Day 88: Judges 14-16

 


Does the theory that Samson’s life is a picture of Israel hold up over his marriage & annulment/divorce, later dalliance with a prostitute then enticement by Delilah, and captivity? The idolatry (which is often pictured as fornication/adultery/illicit sex in the Old Testament) is obvious in Judges. In the later history it isn’t always as obvious. For instance, you’d think that the reign of Josiah was a golden age. He was the best king Judah ever had (2 Kings 23:25), and yet the great apostasy that brought on the ultimate captivity came during Josiah’s reign. (Jeremiah 1:2, 25:3) So although there were cycles of comparatively better or worse leadership, there was always a lot of secret idolatry. (2 Kings 17:7-23) If the theme of Judges is “the need for a king” and the theme of I & II Samuel,I & II Kings are the rise and demise of the kingdom, what is Samson, the last of 12 judges, showing us?
  1. There is a need for a king—when Samson is at his best, he’s still delivered up to the Philistines by his own people. (Judges 15:11) He’s isolated, way up in Dan, unable to unite the tribes.
  2. He’s at his best when the Spirit of the Lord comes upon him. The Spirit’s power transcends his natural abilities and delivers him on multiple occasions. (Judges 14:5-7, 14:19, 15:14-19)
  3. His repeated willingness to yield to the flesh ends up leading him into deception and the Spirit abandoning him without his even being aware of it. (Judges 16:20)
  4. He doesn’t measure up when he’s at his best. None of the judges measured up. They were heroic, courageous, powerful and sometimes godly men, but none of them were the King Israel was looking for.
  5. Like Samson’s search for fulfillment in the forbidden pagan women of Canaan, Israel’s search for fulfillment apart from God ended up leading her into captivity and blindness until the fulness of the gentiles come in. (Romans 11:25)
  6. The Church, too, will end in apostasy (2 Thessalonians 2:3), even though when yielded to Christ the gates of hell itself can no more stand against us than the gate of Gaza could stand against Samson. (Matthew 16:18, Judges 16:3)
  7. Despite the difficult lessons we learn from the Judges, the Kings and the New Testament Church, it’s not wrong to say there’s a need for a King, a Judge, a Lawgiver, a courageous, heroic Deliverer. (See Isaiah 33:22) It’s just typical of our self-centered, idolatrous hearts to look for a fallen man to fill that role. It took God becoming a man to live up to His own perfect Law and deliver us.

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