The Tragedy of Samson - 2 - Daughter of the Philistines

"And Samson went down to Timnath, and saw a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines. And he came up and told his father and his mother, I have seen a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines; now therefore get her for me to wife." (Judges 14. 1-2)

Easy-going, casual words, but in one moment they destroyed a father's pride and a mother's hopes. Their son, dedicated to the Lord from his birth, marked out for Divine service and Divine honours, was preordained to deliver Israel from the Philistines. That he should deny all the high ideals inculcated in him from childhood, by choosing for his wife a woman of the godless aliens, must have caused heartbreak to his parents and consternation throughout Zorah. Where now were all the golden expectations of freedom from servitude and restoration of racial pride and dignity? Their champion had failed them; their idol had feet of clay. "Is there not a woman of the families of Israel, that you take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?" exclaimed his father bitterly. Samson only replied indifferently, "Get her for me, for she pleases me well." There is all the arrogance and self-confidence of inexperienced youth in that remark.

It need not be thought that Samson was either repudiating his Divine calling or even consciously violating his obligations as a Nazarite. The trouble ran much deeper than that. All the evidence goes to show that Samson interpreted his commission in terms of his own physical strength bestowed by God. He believed that his personal relationship to God was of no consequence provided he made use of his physical powers to inflict as much damage upon the Philistines as he could. Samson is the perfect example of the natural man who perceives not the things of the Spirit of God even though he pay God lip service and believe himself to be a favoured one of God. The obligations of the Mosaic Law and of the Nazarites' vow meant nothing to Samson the while he could go out and kill Philistines for God. It was only when the natural strength failed him and he was brought low in suffering that his mind became ennobled to better things. But at this time in his life that sequel lay far in the distant future.

Timnath was a village some six or seven miles from Zorah, lying just inside the boundaries of the tribe of Judah and only a mile or so from the Philistine frontier. It evidently had a joint Hebrew-Philistine population and mixed marriages were probably not at all uncommon, despite the prohibitions of the Law Covenant against such unions. Samson must have known the village well and some of his boyhood friends would have been Timnites. The athletic figure of the Hebrew youth, his flowing locks and keen, clear eyes, would make him attractive in the eyes of all the village maidens and even a Philistine father would not object to a match with a man of such known prowess. So the marriage was arranged. With heavy heart, assuredly, Manoah performed the distasteful task demanded by the custom of the day of consulting with the Philistine father of the girl and agreeing upon the details of her dowry, the guarantees and assurances necessary on behalf of his son. All the arrangements were made before the union could become effective. This to the Hebrews was the real marriage, after which the bride remained at her father's house for a period of months before her husband came to take her to her new home. This part of the arrangement did not conform to Philistine custom and probably that fact was partly responsible for the sequel.

So it came about that within a little while Samson was striding along the narrow track which led from Zorah to Timnath, on the way to finalise the contract with the woman who had taken his fancy. Canaan was a fertile and tree-clad country in those days, and the wilder parts between centres of habitation harboured many wild animals, some of them dangerous to man, so that Samson may not have been altogether surprised at the sudden appearance, on the pathway before him, of a lion. The beast was probably the more frightened. The narrative says, "A young lion roared against him" - the prelude to its crouching for a spring. Samson, confident in his strength and agility, waited for the leap. As it came, he adroitly side-stepped and in a lightning flash got behind and above the animal, his hands round its throat, taking care to keep out of the way of its flailing limbs, bending its neck backwards until he had throttled its life out of existence. With, perhaps, a gesture of contempt, he flung the lifeless body by the wayside and strode on his way, revelling afresh in his strength and probably praising God for his victory. The account says that the Spirit of God came upon him to do this thing. We must remember that there were no eyewitnesses so the account of the incident had in the first place to come from Samson himself. He must have accredited his power and deliverance to the Spirit of God and this would be in all sincerity. He did believe that God was giving him this physical strength in every time of need and the chronicler of the story would repeat Samson's assertion in all good faith. Reading the entire story and viewing the life of Samson in relation to the onward development of God's purposes the Holy Spirit did indeed give him strength above that of most men that he might work out the destiny planned for him. In the end he failed to make of it all that could have been had he been less a slave to his own fleshly passions.

