The Interesting Tale of Samson

As part of a separate project, I’m working on, I’ve been working my way through the Bible. I made it to Judges a few days ago and as always, it’s such a joy to read. By joy, I mean a gruesome bloody mess. That’s a story for another day though. Today, I wanted to talk about Samson. Once again, I almost had enough content on this to make a Podcast episode out of it, but I felt like it would come up a bit short.

In light of that, I’m going to talk about it here. Samson has an interesting narrative. His story starts in Judges 13. He was born to a mother who was barren to start with. This is a recurring theme we see a lot in the bible. A woman is barren, God intercedes to provide a child, and that child then does something to further God’s purpose. In the case of Samson, he’s supposed to be raised as a Nazirite. That means no haircuts, no fermented drinks, and no eating anything unclean in accordance with the traditional Jewish standards of clean and unclean. Samson will then lead in delivering Israel from the hands of the Philistines.

After he’s born, the Spirit of the Lord comes upon him, giving him what appears to be supernatural strength. In Judges 14, we then get to Samson’s marriage. It’s a pretty classic love story. Samson goes out, and he sees a young Philistine woman, he goes home, and he tells his parents that he wants them to get her as his wife. There’s a lot to unpack there. That’s completely different from how things work now. The text doesn’t give us an age for the woman, but I’d assume she’s probably at least 13 or 14 years old.

Samson’s parents protest on account of the woman being a Philistine. The Israelites aren’t supposed to be intermarrying with other people groups. That’s a theme that God stresses about a hundred times during Exodus and Deuteronomy. God wants the Jews to be his people, set apart from all the others. That’s why he gave them about 600 rules to follow. All of them are supposed to make the Jews distinct from others living around them.

To counter this protest, Samson tells his parents that woman is the right one for him. The author of Judges tells us in an aside that this was secretly the will of the Lord because God was trying to start a fight with the Philistines. Samson’s parents cave so together, they head down to get this girl so Samson can marry her. Along the way, they encounter a lion. That’s usually a sure sign of a bad day but Samson simply kills it by tearing it apart with his bare hands.

After that episode, Samson finally talks to this girl who he “love-at-first-sight’ed”. The text says that he liked her, so evidently things were on track to work out. Later, when Samson is on his way back to marry her, he passes by the lion carcass from his previous trip. He sees that it is now filled with honey, so he scoops it out and eats it. He then goes on to share some of it with his parents without telling them that it came from the rotting body of a dead lion. It’s at this point that we can tell that Samson is kind of a moron. Honey from a lion carcass would be classified as unclean. So, this act is an act of sin against God. I mention this because it’s important later.

When wedding time comes, Samson holds a feast. Not just any feast though. It appears this will be a seven-day feast which is kind of insane if you think about it. Christmas is maybe the closest thing we have to that in modern American culture. At said feast, Samson decides to become the Riddler for some reason. He proposes to some of his companions that if they can guess his riddle within the time of the feast, he’ll give them thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes.

Now to us, that sounds like a pretty lame bet. However, back then, people would be lucky to have one or two changes of clothes. So, it was probably a much bigger bet than one would realize. The riddle was “Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet.” To us, it’s obvious this is the sin honey from the lion. But Samson’s companions spent three days trying to guess the answer and they couldn’t do it.

In response to this predicament, they go to his wife and tell her to get Samson to reveal the answer to the riddle or else they’ll “burn you and your father’s household to death. Did you invite us here to steal our property?” So immediately, we can see the type of people we’re dealing with here. Samson is a moron, and his companions are the kind of degenerates who will threaten a young girl and her family just to win some clothes. This seems freaking insane. However, it’s why I mentioned the relative scarcity of clothes compared to how we view clothes today. It’s still freaking insane that they’d say this to her but it’s slightly less insane than it seems on the surface.

So, now what is Samson’s brand-new wife going to do about this? Any guesses? If you guessed that she’d throw herself on Samson sobbing, you guessed right. Specifically, she decided to go the manipulative route and say “You hate me! You don’t really love me. You’ve given my people a riddle, but you haven’t told me the answer.”

Right off the bat, we can tell that Samson has a wife that he deserves. He’s a moron, and she’s a piece of work. Instead of telling her husband the truth, she decides to lie to him. This is a very womanly thing to do and it’s almost a pattern. I wanted to feel sorry for her because she’s a young woman probably forced into a marriage against her will, but she’s not exactly doing a great job of making her case. She then goes on to make it even worse.

