Tragedy of Samson - 3 – Man of Blood

It was probably not very long after the disastrous sequel to his wedding at Timnath that Samson decided to go to the wife he had abandoned, presumably with the idea of bringing her back with him to Timnath and making her his wife in fact. His anger had abated and his nature was probably not capable of maintaining any deep emotion for very long. In the casual way that seems to have characterised so many of his actions he apparently assumed that all that had happened would by now be forgiven and forgotten and that he would be received as cordially as when he first came to Timnath, a prospective son-in-law.

His easy-going hopes, however, were soon dashed. His father-in-law was by no means pleased to see him. "I really thought that you utterly hated her, so I gave her to your companion." (Judges 15.1 RSV). It looks as though the old Philistine quite thought he had seen the last of his turbulent son-in-law and considered the marriage to be at an end. He had in consequence disposed of his daughter to one of the young men who had been the cause of all the trouble at the start. What freedom of choice the girl herself had in all this does not appear. Most likely, very little, but it is quite evident that she was not the sort upon whom much sympathy need be bestowed. The father, however, probably eyeing Samson's menacing bulk a little apprehensively, was ready with a suggestion "Is not her younger sister fairer than she? Pray take her instead.". He misjudged his man. The aggrieved husband was in no mood to discuss the relative merits of the two sisters' physical charms.

He had been slighted once again, his vanity wounded even more deeply than before. One can well imagine the swift revulsion of feeling, the transformation of genial placidity to blazing anger as he strode out of the house vowing vengeance for this, the supreme insult of all. "This time I shall be blameless in regard to the Philistines, when I do them mischief." To describe the ensuing wholesale and widespread destruction of the Philistines' standing crops as 'doing them mischief ' is such a masterly understatement of the facts that one is justified in concluding that if the word Samson used actually does have the meaning of the English phrase, then he could hardly have been fully conscious of the enormity and significance of what he did. The whole story of Samson yields the picture of a man whose mind had not developed in pace with his body, a giant not aware of the moral significance of his actions. Now he went out possessed of one idea only, revenge; revenge upon the whole Philistine community which he blamed for the miscarriage of his dreams and plans.

One of the commonest of small animals in Canaan at that time and during most ages since is the jackal (mistranslated "foxes" in the Authorised Version). Samson was a country lad born and bred and he would well know how to track them to their holes and catch them. It was the time of wheat harvest, when the standing grain was dry and ripe. The early rains had ceased and there would be no more rain for several months. The watercourses were dried up or drying up as is usual in the summer.

Samson started catching jackals, tying them in pairs, tail to tail, and fixing a burning truss of straw or similar material to each pair of tails. The terrified animals struggled frantically with each other, darting madly about as each sought to rid itself of the flaming encumbrances, setting fire to the growing grain in a myriad places as they fled. The account says Samson thus treated three hundred of them. It is not necessary to suppose that he caught the entire three hundred at once and released them simultaneously; rather it is more reasonable to think that he went about the countryside catching and releasing jackals wherever he could. The Philistines desperately endeavoured to quench the rapidly spreading flames which burst out anew in one place as fast as they extinguished them in another. They would have little time to spare to hunt down the instigator of the trouble, who in any case could easily keep one jump ahead of them all the time. By the time the last fire was out and order had been restored, Samson was nowhere to be found.

The loss to the Philistines must have been enormous. It was not only a question of their grain supplies for the coming year; it was the fact that the land of the Philistines was the main grain producing centre for their own homeland of Crete, seven hundred miles away across the Mediterranean Sea. This was an area of something like a thousand square miles. It was some of the richest agricultural land in Canaan and was held by the Philistines for this purpose. Samson's three hundred jackals could easily have destroyed crops over the major portion of this territory. In the dry season, with water scarce and the fields packed with ripe grain, the conflagration must have grown to epidemic proportions and raged for days, leaving at the end miles of blackened fields and burned out homesteads. The disaster might easily have been the turning point of Philistine fortunes in Canaan. They had been in the land for more than eight hundred years without their power being seriously disputed. From Samson's day onwards the Hebrews waged what was a gradually increasingly successful warfare, until in the days of David, not much more than a hundred years later, their power was broken and they were finally subdued. It might well be that the Philistines never recovered from the damage done by this widespread catastrophic fire and that this event marks the real fulfilment of the prophecy "He shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines". But if so, there is no credit to Samson on that account. This is one more instance in which God "makes the wrath of man to praise him". Samson may have diverted the course of history but all he was thinking of at the time was personal revenge.