The period of waiting ended, Samson again took the path to Timnath to claim his bride. It seems to have been an unusually casual proceeding for a son of Israel. As a rule this was the festive occasion on which the bride waited with her maidens on the coming of the bridegroom. That fortunate man set out accompanied by all his men friends and with every manifestation of rejoicing and merriment, to bring his bride back to her new home. On this occasion it is evident that Samson set out alone and that his parents must have preceded him. Perhaps the marriage was not too popular in Zorah and his friends wanted nothing to do with it. When the feast finally was held it was at the bride's home and not the bridegroom's and the companions of the bridegroom turned out to be Philistine men friends of the bride, facts that are significant. The casual nature of the whole proceeding is heightened by the fact, that Samson, on his way to his bride, found time to turn aside to look for the carcase of the lion he had slain some months previously when last he had passed this way. He found the skeleton and inside a colony of bees. The flesh would have been completely consumed by vultures within a very few hours of death. Without ado he scooped out the honey with his hands, "and went on eating, and came to his father and mother, and he gave to them, and they did eat; but he told not them that he had taken the honey out of the carcase of the lion."

They would not have eaten had he told them. Staunch supporters of the Law, they knew better than to eat that which was defiled by association with the remains of the dead. Samson committed two further breaches of his Nazarite vows in this incident. He defiled himself by touching the dead carcase and he partook of that which was defined in the Law as 'strong drink' liable to fermentation. The ancients used honey as a means of producing fermented liquors. For so paltry an immediate attraction as a mouthful of honey he ignored his obligation to God. There is a strong likeness between Samson and Esau. Esau also insisted on marrying alien women and sold his birthright for the present satisfaction of a mess of pottage.

The wedding feast proceeded, but the outcome was disastrous. Thirty full-blooded Philistine youths drinking Samson's wine almost certainly spelt trouble, and trouble was not long in coming. Samson, probably himself flushed with wine, challenged the thirty to a tussle of wits. He would propound a conundrum, a "riddle" as the Authorised Version has it, the loser paying to the winner thirty mantles ("sheets" in the Authorised Version), and thirty sets of inner garments. The youths accepted the challenge, and Samson, remembering his finding the honey in the lion's carcase, said to them "out of the eater came forth food ("meat" in the Authorised Version) and out of the strong came forth sweetness." It would seem to us a particularly difficult conundrum for anyone completely unfamiliar with the circumstances to solve; probably, however, the solution was arrived at by a series of eliminating questions, after the fashion of a modern party game. This was no party game. These Philistine youths had no intention of being on the losing side, and when after three days they were still as far off the solution as ever they determined on more drastic steps.

This feast was a most elaborate affair. It was apparently designed to continue for seven days. The impropriety of such a period of conviviality with the people he had been commissioned from birth to oppose, fight and if necessary destroy in order to deliver Israel, apparently had not entered Samson's mind. These men, Philistines or not, had come to celebrate his wedding and he intended to see that it was well and truly celebrated. And so he awaited in genial equanimity the thirty mantles and sets of inner garments, the price of their failure to guess his riddle. Samson's newly married wife, however, was in a predicament. Her erstwhile friends had threatened her with burning down of her father's house with her inside it unless she obtained the answer to the riddle and told it to them. It does not appear that she had sufficient confidence in Samson's ability to handle the matter to tell him of the threat. Rather she used her woman's wiles, accompanied by floods of tears, until the hero's patience gave out and he told her the secret. After that, of course, it was all plain sailing. On the seventh day the Philistine youths triumphantly returned the answer to Samson. "What is sweeter than honey, and what is stronger than a lion?" Samson knew how they had obtained the solution but there was nothing he could do about it. He contented himself with the contemptuous retort, "If you had not ploughed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle" (RSV).

There remained the matter of the thirty mantles and sets of inner garments. It is sad to relate of a man professedly dedicated to God that this presented no problem. Samson went down to the Philistine town of Ashkelon, some thirty miles away on the sea coast and deep in Philistine territory. There, by means not recorded, he surprised and murdered thirty Philistine men; stole their garments and came back to Timnath to pay his debt.

Cold with anger, Samson returned to Zorah with his parents, leaving his Philistine wife in her father's house. At that moment he had finished with her; he never wanted to see her again. This was not the triumphant home coming he had planned. It is not likely that his feelings were those of a man betrayed by one he loved; more likely they were those of wounded pride. His insulting reference to his newly married wife as 'my heifer' shows that he had little genuine respect or love for the girl. It is more likely her appeal was purely to animal passions and now the fever had passed, he was morose and resentful. Accustomed as he was to admiration and hero-worship from the circle in which he had grown up, he now had been slighted in the very quarter from which he least expected it, and he was coldly furious.

