Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Judges 16:21

Clarke's Commentary

Verse Judges 16:21. Put out his eyes — Thus was the lust of the eye, in looking after and gazing on strange women, punished. As the Philistines did not know that his strength might not return, they put out his eyes, that he might never be able to plan any enterprise against them.

He did grind in the prison-house. — Before the invention of wind and water-mills, the grain was at first bruised between two stones, afterwards ground in hand-mills. This is practiced in China and in different parts of the East still; and women and slaves are the persons who are obliged to turn these mills.

Such instruments were anciently used in this country, and called querns, from the Anglo-Saxon [A.S.] and [A.S.] cweorn and cwyrn, which has the signification of a mill; hence [A.S.] cweorn stan, a millstone: and as quern conveys the notion of grinding, hence [A.S.], cweornteth, the dentes molares or grinders in the jaws of animals. This clause of the verse is thus translated in the Saxon Octateuch: [----Anglo-Saxon----] "And the Philistines laid their fangs, (seized) him soon, and led him away to their burgh, (city,) and shut him up in prison, and made him grind at their hand-querne." So late as half a century ago I have seen these querns or hand-mills in these kingdoms.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

Samson’s exploits (14:1-16:31)

So dominant were the Philistines in Israel, that the Israelites had decided to live with them peacefully rather than try to rise up in armed rebellion. Samson had other ideas. He thought that his marriage to a Philistine woman would give him the opportunity to do some harm to the enemy (14:1-4).

In spite of Samson’s desire to help Israel, he had little respect for either his Nazirite vow or the Israelite law. He handled a dead lion, married a Philistine woman and joined in the customary wine-drinking feasts of the Philistines (5-10; cf. Deuteronomy 7:1-3). His opportunity to harm the Philistines came quickly and unexpectedly during his wedding feast. Through the deceit of his wife, he lost a bet with thirty of her Philistine friends (11-18); but he took revenge by killing thirty other Philistines, whose valuables he used to pay off his lost bet. Then, with no more desire to go on with the marriage, he returned home (19-20).

On calming down, Samson decided he would return and take the woman as his wife after all. When he found that she had been given to another, he took revenge on the Philistines by burning their harvest (15:1-5). The Philistines replied by killing Samson’s wife and father-in-law, since they were the cause of the trouble. Samson, in return, killed more Philistines (6-8).
Not wishing to extend the conflict at this stage, Samson moved to a hideout near one of the towns of Judah. But the Philistines attacked the town and demanded that the Israelites hand Samson over to them. The Israelites were willing to cooperate, because Samson had brought them enough trouble (9-13). Again, however, Samson slaughtered the Philistines (14-17). The victory left him weak and thirsty, but God refreshed him, thereby providing a fitting reminder that God alone was the source of his strength (18-19).
The spectacular exploits of Samson went on for twenty years (20). Although he is called a judge, he was neither a civil administrator nor an army commander. His ‘deliverances’ consisted of one-man adventures against the Philistines in the areas where they had overrun Judah and Dan, the latter being Samson’s tribe (see 13:2; 15:9). Samson’s attacks unsettled the enemy and stirred the people of Israel from their lazy acceptance of foreign rule. He began the deliverance that eventually saw the Philistines overthrown (see 13:5b).
Samson had a moral weakness in matters concerning women, and on one occasion this almost led to his capture (16:1-3). The Philistine leaders, on learning of this weakness, worked out a plan to use the woman Delilah to trap him (4-5). Delilah’s early efforts were unsuccessful, but she did not give up (6-14). Samson had paid little attention to the self-discipline demanded by his Nazirite vow, except that he allowed his hair to remain uncut. But when he removed this the last symbol of his separation unto God, he was in fact separated from God. The Lord who had given him his strength now left him. His abnormal power was gone, and his enemies soon captured him (15-22).

In the celebration feast that followed, the Philistines praised their god Dagon and humiliated Samson (23-25). But when Samson turned to God at last, God graciously responded. He allowed Samson a return of his former strength, so that he had a greater victory in his death than he ever had in his life. The sudden death of all the leading Philistine rulers was the turning point that gave Israel its first hope for victory (26-31).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

DELILAH DELIVERS SAMSON TO THE PHILISTINE LORDS

"And when Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she went and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying Come up this once, for he hath told me all his heart. Then the lords of the Philistines came up unto her, and brought the money in their hand. And she made him sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and shaved off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him. And she said, The Philistines are upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times, and shake myself free. But he knew not that Jehovah had departed from him. And the Philistines laid hold on him, and put out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison-house. Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaven"

The heartless cruelty and deceit of the wicked Delilah, who thoroughly hated Samson, but pretended to love him, only for the sake of delivering him for a price to his bitterest enemies come sharply into focus in this paragraph.

She was a cold, unscrupulous, untrusting religious whore, who did not even trust the lords of her own people, but required of them to pay her the promised bounty "in hand," before she actually delivered Samson.

"And shaved off the seven locks of his head" Grammatically, this seems to say that Delilah herself shaved off Samson's hair, but the calling of a man indicates that she did it by the instrumentality of that accomplice. Again, Samson was asleep, while the crucial deed was accomplished. It would be interesting to know just how that sleep was induced, whether by strong drink or drugs, or however.

"And she began to afflict him" One cannot help wondering if Samson in this development really began to suspect the base treachery and hatred of Delilah. She did this only to be sure that Samson's strength was gone, and when she was sure, she again summoned the Philistines to be upon him.

"I will go out as at other times and shake myself free" When Samson said this, he was not aware that Jehovah had departed from him, and he apparently thought, even at that late hour, that he would be able to escape. But the awful truth was quickly revealed to him. He was blinded, probably by having his eyes gouged out. His judgeship was ended. He was then the slave of the Philistines, assigned to the most humiliating menial labor, and the laughing-stock of his pagan enemies. No one who understands what happened can feel anything but pity for this weak and sinful Judge.

"They put out his eyes… took him to Gaza… bound him with brass fetters… put him to work in the prison-house, grinding corn" (wheat) We are not told the exact nature of the work assignment for Samson. There was in use at that time a mill usually powered by a donkey, as indicated in the marginal reading of Matthew 18:6 (ASV), and it is reasonable to suppose that, due to his great strength, Samson was utilized to turn the mill instead of an animal. In any event, that type of labor, when done by human beings, was allocated to the lowest class of slaves. Thus, the shame and humiliation of Israel's Superhuman Judge reached its terrible climax.

"Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaven" God had not forgotten either the sinful Judge or his Chosen People of Israel. The fact stated here is an indication that there was yet a final episode to be related in the remarkable story of Samson.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

Put out his eyes - Thus effectually, as they thought, preventing any future mischief on his part, while they prolonged their own triumph and revenge. (Compare Numbers 16:14; 2 Kings 25:7; Jeremiah 39:7.)

They applied to the two feet fetters of brass 2 Samuel 3:34; Jeremiah 52:11, and made him “grind” - the special task of slaves and captives Exodus 11:5; Isaiah 47:2; Lamentations 5:13.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Chapter 16

Now his second encounter, going down again to the Philistines. And this time to the city of Gaza, which is on the south coast of the territory of the Philistines, south from Ashdod and Ashkelon. And the purpose of going to Gaza was actually to go in unto a prostitute. And the people in Gaza, the men, were told that Samson was there in town.

