly.

II. Twelve Judges in Chronological Order (continued)

12. Samson (continued)

Judges 16:23-27 — Two Pillars

“Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to rejoice, and they said, ‘Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hand.’ And when the people saw him, they praised their god. For they said, ‘Our god has given our enemy into our hand, the ravager of our country, who has killed many of us.’ And when their hearts were merry, they said, ‘Call Samson, that he may entertain us.’ So they called Samson out of the prison, and he entertained them. They made him stand between the pillars. And Samson said to the young man who held him by the hand, ‘Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, that I may lean against them.’ Now the house was full of men and women. All the lords of the Philistines were there, and on the roof there were about 3,000 men and women, who looked on while Samson entertained.”

Dagon Their God

Scripture mentions Dagon only in association with the Philistine people, and in only three locations: here in Judges, in the delightful 1 Samuel 5 (where Dagon goes ‘head to head’ with the Ark of the Covenant and comes up the loser) and in 1 Chronicles 10:10, where King Saul’s head is displayed by the victorious Philistines in the temple of Dagon, possibly as a triumphant rejoinder to the embarrassment of 1 Samuel 5. In all these places, he is “Dagon their god”.

While the writer calls Dagon their god, we should probably not interpret this as an exclusivity claim. The Philistines were only one of many peoples who served Dagon (or Dagan). Primarily associated with prosperity, this Syrophoenician deity had worshipers from the Upper Euphrates on south and throughout Mesopotamia.

Since the Philistines gathered for the purpose of sacrifice to Dagon, we can safely conclude that “the house” to which Samson refers was the temple of Dagon in Gaza, one of the major Philistine cities, which makes the size of the venue described here plausible. Few houses in those days would hold 3,000-plus. In 1 Samuel 5, it was the temple of Dagon in Ashdod that took the worst hit from the Ark.

‘That He May Entertain Us’

The word “entertain” is a questionable English choice here. It’s highly unlikely Samson juggled, sang or deliberately amused his captors, not least because he was blind. The KJV is actually better on this point in that it refers to “making sport”, a meaning the Hebrew śāḥaq will certainly bear. The Philistines wanted to laugh at Samson and mock him publicly, so they brought him out from the prison to make him the butt of their jokes more efficiently and personally.

Well, you know what they say about the last laugh …

The Lords of the Philistines

The text mentions the lords of the Philistines three times, reinforcing it with “all the lords” in verse 27. As mentioned in a previous post, there were at least five lords of the Philistines, and the writer of this portion of Judges wants his readers to know they were all either under or atop the roof of Dagon’s temple when it came crashing down. The damage to Philistine morale must have been impressive, though, as we know, in politics almost anyone is replaceable, usually sooner than later.

The Young Man

Unless the young fellow who helped Samson find the two pillars holding up the temple was a fellow prisoner and/or Israelite, he must have been completely unaware of Samson’s intentions. It’s not impossible that the Holy Spirit conveyed these events directly to the mind of the human agent who recorded them for us, but far more likely someone who overheard the conversation between Samson and the young man and Samson’s subsequent prayer escaped to tell the tale, perhaps even “the young man who held him by the hand”. He was certainly in the best position to remember it all, and this wouldn’t be the first time the Lord has been gracious to someone who served his purposes, however inadvertently.

Judges 16:28-31 — Two Eyes

“Then Samson called to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes.’ And Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and he leaned his weight against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other. And Samson said, ‘Let me die with the Philistines.’ Then he bowed with all his strength, and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life. Then his brothers and all his family came down and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father. He had judged Israel twenty years.”

Dying as He Lived

Samson was the product of his senses. He was an intemperate man full of intense physical desires and reactions. Permanently deprived of one of his senses, he was desperate for revenge on the men who took it away. We all know vengeance is best left to the Lord, but in this case Samson’s craving for revenge served a higher purpose, and the Lord honored his request for it. Appropriately enough, Samson died as he lived.

More Than in His Life

With 3,000 Philistines on the roof of the temple and perhaps as many inside it, we might reasonably speculate that the death toll in Gaza when Samson died topped 5,000, a one-day total the IDF has yet to come within an order of magnitude of matching. In dying, Samson killed more Philistines than in the twenty years during which he judged Israel. Given that chapter 15 alone ended with 1,000+ dead, it seems the Spirit of God has recorded for us the most memorable events of Samson’s life, numerically at least. Still, the decades between Ramath-lehi and Delilah’s betrayal leave plenty of room for stories left untold.

Samson’s Brothers

Prior to giving birth to Samson his mother was barren. Here we find that “his brothers and all his family” came down to Gaza and took his body back to bury it in Manoah’s tomb. In the Hebrew OT, the word “brothers” occasionally signifies relationships more distant than siblings; however, that seems unlikely in this case because it would make the phrase “all his family” redundant. So then, once the Nazirite from the womb was in the world, it appears the Lord blessed Samson’s mother with other children.

As I pointed out in today’s introduction, there’s plenty of precedent for that sort of thing in scripture. You cannot out-give the Lord.