The Philistine authorities were also in the mood for revenge after this. Samson himself was beyond their reach, but the mob, as mobs always do, demanded a scapegoat. It would appear that the whole trouble had been started by the betrayal of the husband's secret by the wife and the betrayal of the husband's rights by the father-in-law. Mob justice is seldom conducted on judicial lines and is characterised more by expedition than discernment. "The Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire". That did not restore the ravaged grain fields but it probably did help to pacify the homeless and hungry mob. It also did something else. It raised Samson to fresh fury. Throughout the story his intention to be the one to strike the last blow stands out. The Philistines should not have the last word. He had destroyed their crops. but now, learning of the fate that had befallen his ill-fated wife, he declared "If this is what you do I swear I will be avenged upon you, and after that I will quit" (Judges 15.7 RSV). He sallied forth once more across the frontier, "smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter", and withdrew as quickly back into the territory of Israel.

This brought out the Philistine army. Samson was becoming too much of a menace to be ignored. An occasional frontier skirmish in which one or two men were killed could be treated as beneath official notice. However, the way things were going it could be that this Samson would be putting himself at the head of an Israelite army of rebels and that would be a very different thing. The five rulers of the Philistine colony gave orders and the soldiery advanced into Judah to apprehend the trouble maker.

Samson had taken refuge in the precipitous crags of Etam, a jagged peak in the centre of Judah some thirty miles from Zorah and fifteen from the frontier. As he looked down upon the plain he found that he had roused a veritable hornet's nest this time. "The Philistines went up, and pitched in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi". For the first time he was on the defensive. The men of Judah, in whose territory he had taken refuge, were not disposed to help him. Apprehension for their own safety outweighed any feeling of support they may have had for the man who would fain be their national champion. "Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us?" they asked him plaintively "What the is this that you have done to us?" Samson's sullen reply "As they did to me, so have I done to them" did not influence their attitude, perhaps understandingly, for the Philistine soldiers had only just told them that they sought Samson "to do to him as he did to us". The craven-heartedness of the men of Judah is shown by their willingness and even anxiety to hand over Samson, bound, to his enemies in order to save their own skins. Samson might well have asked himself if Israel was worth delivering, but he submitted to being bound in confidence that he himself could burst the bonds when it suited him so to do.

So it came about, the Philistines shouted for triumph as their enemy was brought into their lines, securely trussed up with fine new ropes. Their exultant shouts changed to cries of alarm as the wild-looking Nazarite's bonds snapped like flax under his muscular efforts, and alarm became panic as the giant seized the only handy weapon, an ass's jaw bone lying on the ground, and advanced threateningly into battle.

There must have been a great deal of superstitious fear in the Philistine attitude to Samson. In this case a thousand men were slain. A man even of Samson's calibre and physique can hardly have been expected to prevail against an army of that size. The nature of his past exploits and the fact that he had always emerged unscathed, coupled with the terror induced by his personal appearance threw the Philistine ranks into confusion once their opponent was seen to be free. He was a giant of a man, with flowing locks and beard, enormous muscles and probably a grim and fear-inspiring face; all might well have built up a legendary atmosphere about him.