So they circled him and they set an ambush for him and they locked the gates of the city and they said, "We'll wait until morning and when he goes to leave town we'll pounce on him and we'll kill him." Samson stayed with this gal until midnight and decided to go home. In coming to the gates of the city he found them locked and barred.

So he picked up the doors of the gate of the city, with two posts, and he went away with them, bars and all, put them on his shoulders, and carried them to the top of a hill that is before Hebron ( Judges 16:3 ).

Now Hebron's about twenty-five miles from Gaza. So he carried these gates all the way to Hebron or to a hill before Hebron twenty miles away, tossed them over. And of course, in the morning the men from Gaza had to send out a regimen to get their gates back. And again, going into the territory of the enemy, setting himself up.

You can play with fire but ultimately you're gonna get burned. Sometimes when a person is successful, in a sense, and playing around with his passions, he thinks he can master the situation. He thinks he's getting by with it, but ultimately it's gonna catch you.

Thus, it came to pass, that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines came to her, and they said unto her, Entice him, find out where his great strength lies, and by what means we might prevail against him, and we'll give thee every one of us eleven hundred pieces of silver ( Judges 16:4-5 ).

So they, all of them, offered this enormous bribe to her if she would discover the secret of this fella's strength. So Delilah said plain up to him, "Hey, what is the secret? Where is it that your great strength lies?"

Samson said, "Well, if they would bind me with green vines that have never been dried, then I will be weak just like any other man." So she began to, you know, run her fingers through his hair, that kind of stuff. Pretty soon he fell off to sleep and she commanded the Philistines to come in with green vines, never dried and they bound him up.

She said, "Samson, the Philistines are upon you." And he jumped up and these things snapped off like they were threads that were burned in a fire and he cracked the skulls of the Philistines.

And she said, "You lied to me. That isn't really true. You weren't weak like other men. Tell me. Don't lie to me. Tell me, what is the secret of your strength. Where does your great strength lie?"

And he said, "Well, the mistake people have made is they never bound me with new ropes. Now if you would bind me with new ropes then I will be weak just like any other man."

So again she soothes him off to sleep and ordered the Philistines to bind him with these new ropes never been used for any other purpose. Then she said, "Samson, the Philistines be upon thee." And he jumped up and these ropes snapped off and again busted their skulls.

She said, "Oh, you lied to me again. Tell me Samson, come on, I want the truth this time. What is the secret of your strength?"

Samson said, "Well, if you would braid my hair in seven braids then I'll be weak just like anybody else."

Now, at this point you may be thinking "Good Samson, you're not revealing the truth. Keep her guessing." But in reality, Samson is guilty of a compromise, which is always dangerous. When she said, "What is the secret of your strength?" He should have said, "It's none of your business. I'll never tell." But he's playing games thinking that he is cleaver. But notice he's getting closer to the truth. He's wearing down. He's talking now about his hair.

There are times when people have made a special commitment of their life to God. Maybe at a retreat, maybe just at a time where God has really spoken to their heart and they responded and they've made their determination, "I'm gonna really live my life now for God." And the phone rings and it's one of their friends and they say, "Come on over tonight. We're gonna have a party. Someone's got a keg," you know and "we're gonna have a good time."

Now this is the life you say, "Hey, I'm not gonna do that anymore. I know that that life is a life of folly. I'm not gonna enter that anymore and I'm gonna live for Christ." You've made that commitment within your heart but now here's the invitation and you say, "Ah, thanks. I really appreciate you calling me but I don't feel so good tonight. I think I'm gonna go to bed early."

And they say, "Oh, that's too bad. We're really gonna have a blast, you know." You think "Wow. All right, chalk one up for victory," you know "I didn't go." But wait a minute. You weren't totally honest either and what you have actually done is left the door open for another invitation.

Now, if when they called and said, "Come on over tonight. We got a keg. We're gonna have a great time", if you had said "I appreciate you calling but I've committed my life to Jesus Christ and I'm not gonna be doing any of that stuff anymore. I'm gonna just be living for the Lord because that's the only way to live. Man, the time of the end is close and I'm gonna just really get it on for the Lord. None, no more of that stuff for me." They'd never call you again.

You see, now you're being honest, you're being true. You're closing the door, which we need to do on evil. We need to close the door on evil. We're not always doing that. A lot of times we're leaving the door open, little excuses so that the door is still open. This was Samson's problem. He was leaving the door open but he is weakening. He's breaking down.

And so again she caused him to go to sleep and she braided his hair into seven locks and for good measure they took spikes and pinned them to the planks of the floor. And then she said, "Samson, The Philistines are upon you." And he jumped up and pulled the planks of the floor up with him and went out and took care of them. Now women know when everything else fails, try the tear route. And so Delilah began to turn on the tears. "You've been deceiving me. You don't really love me. You've just been playing games with me. You don't really love me." You know, "You're just making a fool out of me. Tell me Samson," and she began to press him daily making it miserable for him.

So finally Samson said, "Look, all my life I've been a Nazarite unto God." There it is; that was the secret of his strength. The word Nazarite is "separated." "All of my life I've been separated unto God."

The strength of Samson lay in his commitment in his life to God, which was done really before his birth. For before Samson was ever born, the angel of the Lord, in announcing to his mother that she was to have a son, told her never to bring a razor to his head, never to allow him to have anything from the vine, wine or whatever because he was to be a Nazarite from his birth unto God; separated unto God from his birth.

Now in Numbers, the sixth chapter, you have the law for the Nazarite. There were many times when a person wanted to have a special dedication of his life to God for a period of time. It's more or less as the traditional lent period today where people, you know, make sort of a commitment prior to Easter and sacrifice or give up something for the lent period.

Well, in Israel they did the same kind of thing in a period, and usually before their feast days, the holy days of their feast, they would take a vow and separate their lives unto God. And according to the sixth chapter of Numbers, if you wanted to separate your life and take the vows of a Nazarite you were to bring no razor to your head and you were not to drink any wine, any vinegar made from grapes in a strong drink coming from grapes. You were not to drink any nectar or grape juice nor were you to eat any grapes themselves nor raisins nor anything that came from the grapevine.

Now the reason for that I don't know but it was just kind of a self-denial. Raisins were one of the real delicacies in those days. They did not have canning processes or freezing of food in all in those days, so in the summer time they would dry their fruits and all winter long they would eat dried fruits, or you know they could take and cook up the apricots with some water and they'd have apricots. But they did not have any canning processes so the preserving process was always that of drying the fruit. So raisins were really a delicacy. It's something they-it was something that they always had and enjoyed. And so it's sort of a denial in order to make this consecration unto God for a period of time.

And then when you came to the end of that time that you have set for your consecration, then you shave all of your hair and then you bring it and offer it as a burnt offering unto God. It was just a sacrifice thing and you, you know, it was just the sacrifice. In Numbers, in the sixth chapter, tells of the vows of the Nazarite.

Now his was not to be a separation for a period of time. It was to be lifelong commitment and separation of his life to God, a lifelong type of consecration or commitment. And that was the secret of his strength. "I have been a Nazarite unto God." I've been separated unto God. And therein his great strength did lie, that separation unto God or that Nazarite vow was indicated by his hair having never been cut.

And so he tells her, "I've been a Nazarite unto God. There's never been a razor come to my head. If I would break that vow, if I would shave my head the vow would be broken. It would be over. Then I would be just like any other man." He told her all that was in his heart. He laid his heart open before her. And it said that Delilah knew that this time he actually laid his heart open. He told her the truth.