What could have been the feelings of the older couple, trudging along wearily behind him? What had become of all the golden dreams which had coloured their up-bringing of this child of promise? How could they now expect this son of theirs to become a saviour in Israel, a champion of the people of God, going out in the power of the Holy Spirit to overthrow the enemies of the chosen people? How could he restore the safety and prosperity of a covenant-keeping nation and so enable its God-given destiny to be fulfilled. Rioting, gluttony, drunkenness, theft and murder; these were the fruits of Samson's wedding feast. These were embedded in the character of the man of whom it had been predicted before his birth; "…the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from birth and He shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines" (Judges 13.5 RSV). When the two arrived home and the full story of the week's disastrous happenings had been made known in Zorah, many there must have been who mourned for their fallen idol; many who uttered in their hearts, as long cherished hopes faded, the oft-repeated plaint, "Hath God forgotten to be gracious?"

Manoah and his wife were not the only saintly couple whose devoted training of a loved child in the things of God seems in later days to have been wholly fruitless, when that child, grown to maturity has turned to lawless or godless ways. So many have asked, in all sincerity, "How can such things be?" What was wrong with the early training that it proved unable to hold the one so instructed throughout life? Many disappointed parents have been plunged into the depths of despair because of some such outcome to their efforts. The fault does not usually lie in the inadequacy of training. The root cause goes much deeper. It lies in the well nigh overwhelming power of Atomic sin. There is no answer to these problems unless the doctrine of the Fall is accepted with all its implications. "As by one man sin entered and death by sin: so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." The accumulated effect of all mankind's sin from the beginning lies inherent in everyone born into the world. Every child starts life under this handicap. Our Adversary the Devil remains vigilant and active, ever seeking to maintain and increase the content of the world's sin. Is it to be wondered at that in many cases the earnest endeavours of the best parents just fail entirely to offset that inherited poison and eventually some external chain of circumstances tips the balance sufficiently to set the unhappy individual upon the downward track. In Samson's case it was a pretty face which started him on the road to ruin; in countless other instances it has been one or another of the varied aspects of those three cardinal influences, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. Behind it all has been the dread influence of the god of this world blinding the minds of those who believe not.

But just as the seed of evil, sown in past generations, comes to its fruitage, so must the seed of righteousness, sown in prayer and faith by godly parents, bear fruit one day. God is not mocked, and God is all-powerful. We do not understand all God's secrets and our knowledge of His purposes is at the best immature. We do know that God desires not the death of the sinner, but rather that he may turn from his evil ways, and live. There is much in the prophetic Scriptures which speaks of a Day of righteousness in which, under the righteous rule of Christ, returned to earth in power and glory, the Devil will be bound that he might deceive the nations no more. All men will walk in the light of Christ's Kingdom to learn of righteousness and hear the call to become reconciled to God. Is it too much to expect that in some wonderful manner, God will extend to all the Samsons of every age the opportunity to turn again from their evil? He knows the secrets of all in whose hearts resides the slightest possibility of repentance. They will accept in sincerity the Christ whom once they knew and from whom in ignorance and under the handicap of Adamic taint they turned away. Let every parent who mourns a son or daughter at present thus lost, take comfort from the Scriptural truth that God is not less merciful than our own hearts. His love for the erring one is not less than is ours, and He will by no means loose His hold until in His own infinite wisdom He sees that all hope and possibility of repentance is dead. It was Dr Paterson Smyth many years ago who suggested that it may take the supreme crisis of physical death eventually to awaken some wayward ones to the evil of sin. It is the goodness of God that accepts repentance in such circumstances, as in the story of the prodigal son the Father was ready to come out and meet the lost one returning.

But here in the story, Samson is farther away from God than ever. Of what use to say that the Spirit of the Lord came upon him when the only result was to nerve and strengthen him to great physical feats but never to reach his heart. Until then he could in no sense of the word be God's man. So he returned to Zorah, a disappointed, frustrated, vengeful man, consumed only with the desire to execute further retaliation upon the authors of his wounded feelings.