Samson tells her that he hasn’t even told his own parents so why would he tell her the answer to the riddle. She takes that about like you’d expect. She spends the rest of the feast crying. After all of that, Samson finally gives in. The text says, “On the seventh day he finally told her because she continued to press him. She in turn explained the riddle to her people.” So basically, Samson’s wife cried and nagged him for a week and then she betrayed him. She seems like a real catch.

She’s not fully to blame though. Once again, if Samson had just kept his mouth shut on the front end, none of this would have happened. He holds some culpability to be sure. But that doesn’t give his wife a pass to lie or sell him out. Both need to be accountable for their actions and God sees to it that they are.

Samson’s companions guess the riddle. He figures out that his wife told them. He gets ticked off, so he goes to Ashkelon and kills 30 Philistine men, strips them, and takes back their clothes to give to his companions. It says the “Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him” so it looks like part of this is still God trying to pick fights with the Philistines, but Samson is still the one who does the killing.

After the wager is complete, “Burning with anger, [Samson] returned to his father’s home. And Samson’s wife was given to one of his companions who had attended him at the feast.” Talk about a fantastic ending. Unfortunately, Samson’s wife gets the worst end of the deal in this one. I think we all know what “given to one of his companions” means. Samson also murders 30 men so it’s not like he got off scot-free exactly.

Unfortunately, the story isn’t over. In Judges 15, around the time of the wheat harvest, Samson takes a young goat and heads off to visit his wife. If I had to guess, it seems like he must have been in the “mood” if you catch my drift. However, Samson’s father-in-law stops Samson from seeing his wife. He tells Samson that he gave his daughter to Samson’s companion. Then he tries to give Samson his wife’s younger sister in exchange.

There’s a lot that could be said about Samson’s father-in-law. However, you have to view the whole thing through the proper cultural context. In this particular culture, women are basically a liability. They don’t eat that much less than men and they lose labor capacity when pregnant. They also don’t have as much labor capacity in general. This isn’t something popular to say but the facts are the facts. Be thankful we live in an era where technology has offset the cruel realities of the world.

In response to all of this, Samson gets mad. He captures 300 foxes, ties them into pairs by the tails, and then attaches torches to the tails. The foxes go crazy and run loose, burning down a bunch of the Philistines' standing grain, and a bunch of other stuff. I can’t even begin to imagine how long it took Samson to catch 300 foxes.

In response to this, the Philistines then go and burn Samson’s wife and his father-in-law to death. This is an important point for several reasons. For starters, it demonstrates that the Philistines are a nasty bunch. Moving past that, there’s some irony to it. This was the threat they originally used on Samson’s wife. Unless she gave them the answer to the riddle, they were going to burn her and her father. It’s ironic that this ultimately ended up being her fate anyway.

I think Samson’s wife is an underrated character in this story. She’s a young girl in a society that’s not kind to women. She gets married off to a man who’s not very wise. Instead of being faithful to this moron of a man, she decides to betray him for the sake of herself and her family. On account of this betrayal, she’s given to another man. She is then burned to death along with her father. I think her story speaks to the plight of women in general. Back in Genesis 3:16, after the fall, God tells Eve “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” There are a lot of women stuck in relationships with men who they feel don’t deserve to rule over them.

Instead of submitting to Samson, telling him the truth, and trusting in him to do right by her, Samson’s wife selected for herself the path of rebellion. She decided to be faithless instead of faithful. In Judges 15:15, Samson kills 1,000 men using the jawbone of a donkey. It is likely that if his wife had simply told him “Dear, your companions have threatened to burn me and my whole family unless I tell them the answer to your riddle,” Samson could have probably resolved the situation in a manner that would have resulted in the survival of both his wife and her family. However, she does not do that. Instead, she lies to him, she tries to emotionally manipulate him, and she cries about it for a week. Consequently, she pays the price for her actions.

Overall, the story is brilliant but the characters suck. They are all bad. Not a single person in this story does the right thing. They all are very human, and they all fail. For those of you out there who are mad that Samson got off with no consequences while his wife burned with her family, stay tuned. Samson is at fault for this too. He sinned before the Lord, and he gets his just desserts just as his wife did.

When I was a kid, I used to feel sad for Samson. As an adult, I don’t. Looking at the story now, I see far too much of myself in Samson. I can relate all too well to being the moron in the story who causes everything to fall apart. That’s how you can tell it’s a good story.