And so she went out to the lords of the Philistines, she said, "We've got him."

And so they all gathered together and again she relaxed him so he could go to sleep. You think "Oh, that poor stupid oaf." You'd think that the guy would know better. You know, after all she's done everything she said so far. He said tie me with new green vines, tie me with new ropes, braid my hair; she's done the whole thing. He ought to know that she's gonna do it. You'd think that he'd get out of there.

Paul said to Timothy, "To flee youthful lust which damned men's soul in perdition." Samson, sort of bolstered by the victories of the past, having become self-confident over the past power, went to sleep. Now you hear so often that Delilah cut off his hair. No she didn't, she called a barber and while he was sleeping there on her lap the barber shaved his head.

And so she woke him up she said, Samson, the Philistines are upon you. And he jumped up, and he said, I'll shake myself as times before. And he knew not that the LORD had departed from him ( Judges 16:20 ).

As we move on in the Old Testament we're gonna come upon an interesting king by the name of Asa, who at the beginning of his reign was facing a huge invading army of Ethiopians and Nubians. And he called upon the Lord and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Israel. And as he was coming back from victory over this huge army, the prophet of God came out to Asa and said, "The LORD is with you while you'll be with Him, but if you forsake Him he will forsake you." The Lord was with Samson as long as he kept that vow, even though he wasn't always doing the right thing. Even though there was tremendous weakness in his own moral character, even though he was guilty of doing foolish things yet the Lord didn't desert him until he deserted the Lord, until the vow was broken. But at this point he had strayed so far that he didn't even know that the Lord had departed from him.

Now there is a spiritual kind of a blindness that afflicts people especially if you are fooling around in the enemy's territory, trying to play around with sin, playing games on the enemy's field. It is possible for you to stray from God and to get out, more or less, isolated and away from God, so caught up in your activities that you're not really aware of the fact that anointing, that power of God is no longer upon your life.

Now there are many people who assume because the anointing God is still upon their life that God must be pleased with all that they are doing. That is a wrong conclusion. God does not immediately lift his anointing from a person's life because they have failed or have faults. I heard so many people use the rational "but God still uses us" and thus, they take the fact that God is still using them as sort of God is approving what we are doing. If God wasn't approving what we were doing then he would take his anointing and take his power from our lives. That isn't always true. It's a wrong rational. The gifts and calling of God are without repentance, but if you continue in that path you're gonna get one day to the place were God's spirit is removed from your life. You won't know it maybe for a time. You'll still be going on in the same old thing but you'll not be seeing the affects and the results anymore.

He was blind to his own spiritual state. It is possible to be self-deceived about your own spiritual state. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves; the truth isn't in us. And there are a lot of self-diluted people as regarding to their own spiritual conditions. Samson was blind to the truth about his own spiritual condition. "He knew not that the Lord had departed from him" ( Judges 16:20 ). But because the Lord had departed from him, he was weak just like any other man. And this man who at one time had slain a thousand of the Philistines with the unlikely weapon of a jawbone of a donkey is now held down by just a few of them as one brings a stick and gouges out his eyes while others grab him and bind him with chains of brass. And they lead him off to Gaza to put him in the prison where he is now grinding.

In those days they had their mills with a giant millstone. Some of them weighing several hundred pounds. And they would take these stones and lay them and carve into the stones little grooves around in a circle. And they would have a stone in the center of the circle with a whole that they had made in the top that would pivot around and around. And then they would have the giant round millstone that rolled around in this groove all the way around and a post going through it. And they would take an ox, as a rule, or a donkey and they would harness it to this post so that ox or donkey would just continue walking round and round in the circle as it would pull this millstone. And then the ladies would come and pour out their corn or their wheat or their barley into the little groove and as the millstone would roll over it, it would grind their wheat into flour. And this was usually the work of an ox or a donkey pushing this pole around to push the millstone around to grind the flour. It now became the occupation of Samson.

In my lifetime I've had some very boring jobs. One summer on the Irvine Ranch I piled beans. You ever pile beans all day? It has to be one of the most boring jobs in the world. You just walk up this row of beans and you know, you take your pitch fork and just go along and then you make a pile and you know you just go, and it is boring. And you wait for lunchtime but lunch is so far coming and then you wait for evening so you can get off work.

I picked tomatoes for Tewinkle over here in Costa Mesa on the bluffs when the whole area of Dover Shores used to be tomato fields and picking tomatoes is a boring job. You know you get a bunch of guys and of course you end up usually in tomato fights and time goes a little faster but it is just a boring job. There's no challenge to it. Days seem like months.

Can you imagine how boring it would be if all day long you were just pushing this pole around in a circle? That would have to be a miserable life. No longer can you even see. You're now forced totally within yourself and you have really nothing to look forward to. This was the condition of Samson.

And so they put out his eyes, they bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house ( Judges 16:21 ).

I would like to suggest that this is perhaps one of the most colorful pictures of the affect of giving yourself over to unbridled lust, living in sin. Its ultimate affect upon you is blinding you to the truths of God, to the realities of God. Secondly, its affect is binding you by its power. You find yourself in the situation, no longer able to get out; you're bound.

You began it as a lark, you began it as an excitement, you began it for thrills, for kicks, but in time it got its hold upon you and now you continue to do it though the kicks are no longer there. But you can't get rid of it, you can't quit it, you find yourself bound by the power of sin. And then it becomes a grind. You begin to hate yourself, you begin to hate what you're doing but you have no way out, you can't escape from it and you get into that grind and your life becomes miserable, your life becomes hopeless, you see no sense in trying to go on. You're living in misery as it's beginning now to grind away.

So Samson, an apt picture of the affects of sin; unbridled lust in a person's life.

Howbeit, [the scripture tells us] the hair of his head began to grow again after they had shaved him ( Judges 16:22 ).

Therein I see the marvelous grace of God. Samson had blown it. He had the potentials of greatness, he had the potential of delivering God's people out of the hands of their enemies. Samson had the potential of going down in the history book as one of the mightiest and most glorious of all the deliverers of Israel. His name could've been alongside of David's and Samuel's, the marvelous deliverers of Israel. But he could not conquer his own passions, his own lust. And thus, there he is, blinded, bound, grinding; "Howbeit the hair on his head began to grow again." ( Judges 16:22 )

Therein is the gospel because all of us have sinned, all of us have come short of the glory of God, all of us have failed God, all of us have found ourselves trapped thinking that there's no way out. But God is gracious and even though we have failed Him, He will not fail us and even though we have forsaken Him, if we will just turn back unto Him, He will be merciful and gracious.

On a boring job there's plenty of time to think and I imagine Samson did a lot of thinking as he was pushing that post around. Thinking of what a fool he had been, going back and reliving the mistakes and thinking, "If I'd only done this. If I'd only done that. If I'd stayed out of Sorek. If I'd only walked away from Delilah. If I'd only, if I'd only" and living in those reflections of the past. Man, once mighty and powerful now shuffling with uncertain gate because he can't even see where he's going anymore. Brought down to the bottom but many times God has to bring us to the bottom so we'll look up and he began to look up.

And I'm certain that as his hair began to grow again he felt within his heart, "God I'm gonna renew my consecration. I'm gonna renew my vow. But God what can you do with me now. Lord, what I have and what's left here is yours. I'm gonna give my life to you such as it is." Never can he achieve or attain what he could have, the full potential of his being, but Lord, at least you can have what's left, the broken shell.

