He Was a Nazirite from His Birth

Here begins the story of Samson, the "strong" man of the Bible. A mother and father, without children, pray to God for a child. We've all known them - couples desperately wanting children. Sometimes their prayers are answered, and sometimes not. (Questions we will ask in Heaven?) But God has a plan to use this child for he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines. Thus his parents were informed, by an Angel of God, that they would bear a son. (Sound like a familiar story in the New Testament? - I'm thinking Elizabeth and Mary.) I love the fact that she ran to tell her husband, who was then able to see and hear the Angel himself. And to Manoah's credit, he never doubted her word.

A Nazirite - "an individual especially devoted to God - consecrated and separated" from the usual. The outward signs? The growth of hair, abstaining from wine and other strong drink (even eating the grape skins), and no contact with the dead. Two types of Nazirites are found in the Bible - one based on a vow by an individual for a specified time period, and the other for a lifelong period (i.e., Samuel and John the Baptist).

Who was this Samson whom God enabled to perform amazing feats of strength? It states that the Spirit of the Lord would "come upon" him to enable him to perform these tasks. It was not the long hair that he wore, nor his abstinence from strong drink, but the power of the Spirit of God in him. When we perform "acts of service" that turn out well, do we attribute it to our marvelous ideas, training, timing, or education - or do we give the glory and praise to God?

I'm afraid that Samson was a head-strong young man, who saw something he wanted, whined and complained until he got it, and had little or no self-control. (Been there, done that?) Should have listened to his parents, don't you think, when they told him it wasn't a good idea to marry a Philistine girl. Turns out badly for him, for her, and her family. BUT God is in control, with a plan to use use, even if we turn from what we know to be the way. I Gordan states, A marvelous example of what God might have done with a thoroughly separated man, and yet what self-indulgence and sin can do to hinder the glorious promise and the gracious purpose of God.

Killing the lion, getting honey from a dead carcass (which violated his Nazirite vow), taunting the Philistine men with his riddle, offering thirty pieces of expensive clothing, listening to a weeping and harping fiance, catching 300 foxes, setting wheat fields on fire - seems that all of these events were brought on by his relationship with this Philistine woman. (You know I'm an animal lover, so I hated to read this part - did he catch these foxes by himself or have help? I read that these foxes were probably "jackals" which look like a fox with wider faces, shorter ears and noses, and were plentiful and even a nuisance in that area - which made me feel better).

We end this part of the story with Samson being "turned in" by the Israelites to the Philistines, bound by two strong ropes. When the "Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him" he breaks free, picks up a handy jawbone of a donkey nearby, and kills 1,000 of the Philistine men. Exhausted and thirsty, he cried out to God. God hears his prayer and opens up a spring right there to quench his thirst. The Bible says that Samson was judge in Israel for 20 years - ah yes, but there is more to this story . . .