It is quite likely that the men of Judah, seeing him free himself and advance into combat, shook off their fears after all and rallied spontaneously to his support. The account says "the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him" and something of that Spirit might have communicated itself to the watching men of Judah and caused them to remember the past glories of Israel when their ancestors fought to establish a foothold in the land. Perhaps the Battle of Lehi that day was in very fact the first real blow Israel struck for her independence from the Philistines. It is much more reasonable to think that Samson, wielding his jawbone to good effect in the midst of the Philistines, was assisted by a goodly contingent of men of Judah armed with whatever they could lay hold of. The result of the battle was the defeat of the enemy with a thousand left dead on the field. There is a strange little sequel here. Samson, after the victory, thirsted, and for the first time in the story of his life is shown calling upon the Lord. Regrettably it was only for an immediate benefit, a drink of water, but it does at least indicate some acknowledgment of God. "You have granted this great deliverance by the hand of your servant" he said "and shall I now die for thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?" His mind was still on himself and the material things, but God, ever ready to respond to the slightest trace of faith, gave answer. The hero found water suddenly bubbling out of a cleft in the rock, and drank, and was revived. There used to be an idea that God performed a miracle here in bringing forth water from the discarded jawbone. The Authorised Version says "God clave an hollow place that was in the jaw; and there came water thereout". The translators were confused by the fact that the Hebrew word for jaw, lehi, is the same as the name of the place on which the battle took place. Rightly translated, "God clave an hollow place that was in Lehi..."

The result of this battle established Samson as the recognised leader of at least the southern half of Israel, including Judah, Benjamin, Simeon, Dan and Ephraim, and possibly the remainder of the tribes also. He remained "judge" of Israel for twenty years although at no time during that twenty years was Israel freed from the Philistine yoke. Such law and order as there was in Israel was vested in Samson. Such freedom from oppression and victory over enemies as was achieved was due to the leadership and prowess of Samson. But there was no religious revival, no national return to God, no restoration of the covenant. The fact that their subjection to the Philistines continued is evidence of that, for whenever Israel did repent and return to God, He gave them actual deliverance from servitude to their enemies; that was a condition of the covenant. The rule of Samson, Nazarite though he was, remained a purely secular one, without God. Small wonder that it ended in disaster.

Not very long after Samson's death another Nazarite child, born of a God-fearing mother, and devoted to God from his birth, was born in a village of Ephraim. Samuel, like Samson, was brought up under the Nazarite discipline, but Samuel, unlike Samson, had an ear to listen to God's voice from earliest years. Samuel also had to contend with the Philistines but Samuel put his trust first in God; and Samuel it was who did deliver Israel for at least part of his life from Philistine domination. Samuel, the last and greatest of the Judges, has the story of his judgeship recorded in extreme detail in the Old Testament and every incident in the story reflects his abiding faith in God and sterling loyalty to the laws of God. The only incident in the judgeship of Samson that is recorded concerns his visit to a harlot in Gaza, the Philistine capital. It is not a particularly edifying story. The Philistines had observed his coming and had shut the city gates and laid in wait for him with the intention of capturing him in the morning. Samson remained with the woman until midnight and then, finding his egress from the city barred, pulled down the closed gates complete with gateposts and crossbar and carried the lot to a hill near Hebron, full forty miles away, in the territory of Judah. He would have to cross fifteen miles of Philistine territory in order to get to the frontier and one wonders how he could have done that without interference and what was the size and weight of the gates that he carried. The action seems to have been a completely irresponsible one. The record of this incident seems to serve no other purpose than to indicate that Samson during his judgeship manifested the same characteristics as at the beginning, overwhelming indulgence of his animal passions and complete absence of any consciousness of responsibility toward God. It seems that the Philistine endeavour to capture him was at all times a half-hearted one. He came and went to the Philistine cities more or less as he pleased, and for twenty years figured in the public eye as the leader of Israel. He seems to have remained in possession of prodigious physical strength coupled with a flair for outwitting his enemies on every occasion so that they despaired of ever getting him into their power. It is almost certain that during those twenty years he was a constant thorn in the side of the Philistines and probably waged a constant but half hearted guerrilla warfare against them. It led to sudden raids into their territory and generally keeping them always in a state of tension. But he did nothing whatever to lead Israel to trust in God and in consequence he never achieved real deliverance. At the end of the twenty years the Philistines were still their masters, and Samson himself was still a man in whose life God had no place.