So the Philistines were having a huge gala party. They had gathered in the temple of their god, the god Dagon, people were on the roof crowded around the place. Someone got the brilliant idea, "Let's bring that guy Samson that used to give us such a bad time. Bring him into the arena so we can see him shuffling around in his blinded condition. Let him stumble around, trip him and all and just so we can have a big laugh at the clumsiness of him now that he cannot see."

And so they hurried down into the prison and they brought Samson from the prison into the temple and as he came in the laughs and the hoorahs went up as the people began to mock him and to jeer him and to make fun of him as he tried to make his way around the room in a strange place not able to see. One would put his foot out in front of Samson and Samson would trip and fall and everybody would roar and howl with laughter. That man who was such a nemesis is now so weakened and it delighted them.

Samson said, "O God, once more, just once more God. All I ask is once more. Let the anointing of your spirit come upon my life."

David the psalmist, messing around also lost that sense of God's spirit. After his sin with Bathsheba and after the death of his child, David repented and his repentance is given to us in the fifty-first psalm. And one of the pertinent prayers of David in the fifty-first psalm when he is asking God to cleanse him and according to God's mercy blot out his transgression. One of the pertinent verses there he said, "And return thy Holy Spirit unto me." O God again let me sense your presence, let me again sense your power. This was Samson's prayer, "Lord once more I want to know your power in my life. And Lord I don't want to live, I have nothing to live for now. Let me die with the Philistines." His prayer unto God.

He said to the young boy who was leading him around, "Take me over to the pillars that hold this place up." And the little boy innocently led him over to the pillars that held up the temple. He took hold in his right arm and left arm the two key pillars holding up the building. He said, "God I want the Philistines to be avenged for the eyes that they put out." And by faith he began to pull and the Spirit of God came upon Samson and he pulled those pillars together. The temple of the god Dagon fell with the Philistines packed into it and three thousand of them were crushed to death. And Samson laid dead under the crushed Philistines. God's grace allowed him to once more experience the power of God and he went out in the greatest victory of his life.

Jesus, in the New Testament said something that was very interesting in regards to his disciples, he said, "Ye are the salt of the earth but if the salt has lost its savor it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under the foot of man." Samson probably is a good illustration of this sort of allegory of Jesus, for God had chosen Samson to be the saving salt of Israel but because of the weakness of his flesh he lost his savor and he ended up crushed beneath the Philistines.

The sad story of Samson is being repeated however over and over as we see men with wasted potentials. God has endowed people with talents, abilities and they waste them because of the weaknesses of their own flesh. They never achieve, they never attain that full glory and power that God wants their lives to be. Wasted potential is the story of so many people. The tragic biography, wasted, his life was wasted. He could have done so much for God, he could have been such a power for God's kingdom, he could have been so influential in bringing others to the Lord but his life was wasted. He was destroyed by the weakness of his own flesh "

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

4. Samson’s final fatal victory ch. 16

To this point in his history Samson had demonstrated some faith in God, even though "the exploits of Samson read like the actions of an uncontrollable juvenile delinquent." [Note: Cundall and Morris, p. 155.] However, his unwillingness to remain dedicated to God resulted eventually in his loss of strength, his enslavement, and his death.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

Samson and Delilah 16:4-21

The first three verses present Samson sowing "wild oats." Judges 16:4-21 picture him reaping a bitter harvest (cf. Galatians 6:7).

Samson allowed a woman to seduce him again. She lived in the Sorek Valley between Samson’s home area of Zorah and Eshtaol and the Philistine town of Timnah. The place itself was a compromise between Israelite and Philistine territory. Her name "Delilah" is evidently Jewish and probably means "devotee" or "worshipper." [Note: Ibid, pp. 453-54, offered three other possible interpretations of her name.] However she seems to have been a Philistine, possibly a temple prostitute. [Note: Lindsey, p. 407.] Her devotion to the Philistines is obvious in the text, and her devotion to their gods may well have motivated her actions in this instance. Evidently she and her family had chosen to live among the attractive and advanced enemies of God’s people.

"It is strange that Samson’s three loves should have been numbered amongst his inveterate enemies, the Philistines." [Note: Cundall and Morris, p. 175.]

Samson posed a great threat to the Philistines. The leading lords of the Philistines initiated the plan to capture him, and they offered a reward that would have made Delilah rich (Judges 16:5). "Eleven hundred . . . of silver" was a fortune since a person could live comfortably on "10 . . . of silver" a year (Judges 17:10).

Samson may not have possessed an abnormally muscular physique since the Philistines did not know where he got his great strength.

"The Philistine princes thought that Samson’s supernatural strength arose from something external, which he wore or carried about with him as an amulet." [Note: Keil and Delitzsch, p. 419.]

Moral compromise always makes one vulnerable to temptation. We see this in Samson’s case and in Delilah’s in these verses. Temptation usually comes in attractive packages. The wrong companions can lead us into temptation (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:33). Temptation is persistent (cf. Matthew 4). Yielding to temptation starts us on a toboggan slide. We find ourselves going faster and faster downhill, and soon we can get off only with great personal pain.

The seven fresh cords (Judges 16:7) were probably common catgut cords that the Philistines used for bowstrings and the strings of their harps. If so, they were unclean for Samson since they were dead animal parts. Perhaps Samson specified seven of these since the Israelites regarded seven as a complete number. New ropes (Judges 16:11) had not held him previously (cf. Judges 15:13-14), but perhaps the lords of the Philistines were unaware of this.

It is difficult to understand exactly what Samson meant when he instructed Delilah to weave the locks of his hair with a web and pin (Judges 16:13-14). The commentators all struggle with what the writer wrote and what Delilah did. Apparently Delilah wove Samson’s long hair with some kind of loom and left it fastened in this primitive machine.

". . . The words in question are to be understood as referring to something that was done to fasten Samson still more securely." [Note: Ibid., p. 421.]

"Ironically, the words ’tightened it with [=’drove’] the pin’ (titqa’ bayyated, Judges 16:14) are the same ones used of Jael, who drove the tent peg into Sisera’s head (Judges 4:21). Though Delilah did not kill Samson in the same way, she was to become as important a heroine among the Philistines as Jael had been in Israel." [Note: Wolf, p. 476.]

The fact that Samson told Delilah to do something to his hair (Judges 16:13) suggests that he was giving her a clue to his strength. She did not pick this up but kept hounding him for his secret. Finally he gave in (Judges 16:17; cf. Judges 14:17).

Why did Samson continue to give Delilah reasons for his strength even when she threatened him with violence by the Philistines? He may have done so because they were playing a game together and teasing each other. Samson liked riddles (Judges 14:12). He seems to have uprooted Gaza’s gates in sport too. Samson thought he was playing "Here come the Philistines!" but really he was playing Russian roulette.

It is incredible that Samson would have told Delilah the secret of his strength if he had thought she really intended to betray him. Evidently Samson had so much self-confidence because of his physical strength that he thought he could control this situation. He even appears to have felt that he was stronger than God. He expected God to behave on his terms rather than submitting to God’s terms, namely, his Nazirite vow. Sin, if persisted in, makes a person irrational and vulnerable. Such is its deceitfulness (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:18; 2 Timothy 2:22). Samson thought he was strong, but really he was weak. Contrast the apostle Paul’s attitude in 2 Corinthians 12:10.

