Samson & Delilah: Losing & Finding Our Sacredness

This week we find ourselves once again in the Old Testament book of Judges. The entire book cycles through a pattern over and over again:

The people “do evil” in the eyes of God (usually worshipping foreign gods)
As punishment God lets the enemy take over the land and the Israelites
The people cry out for help
God sends a judge (leader and war lord, maybe prophet) to fight the enemy

As this cycle is repeated, the judges become less faithful and more violent, and the plight of women becomes worse and worse. Samson is the final judge. His death marks the end of the era of judges in Israel. The last line in the book of Judges reads: In those days Israel had no king and everyone did as they pleased.

Before we get to the story of Samson, let’s talk briefly about the Philistines. Where on earth did they come from? Well, in the early 12^th century BCE, the Philistines were invaders called “Sea Peoples” or “foreigners from the sea” who came by ship from Crete, the mainland of Greece, and Western Turkey. After Egypt fought them off, they sailed up the coast and settled in the land of Palestine where they set up five small, but closely united, cities who eventually began to expand inland. At first, the Philistines were helpful to the Israelites by weakening the Canaanites, but eventually it put the Israelites in direct conflict with the Philistines themselves

Judges 13 begins the story of Samson. As the cycle begins again, the Israelites did what was evil in the sight of God, so scripture says, God “delivered” them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years. In this instance, God initiates raising up a hero, a new judge for Israel, Samson. As so often happens in the Old Testament, God sends an angel to a barren couple, Manoah and his wife, and tells them that they are going to have a child who will be a Nazarite, consecrated to God. The child will “strike the first blow” against the Philistines.

What is a Nazarite?

It is similar to being a priest, but could be man, woman or servant. A Nazarite vow was usually a short-term vow (30 days) in gratitude for being cured of Illness, or after the birth of a child or the fulfillment of a prayer. During that time the person did not drink alcohol, touch dead bodies or cut their hair. At the end, their hair was shaved off and offered as a sacrifice. (Inclusive Bible note) Samson’s vow, on the other hand, was a lifelong vow.

Samson grows up to be extremely strong, able to single-handedly kill 1,000 Philistines. He’s also a bit full of himself, seems to do whatever he wants and has forgotten his sacred purpose to protect the people of Israel.

Samson had led the Israelites for 20 years when he fell in love with Delilah. The leaders of the five Philistine cities saw this as their golden opportunity. They offered Delilah a HUGE amount of money to discover the secret to Samson’s strength – a total of 5500 shekels (about $14 million today).

Eventually Delilah nagged the truth out of him, lulled him to sleep on her lap, and called a servant to shave his head. With his hair and his strength gone, the Philistines easily captured him, gouged out his eyes, and made him grind grain in the prison.

As his hair began to grow back, Samson sensed that some of his strength was returning. One night, when the Philistines paraded him around as entertainment at a huge celebration to their god, Dagon, Samson prayed that God would let him use his strength once more to pull down the pillars of the temple as revenge for his eyes. The story says that even though it killed Samson in the process, he took many more Philistine lives on that night than in all his lifetime.

So, what do we do with this? First, we realize that there is a good chance the story is merely symbolic, that Samson embodies Israel as a nation and the story foreshadows their future.

The shaved head, forced labor, binding and imprisonment of Samson offers images of exile and captivity which hint at the exile Israel will experience. (In 722 BCE the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians and sent into exile. In 586 BCE the southern kingdom of Judah was sent into exile when the Babylonians take over Jerusalem.)
As Samson lost his strength, so too will Israel and Judah
As Samson is blinded, so will the prophets cry out that Israel is blind to its sin before the exile
Just as the Philistine temple of Dagon was destroyed, so too will the Temple in Jerusalem will be destroyed,
As Samson dies, it marks the end the age of the judges and the beginning of the time of the kings. The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem marks the end of the time of the kings.

The second way to understand this story is to return to the theme that runs through the entire book of judges: the people did whatever the heck they wanted and society deteriorated. They lost sight of God (their moral compass), they lost sight of goodness, kindness, compassion, caring and became greedy, wanton, power-hungry, and corrupt.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann reminds us that, in the stories of the Old Testament, human power isolated from covenant loyalty to Yahweh always ends in catastrophic failure. We look at Samson and see a muscular hero, but the text reveals a tragic reality. Samson began life with a sacred purpose and gift, but goes astray, doing whatever he pleases. And, he had the strength to make his own rules, follow his own impulses, and be accountable to no one.

Samson was headed down a dangerous road. Enter in Delilah. We can villainize Delilah for her deception, trickery and betrayal, but I wonder if she isn’t just a symbol of all the powerful forces that lead people astray? Having been pressured and bribed to betray Samson, perhaps she symbolizes the pressure of our culture that nags at us every day?

We live in a culture that constantly pulls us away from our goodness and our sacredness. We have normalized things that should still trouble us, including consumerism, lying, manipulation, violence, and harsh or careless speech. We idolize what should not be idolized, such as money, power, beauty, possessions, sports figures, movie stars, presidents, billionaires, and musicians. We often listen more closely to the voices that are white, straight, and powerful. And we compromise what matters because it is easier or expected, including ethics at work, Sabbath time, and family time. Little by little, the world wears us down until we simply give in.

The story of Samson forces an uncomfortable question upon us: Have we lost ourselves and our sense of sacredness?

We tell ourselves each time we give in to the pressure that that little bit doesn’t change us, but it does. It changes us little by little until we don’t know who we are anymore and we don’t understand what happened to our sacred connection to ourselves and the divine.

When Samson wakes up from the razor's touch, he thinks, "I’ll get out of here as I did before." He expects his muscles to flex. He expects the ropes to snap. But the narrator delivers the most chilling sentence in the entire book: "But he did not know that Yahweh had abandoned him."

Now, in my understanding, God doesn’t abandon us, but it can feel that way. When we get so caught up in the rhetoric, the expectations, the demands, the values of the world (or lack thereof), it is easy to lose sight of the spiritual connection with Something More in our lives. And when we work ourselves into the ground, run out of fuel and creativity, and burn ourselves out, we wonder why on earth we can’t feel the sacred pulse of the Universe anymore.

Samson really hit rock bottom before he came back to himself and reconnected with Yahweh. His hair growing back was simply symbolic of the relationship he was slowly recovering with God. For us, the good news is that when we finally come to the end of our own strength, we have now left room for the Spirit to begin a new thing.

Perhaps Samson’s story leaves us not with admiration for his strength, nor even anger toward Delilah and the Philistines, but with an opportunity to look within. How much do we (even subconsciously) insist on doing things ourselves, rely only on our own strength, our own will, our own cleverness, our own ability to push through? Perhaps it is time to look honestly into the depths of our own souls, to once again see the sacredness within us, and reconnect with the life-force that sustains, challenges, holds and guides us.

Love & Light,

Kaye

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