Samson: A Checkered Character

Day 23: July 10, 2009, Friday

Today was the end of the first week of our Samson course. We discussed in Hebrew what we saw and did yesterday, then read and acted out the story for the first half of Jdg 15. Along the way we are discussing many things in Hebrew. After lunch, I blogged (catching up on yesterday's) and read. In the evening, a group of us went up to Tel Tzuba again to snack and enjoy the sunset and fellowship. Since I didn't go anywhere, I don't have any pictures for you. So, I thought I would show you one insight I noticed while reading the Samson story in Hebrew.

When teaching the Bible to children, Samson is always a hero. This may be a good thing. But we as adult readers of Scripture need to look a little more closely to see how Scripture actually portrays him. It is obvious pretty early on that Samson is a rather checkered character. Reading Hebrew helps a person to see this by the word plays the author uses. In Jdg 14.1, the writer begins telling about the career of Samson with a very common word, vayyared, meaning, "and he went down. This is a normal word, and if you saw yesterday's blog, you saw why he went down: Tzor`a was on the top of a mountain. What's unusual, though, is that he went down to the Philistine city of Timnah. Why?

The upshot is, he saw a girl there and demanded his parents go get her for him for a wife. Even though they don't want to, because she is one of those uncircumcised Philistines, they give in to his demand. In v. 5, the same word, vayyared, is repeated; Samson goes down again with his mom and dad. Where to they go? They come to the vineyards of Timnah. This also is to get the reader's attention. Remember: before he was born, his parents were told that their son would be a Nazirite and he was not to eat anything related to a vineyard (no wine, no raisins, no grapes, no grape leaves, etc.) and he was not to eat anything unclean.

In v. 7, after the incident of killing a lion, he went down (vayyared) again (or perhaps the same trip) and he spoke to the Philistine woman and he found her to be attractive. After a number of days he returns to Timnah, but on the way he remembered the lion he had killed and he turned off his path to check it out. What he found was a lion's carcass with a bee hive and honey. In Num 6.6, a Nazirite is not to come over a dead body, animal or human. So Samson's going to the lion carcass is not a good sign.

Now, honey was a clean food and not prohibited to him, but honey found in the carcass of a dead animal is not clean. So what does Samson do? In Jdg 14.9, he scoops the honey into his hands, like you might scoop the last ice cream out of a carton. So he gets and eats unclean honey, which he shouldn't eat, by scooping it out of a carcass, which he shouldn't even have touched.

Here's the word play. The word for "and he scooped it," a normal enough word for a common action, is vayyirdehu. Notice the similarity of the word for scoop and the word for going down, vayyared. There's nothing wrong with "going down" per se; Samson had to go down to leave town. But from the very beginning, the going down - repeatedly - takes on an ominous tone because of the accompanying situations (going to a Philistine city, wanting to marry a Philistine girl, his parents giving and and going with him and entering the vineyards of Timnah). Entering the vineyard of Timnah moves closer to sinning. The killing of the lion is okay, but might require some purification (see Num 6.1-21); the situation could have been avoided. Then the resulting honey incident occurs. This is a clear violation of his Nazirite status. The word play between "going down" and "scooping" draws the readers attention to Samson's failures.

How many times do we Christian's, like Samson's going down into iffy situations, try to push the envelop to see how far we can go without sinning, instead of seeing how far away we can get from sinning? How many times do we Christians, like Samson's scooping of unclean honey from an unclean carcass, act carelessly about our lifestyles to the point where we simply wallow in sinful activity, not putting up any fight?

As we encounter the enemy, sin, in our lives, may we rely on God's power not to scoop sin into our hands, or even go down into places where we put ourselves at unnecessary spiritual risk. Let us be different than the world by living lives in contrast to worldly ways and woo them with loving words and deeds. Let us do this without judgmentalism, for that's where we were, and we still have our struggles with sin inside of us. Thanks to God that he gives us power through his Spirit to continue to fight. We long for the day when the fight will be ended.

Maranatha!