"This man is indeed all brawn and no brain." [Note: Block, Judges . . ., p. 463.]

"The hypocrisy of Delilah, pretending to love but all the time plotting the death of her lover, can be left without comment." [Note: Cundall and Morris, p. 177.]

It is for this behavior that she has become an infamous figure in history. Like Judas Iscariot, Delilah betrayed a friend for money.

The reason Samson lost his strength was only secondarily that he allowed Delilah to cut his hair. The real reason was that "the Lord had departed from him" (Judges 16:20). When God’s Spirit departed from someone under the Old Covenant, the results were disastrous (cf. 1 Samuel 16:14; Psalms 51:11).

"Forty years, Samson had kept one part of his vow. He had broken all the other parts, but he had kept his hair unshaven, as a sign of his commitment to God. He had not made a very strong commitment or felt a deep faith, but he had trusted God at least in this. There was no magic in his hair. It was only a symbol of his separation to God. But if his hair was shaved, Samson’s feeble dedication would crumble completely." [Note: Inrig, p. 252.]

There is some question about whether Samson, a lifelong Nazirite, was subject to all the normal restrictions on temporary Nazirites, and whether he really broke all three of the typical Nazirite restrictions. He may have only broken the one involving his hair, or he may have broken two. [Note: For further discussion see Robert B. Chisholm Jr., "Identity Crisis: Assessing Samson’s Birth and Career," Bibliotheca Sacra 166:662 (April-June 2009):155-62.]

"The fact that God worked through Samson need not denote approval of his lifestyle. In God’s sovereignty the Holy Spirit came on men for particular tasks, and this enduing was not necessarily proportionate to one’s spirituality. The Spirit’s power enabled men to inspire Israel (Judges 6:34; Judges 11:29) and to perform great feats of strength (Judges 14:6; Judges 14:19; Judges 15:14). But it was a temporary enduement, and Samson and later Saul tragically discovered that the Lord had left them. The NT experience of the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit was not known in OT times." [Note: Wolf, p. 381.]

Samson was fatally unwise in sharing his secret with Delilah. His willingness to do so seems traceable to his lack of appreciation of two things. He failed to appreciate his personal calling by God and the fact that his strength lay solely in God’s power working through him as a holy instrument. These are the same failures that Israel manifested and that resulted in her experiencing a fate similar to Samson’s during the period of the judges. They have caused many other servants of God to fall since Samson’s day too.

Samson’s spiritual blindness resulted in his becoming blind physically (Judges 16:21). The Philistines seized him in Gaza as he had seized the Philistines’ gate there (Judges 16:3). The same Hebrew verb occurs in both verses, highlighting the comparison. Since he chose to be the slave of his physical passions rather than his God, God disciplined him with physical slavery (cf. Galatians 6:7). The Philistines may have tied him to a large millstone like an ox and compelled him to pull it in a circular pattern, or he may have ground a hand mill.

"Grinding a hand mill was the hardest and lowest kind of slave labour (compare Ex. xi. 5 with xii. 29); and both Greeks and Romans [later] sentenced their slaves to this as a punishment . . ." [Note: Keil and Delitzsch, pp. 423-24.]

"This occupation was not only menial, it was humiliating, since it was invariably women’s work . . ." [Note: Cundall and Morris, p. 179.]

Poor blind Samson found himself chained in the prison in Gaza where he had performed his greatest feat of strength (Judges 16:3). Previously he had demonstrated great physical strength there, but now he was very weak.

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

But the Philistines took him,.... Being assured by Delilah that his strength was gone from him, of which perhaps she had made trial by binding him, and found he could not free himself from the bonds till she loosed them; or otherwise they would have been afraid to have ventured to lay hold upon him;

and put out his eyes; that should his strength return to him, be might not be able to see where and whom to strike, and so be incapable of doing much mischief any more; the word signifies, they "dug" or "bored them" i out; they plucked or cut out his eye balls, so that it was impossible his sight should ever be recovered; according to the Arabic version, they blinded him by putting fire to his eyes; the Jews observe, that this was done in just retaliation, measure for measure; Samson, they say k, went after his eyes; that is, by taking one harlot after another; therefore the Philistines put out his eyes:

and brought him down to Gaza: which lay on the sea coast, and therefore they are said to bring him down to it; here he had been before of his own will, now against it; for in one instance he had acted to his own shame, by going in to an harlot; and in another, to the shame and disgrace of the city, and the inhabitants of it, by carrying off their city gates; through which they now brought him in triumph, in order to repair the dishonour done them: though, perhaps, the true reason of carrying him thither was, that he might be at the greater distance from the Israelites, should they think of rescuing him out of their hands; and especially because it was a very strong fortified city, it had its name from strength; hence Mela l calls it "Munita admodum Gaza", and says, that when Cambyses made war in Egypt, he carried his wealth and money to this place:

and bound him with fetters of brass; the Targum calls them chains of brass, and the word being of the dual number, it is probable there were two of them, with which he was bound the greater security:

and he did grind in the prison house; the motion of mills by water or wind was as yet not invented, but it was usual, as it is still in the eastern countries, to grind with hand mills, at which one or more worked; or with mills moved around by beasts or slaves, and was a work prisoners were employed in, Exodus 11:5 and Samson being a strong man, they might expect much service from him this way. The Talmudists m understand this in a criminal sense, as they do

Job 31:10 but this is justly rejected by Kimchi.

i ינקרו "effoderant", Pagninus, Montanus, Tigurine version, Junius & Tremelius, Piscator k Misn. Sotah. c. sect. 8. l De Situ Orbis, l. 1. c. 11. m T. Bab. Sotah, fol. 10. 1.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      18 And when Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, Come up this once, for he hath showed me all his heart. Then the lords of the Philistines came up unto her, and brought money in their hand.   19 And she made him sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him.   20 And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him.   21 But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house.

