Ah, Samson. Samson was super-strong, you probably already knew that, but there’s far more to his story.
Before Samson was born, an angel came to his parents and told them that he was to be a Nazarite. I think that vow was outlined in Leviticus. Nazarites have three major rules: don’t drink any fermented beverages or anything that comes from grapes, don’t ever touch anything dead, and don’t cut your hair. What’s different about Samson though is that he wasn’t just a Nazarite for a couple months like most people who took the vow, he was to be a Nazarite for life. This is notable because, for his entire life, Samson was a terrible Nazarite.
First, he decided he was in love with a Philistine woman, which was frowned upon by his family to say the least. He demanded that his father procure this woman for him though and so he did.
On his way to visit his future wife once he killed a lion with his bare hands. That’s pretty amazing, but then when he went back through there again later to actually marry his betrothed, he saw that some bees had moved into the lion carcass. He grabbed a handful of honey on his way by to snack on, breaking his vow to never touch dead things.
At his wedding, he drank a little too much (violating his vow to never drink) and made a bet with the philistine guests to solve a riddle, but they pressured his new wife to give them the answer. Samson responded by beating up a bunch of random philistines in town, gave away his wife and went back to his father’s house implementing what we might refer to today as a tantrum.
Later, after he’d had some time to cool down, he went back again to claim his wife. She was now someone else’s wife though because they thought that he didn’t want her. Samson was so angry about not being able to see his wife that he set all the Philistine’s fields on fire.
This was the last straw for the Philistines, who rounded up an army to take Samson prisoner. Samson hid in a cave.
This was a real turning point in Samson’s story though. Up until this point he’s mostly just been using his great strength to beat up people he doesn’t like or to further his own goals, but after this encounter it seems like Samson begins to acknowledge that there are some bigger issues at stake.
Some Israelites come and confront him with the fact that the Philistines are going to take out their anger on them if Samson isn’t captured, so he agrees to let them turn him over to the Philistine army, which he then kills with the jawbone of an ass. I’m not sure if that counts as touching a dead thing or not.
Then he delivers one of the most disrespectful prayers I think I’ve come across so far, yelling “You have given your servant this great victory. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”
But maybe the tone is changed by the translation, because God responds by opening up a spring nearby for Samson to drink from. Or maybe the moral of this story is simply that God really hates Philistines.
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