      We have here the fatal consequences of Samson's folly in betraying his own strength; he soon paid dearly for it. A whore is a deep ditch; he that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein. In that pit Samson sinks. Observe, 1. What care Delilah took to make sure of the money for herself. She now perceived, by the manner of his speaking, that he had told her all his heart, and the lords of the Philistines that hired her to do this base thing are sent for; but they must be sure to bring the money in their hands,Judges 16:18; Judges 16:18. The wages of unrighteousness are accordingly produced, unknown to Samson. It would have grieved one's heart to have seen one of the bravest men then in the world sold and bought, as a sheep for the slaughter; how does this instance sully all the glory of man, and forbid the strong man ever to boast of his strength! 2. What course she took to deliver him up to them according to the bargain. Many in the world would, for the hundredth part of what was here given Delilah, sell those that they pretend the greatest respect for. Trust not in a friend then, put no confidence in a guide. See what a treacherous method she took (Judges 16:19; Judges 16:19): She made him sleep upon her knees. Josephus says, She gave him some intoxicating liquor, which laid him to sleep. What opiates she might steal into his cup we know not, but we cannot suppose that he knowingly drank wine or strong drink, for that would have been a forfeiture of his Nazariteship as much as the cutting off of his hair. She pretended the greatest kindness even when she designed the greatest mischief, which yet she could not have compassed if she had not made him sleep. See the fatal consequences of security. Satan ruins men by rocking them asleep, flattering them into a good opinion of their own safety, and so bringing them to mind nothing and fear nothing, and then he robs them of their strength and honour and leads them captive at his will. When we sleep our spiritual enemies do not. When he was asleep she had a person ready to cut off his hair, which he did so silently and so quickly that it did not awake him, but plainly afflicted him; even in his sleep, his spirit manifestly sunk upon it. I think we may suppose that if this ill turn had been done to him in his sleep by some spiteful body, without his being himself accessory to it, as he was here, it would not have had this strange effect upon him; but it was his own wickedness that corrected him. It was his iniquity, else it would not have been so much his infelicity. 3. What little concern he himself was in at it, Judges 16:20; Judges 16:20. He could not but miss his hair as soon as he awoke, and yet said, "I will shake myself as at other times after sleep," or, "as at other times when the Philistines were upon me, to make my part good against them." Perhaps he thought to shake himself the more easily, and that his head would feel the lighter, now that his hair was cut, little thinking how much heavier the burden of guilt was than that of hair. He soon found in himself some change, we have reason to think so, and yet wist not that the Lord had departed from him: he did not consider that this was the reason of the change. Note, Many have lost the favourable presence of God and are not aware of it; they have provoked God to withdraw from them, but are not sensible of their loss, nor ever complain of it. Their souls languish and grow weak, their gifts wither, every thing goes cross with them; and yet they impute not this to the right cause: they are not aware that God has departed from them, nor are they in any care to reconcile themselves to him or to recover his favour. When God has departed we cannot do as at other times. 4. What improvement the Philistines soon made of their advantages against him, Judges 16:21; Judges 16:21. The Philistines took him when God had departed from him. Those that have thrown themselves out of God's protection become an easy prey to their enemies. If we sleep in the lap of our lusts, we shall certainly wake in the hands of the Philistines. It is probable they had promised Delilah not to kill him, but they took an effectual course to disable him. The first thing they did, when they had him in their hands and found they could manage him, was to put out his eyes, by applying fire to them, says the Arabic version. They considered that his eyes would never come again, as perhaps his hair might, and that the strongest arms could do little without eyes to guide the, and therefore, if now they blind him, they for ever blind him. His eyes were the inlets of his sin: he saw the harlot at Gaza, and went in unto her (Judges 16:1; Judges 16:1), and now his punishment began there. Now that the Philistines had blinded him he had time to remember how his own lust had blinded him. The best preservative of the eyes is to turn them away from beholding vanity. They brought him down to Gaza, that there he might appear in weakness where he had lately given such proofs of his strength (Judges 16:3; Judges 16:3), and be a jest to those to whom he had been a terror. They bound him with fetters of brass who had before been held in the cords of his own iniquity, and he did grind in the prison, work in their bridewell, either for their profit or his punishment, or for both. The devil does thus by sinners, blinds the minds of those who believe not, and so enslaves them, and secures them in his interests. Poor Samson, how hast thou fallen! How is thy honour laid in the dust! How has the glory and defence of Israel become the drudge and triumph of the Philistines! The crown has fallen from his head; woe unto him, for he hath sinned. Let all take warning by his fall carefully to preserve their purity, and to watch against all fleshly lusts; for all our glory has gone, and our defence departed form us, when the covenant of our separation to God, as spiritual Nazarites, is profaned.

Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible

Samson Conquered

November 21st, 1858 by C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892)

"And she said, the Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the Lord was departed from him. But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house." Judges 16:20-21 .

Samson is, in many respects, one of the most remarkable men whose history is recorded in the pages of inspiration. He enjoyed a singular privilege only accorded to one other person in the Old Testament. His birth was foretold to his parents by an angel. Isaac was promised to Abraham and Sarah by angels whom they entertained unawares; but save Isaac, Samson was the only one whose birth was foretold by an angelic messenger before the opening of the gospel dispensation. Before his birth he was dedicated to God, and set apart as a Nazarite. Now, a Nazarite was a person who was entirely consecrated to God, and in token of his consecration he drank no wine; and allowed his hair to grow, untouched by the razor. Samson, you may therefore understand, was entirely consecrated to God, and when any saw him, they would say, "That man is God's man, a Nazarite, set apart." God endowed Samson with supernatural strength, a strength which never could have been the result of mere thews and sinews. It was not the fashioning of Samson's body that made him strong; it was not the arm, or the fist with which he smote the Philistines; it was a miracle that dwelt within him, a continued going forth of the omnipotence of God, which made him mightier than thousands of his enemies. Samson appears very early to have discovered in himself this great strength, for "the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan." He judged Israel for thirty years, and gloriously did he deliver them. What a noble being he must have been! See him, when he steps into the vineyard for a moment from his parents. A lion that has been crouching there springs upon him, but he meets him all unarmed, receives him upon his brawny arms and rends him like a kid. See him afterwards, when his countrymen have bound him and taken him down from the top of the rock, and delivered him up to the thousands of the Philistines. He has scarcely come near them, when, without a weapon, with his own foot, he begins to spurn them; and seeing there the jaw-bone of an ass, he takes that ignoble weapon, and sweeps away the men that had helmets about their heads and were girded with greaves of brass. Nor did his vigour fail him in his later life, for he died in the very prime of his days. One of his greatest exploits was performed at this very season. He is entrapped in the city of Gaza. He remains there till midnight; so confident is he in his strength that he is in no hurry to depart, and instead of assailing the guard, and making them draw the bolts, he wrenches up the two posts, and takes away the gate, bar and all, and, carries his mighty burden for miles to the top of a hill that is before Hebron. Every way it must have been a great thing to see this man, especially if one had him for a friend. Had one been his foe, the more distant the sight the better, for none could escape from him but those who fled; but to have him for a friend and to stand with him in the day of battle, was to feel that you had an army in a single man, and had in one frame that which would strike thousands with terror. Samson, however, though he had great physical strength, had but little mental force, and even less spiritual power. His whole life is a scene of miracles and follies. He had but little grace, and was easily overcome by temptation. He is enticed and led astray. Often corrected; still he sins again. At last he falls into the hands of Delilah. She is bribed with an enormous sum, and she endeavours to get from him the secret of his strength. He foolishly toys with the danger, and plays with his own destruction. At last goaded by her importunity, he lets out the secret which he ought to have confided to no one but himself. The secret of his strength lay in his locks. Not that his hair made him strong; but that his hair was the symbol of his consecration, and was the pledge of God's favour to him. While his hair was untouched he was a consecrated man; as soon as that was cut away, he was no longer perfectly consecrated, and then his strength departed from him. His hair is cut away; the locks that covered him once are taken from him, and there he stands a shaveling, weak as other men. Now the Philistines begin to oppress him, and his eyes are burned out with hot iron. How are the mighty fallen! How are the great ones taken in the net! Samson, the great hero of Israel, is seen with a shuffling gait walking towards Gaza. A shuffling gait, I said, because he had just received blindness, which was a new thing to him, therefore, he had not as yet learned to walk as well as those who, having been blind for years, at last learn to set their feet firmly upon the earth. With his feet bound together with brazen fetters an unusual mode of binding a prisoner, but adopted in this case because Samson was supposed to be still so strong, that any other kind of fetter would have been insufficient you see him walking along in the midst of a small escort towards Gaza. And now he comes to the very city out of which he had walked in all his pride with the gates and bolts upon his shoulders; and the little children come out, the lower orders of the people come round about him, and point at him "Samson, the great hero, hath fallen! let us make sport of him!" What a spectacle! The hot sun is beating upon his bare head, which had once been protected by those luxuriant locks. Look at the escort who guard him, a mere handful of men, how they would have fled before him in his brighter days; but now a child might overcome him. They take him to a place where an ass is grinding at the mill, and Samson must do the same ignoble work. Why, he must be the sport and jest of every passer by, and of every fool who shall step in to see this great wonder the destroyer of the Philistines made to toil at the mill. Ah, what a fall was there, my brethren! We might indeed stand and weep over poor blind Samson. That he should have lost his eyes was terrible; that he should have lost his strength was worse; but that he should have lost the favour of God for awhile; that he should become the sport of God's enemies, was the worst of all. Over this indeed we might weep. Now, why have I narrated this story? Why should I direct your attention to Samson? For this reason. Every child of God is a consecrated man. His consecration is not typified by any outward symbol; we are not commanded to let our hair grow for ever, nor to abstain from meats or drinks. The Christian is a consecrated man, but his consecration is unseen by his fellows, except in the outward deeds which are the result thereof. And now I want to speak to you, my dear friends, as consecrated men, as Nazarites, and I think I shall find a lesson for you in the history of Samson. My first point shall be the strength of the consecrated, for they are strong men; secondly, the secret of their strength; thirdly, the danger to which they are exposed; and fourthly, the disgrace which will come upon them if they fall into this danger. I. First, THE STRENGTH OF THE CONSECRATED MAN. Do you know that the strongest man in all the world is a consecrated man? Even though he may consecrate himself to a wrong object, yet if it be a thorough consecration, he will have strength strength for evil, it may be, but still strength. In the old Roman wars with Pyrrhus, you remember an ancient story of self-devotion. There was an oracle which said that victory would attend that army whose leader should give himself up to death. Decius the Roman Consul, knowing this, rushed into the thickest of the battle, that his army might overcome by his dying. The prodigies of valour which he performed are proofs of the power of consecration. The Romans at that time seemed to be every man a hero, because every man was a consecrated man. They went to battle with this thought "I will conquer or die; the name of Rome is written on my heart; for my country I am prepared to live, or for that to shed my blood." And no enemies could ever stand against them. If a Roman fell there were no wounds in his back, but all in his breast. His face, even in cold death, was like the face of a lion, and when looked upon it was of terrible aspect. They were men consecrated to their country; they were ambitious to make the name of Rome the noblest word in human language; and consequently the Roman became a giant. And to this day let a man get a purpose within him, I care not what his purpose is, and let his whole soul be absorbed by it, and what will he not do? You that are "everything by turns and nothing long," that have nothing to live for, soulless carcases that walk this earth and waste its air, what can you do? Why nothing. But the man who knows what he is at, and has his mark, speeds to it "Like an arrow from a bow shot by an archer strong." Nought can turn him aside from his design. How much more is this true if I limit the description to that which is peculiar to the Christian consecration to God! Oh! what strength that man has who is dedicated to God! Is there such an one here? I know there is. I know that there be many who have consecrated themselves to the Lord God of Israel in the secret of their chamber; and who can say in their hearts,

"Tis done; the great transaction's done I am my Lord's, and he is mine. He drew me, and I followed on, Glad to obey the voice divine."

Now, the man that can say that, and is thoroughly consecrated to God; be he who he may or what he may, he is a strong man, and will work marvels. Need I tell you of the wonders that have been done by consecrated men? You have read the stories of olden times, when our religion was hunted like a partridge on the mountains. Did you never hear how consecrated men and women endured unheard-of pangs and agonies? Have you not read how they were cast to the lions, how they were sawn in sunder, how they languished in prisons, or met with the swifter death of the sword? Have you not heard how they wandered about in sheeps' skins and goats' skins, destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy? Have you not heard how they defied tyrants to their face, how, when they were threatened, they dared most boldly to laugh at all the threats of the foe how at the stake they clapped their hands in the fire, and sang psalms of triumph when men, worse than fiends, were jeering at their miseries? How was this? What made women stronger than men, and men stronger than angels? Why this, they were consecrated to God. They felt that every pang which rent their heart was giving glory to God, that all the pains they endured in their bodies were but the marks of the Lord Jesus, whereby they were proven to be wholly dedicated unto him. Nor in this alone has the power of the consecrated ones been proved. Have you never heard how the sanctified ones have done wonders? Read the stories of those who counted not their lives dear unto them, that they might honour their Lord and Master by preaching his Word, by telling forth the gospel in foreign lands. Have you not heard how men have left their kindred and their friends, and all that life held dear have crossed the stormy sea, and have gone into the lands of the heathen, where men were devouring one another? Have you not known how they have put their foot upon that country, and have seen the ship that conveyed them there fading away in the distance, and yet without a fear have dwelt amongst the wild savages of the woods, have walked into the midst of them, and told them the simple story of the God that loved and died for man? You must know how those men have conquered, how those, who seemed to be fiercer than lions, have crouched before them, have listened to their words, and have been converted by the majesty of the gospel which they preached. What made these men heroes? What enabled them to rend themselves away from all their kith and kin, and banish themselves into the land of the stranger? It was because they were consecrated, thoroughly consecrated to the Lord Jesus Christ. What is there in the world which the consecrated man cannot do? Tempt him; offer him gold and silver; carry him to the mountain top, and show him all the kingdoms of the world, and tell him he shall have all these if he will bow down and worship the god of this world. What saith the consecrated man? "Get thee behind me, Satan; I have more than all this which thou dost offer me; this world is mine, and worlds to come; I despise the temptation; I will not bow before thee." Let men threaten a consecrated man, what does he say? "I fear God, and, therefore, I cannot fear you; if it be right in your sight to obey man rather than God, judge ye; but, as for me, I will serve none but God." You may, perhaps, have seen in your life a consecrated man. Is he a public character? What cannot he do? He preaches the gospel, and at once a thousand enemies assail him; they attack him on every side; some for this thing, and some for that; his very virtues are distorted into vices, and his slightest faults are magnified into the greatest crimes. He has scarce a friend; the very ministers of the gospel shun him; he is reckoned to be so strange that every one must avoid him. What does he do? Within the chamber of his own heart he holds conference with his God, and asks himself this question am I right? Conscience gives the verdict, yes, and the Spirit bears witness with his spirit that conscience is impartial. "Then," says he, "come fair, come foul, if I am right, neither to the right hand nor to the left will I turn." Perhaps he feels in secret what he will not express in public. He feels the pang of desertion, obloquy, and rebuke; he cries

"If on my face, for thy dear name, Shame and reproach shall be, I'll hail reproach, and welcome shame, If thou'lt remember me."

As for himself in public, none can tell that he careth for any of these things; for he can say with Paul "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto me that I may win Christ and finish my course with joy." What cannot a consecrated man do? I do believe if he had the whole world against him, he would prove more than a match for them all. He would say "Heaps upon heaps, with the jaw-bone of an ass, have I slain my thousand men." I care not how violent may be his foe; nor how great may be the advantage which that foe may get on him: though the lion may have crouched for the spring, and may be leaping upon him, yet will he rend him as a kid, for he is more than a conqueror through him that loved him. He is alone such, who is wholly consecrated unto the Lord Jesus Christ. "But," says some one, "can we be consecrated to Christ? I thought that was for ministers only." Oh, no, my brethren; all God's children must be consecrated men. What are you? Are you engaged in business? If you are what you profess to be, your business must be consecrated to God. Perhaps you have no family whatever, and you are engaged in trade, and are saving some considerable sum a-year; let me tell you the example of a man thoroughly consecrated to God. There lives in Bristol, (name unknown), a man whose income is large; and what does he do with it? He labours in business continually that this income may come to him, but of it, every farthing every year is expended in the Lord's cause except that which he requires for the necessaries of life. He makes his necessities as few as possible, that he may have the more to give away. He is God's man in his business. I do not exhort you to do the same. You may be in a different position; but a man who has a family, and is in business, should be able to say "Now, I make so much from my business; my family must be provided for but I seek not to amass riches. I will make money for God and I will spend it in his cause. Did I not say, when I joined the church

"All that I am, and all I have, Shall be for ever thine; Whate'er my duty bids me give, My cheerful hands resign."

And if I said it, I meant it." I do not understand some Christian people who sing that hymn, and then pinch, screw, and nip anything when it comes to God's cause. If I sing that, I mean it. I would not sing it unless I did. If I join the church, I understand that I give myself and all that I have up to that church; I would not make a lying profession; I would not make an avowal of a consecration which I did not mean. If I have said, "I am Christ's;" by his grace I will be Christ's. Brethren, you in business may be as much consecrated to Christ as the minister in his pulpit; you may make your ordinary transactions in life a solemn service of God. Many a man has disgraced a cassock, and many another has consecrated a smockfrock: many a man has defiled his pulpit cushions, and many another has made a cobbler's lapstone holiness unto the Lord. Happy the man who is consecrated unto the Lord; where'er he is, he is a consecrated man, and he shall do wonders. It has often been remarked that in this age we are all little men. A hundred years ago, or more, if we had gone through the churches, we might have readily found a number of ministers of great note. But now we are all little men, the drivelling sons of nobodies; our names shall never be remembered, for we do nothing to deserve it. There is scarce a man alive now upon this earth; there are plenty to be found who call themselves men, but they are the husks of men, the life has gone from them, the precious kernel seems to have departed. The littleness of Christians of this age results from the littleness of their consecration to Christ. The age of John Owen was the day of great preachers; but let me tell you, that that was the age of great consecration. Those great preachers whose names we remember, were men who counted nothing their own: they were driven out from their benefices, because they could not conform to the Established Church, and they gave up all they had willingly to the Lord. They were hunted from place to place; the disgraceful five-mile act would not permit them to come within five miles of any market town; they wandered here and there to preach the gospel to a few poor sheep, being fully given up to their Lord. Those were foul times; but they promised they would walk the road fair or foul, and they did walk it knee deep in mud; and they would have walked it if it had been knee deep in blood too. They became great men; and if we were, as they were, wholly given up to God if we could say of ourselves, "From the crown of my head to the sole of my foot, there is not a drop of blood that is not wholly God's; all my time, all my talents, everything I have is God's" if we could say that, we should be strong like Samson, for the consecrated must be strong. II. Now, in the second place, THE SECRET OF THEIR STRENGTH. What makes the consecrated man strong? Ah! beloved; there is no strength in man of himself. Samson without his God was but a poor fool indeed. The secret of Samson's strength was this as long as he was consecrated he should be strong; so long as he was thoroughly devoted to his God, and had no object but to serve God, (and that was to be indicated by the growing of his hair) so long, and no longer, would God be with him to help him. And now you see, dear friends, that if you have any strength to serve God, the secret of your strength lies in the same place. What strength have you save in God? Ah! I have heard some men talk as if the strength of free will, of human nature, was sufficient to carry men to heaven. Free will has carried many souls to hell, but never a soul to heaven yet. No strength of nature can suffice to serve the Lord aright. No man can say that Jesus is the Christ but by the Holy Ghost. No man can come to Christ except the Father that hath sent Christ doth draw him. If, then, the first act of Christian life is beyond all human strength, how much more are those higher steps far beyond any one of us? Do we not utter a certain truth when we say in the words of Scripture, "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God." I think every one who has a really quickened soul will sooner or later be made to feel this. Ay! I question whether a man can be converted a day without finding out his own weakness. It is but a little space before the child finds that he can stand alone so long as God his Father takes him by the arms and teaches him to go, but that if his Father's hand be taken away he has no power to stand, but down he falls at once. See Samson without his God, going out against a thousand men. Would they not laugh at him? and with scarcely time to express his terror, he would flee, or be rent in pieces. Imagine him without his God, locked up in Gaza, the gates fast closed. He goes out into the streets to escape; but how can he clear a passage? He is caught like a wild bull in a net; he may go round and round the walls, but where shall be his deliverance? Without his God he is but as other men. The secret of his strength lies in his consecration, and in the strength which is its result. Remember, then, the secret of your strength. Never think that you have any power of your own; rely wholly upon the God of Israel; and remember that the channel through which that strength must come to you must be your entire consecration to God. III. In the third place, What is THE PECULIAR DANGER OF A CONSECRATED MAN? His danger is that his locks may be shorn, that is to say, that his consecration may be broken. As long as he is consecrated he is strong; break that, he is weak as water. Now there are a thousand razors with which the devil can shave off the locks of a consecrated man without his knowing it. Samson is sound asleep; so clever is the barber that he even lulls him to sleep as his fingers move across the pate, the fool's pate, which he is making bare. The devil is cleverer far than even the skilful barber; he can shave the believer's locks while he scarcely knows it. Shall I tell you with what razors he can accomplish this work? Sometimes he takes the sharp razor of pride, and when the Christian falls asleep and is not vigilant, he comes with it and begins to run his fingers upon the Christian's locks, and says, "What a fine fellow you are! What wonders you have done! Didn't you rend that lion finely? Wasn't it a great feat to smite those Philistines hip and thigh? Ah you will be talked-of as long as time endures for carrying those gates of Gaza away. You need not be afraid of anybody." And so on goes the razor, lock after lock falling off, and Samson knows it not. He is just thinking within himself, "How brave am I! How great am I!" Thus works the razor of pride cut, cut, cut away and he wakes up to find himself bald, and all his strength gone. Have you never had that razor upon your head? I confess I have on mine. Have you never, after you have been able to endure afflictions, heard a voice saying to you, "How patient you were!" After you have cast aside some temptation, and have been able to keep to the unswerving course of integrity, has not Satan said to you, "That is a fine thing you have done; that was bravely done." And all the while you little knew that it was the cunning hand of the evil one taking away your locks with the sharp razor of pride. For mark, pride is a breach of our consecration. As soon as I begin to get proud of what I do, or what I am, what am I proud of? Why, there is in that pride the act of taking away from God his glory. For I promised that God should have all the glory, and is not that part of my consecration? and I am taking it to myself. I have broken my consecration; my locks are gone, and I become weak. Mark this, Christian God will never give thee strength to glorify thyself with. God will give thee a crown, but not to put on thine own head. As sure as ever a Christian begins to write his feats, and his triumphs upon his own escutcheon, and take to himself the glory, God will lay him level with the dust. Another razor he also uses is self-sufficiency. "Ah," saith the devil as he is shaving away your locks, "You have done a very great deal. You see they bound you with green withes, and you snapped them in sunder, they merely smelt the fire and they burst. Then they took new ropes to bind you; ah! you overcame even them; for you snapped the ropes in sunder as if they had been a thread. Then they weaved the seven locks of your head, but you walked away with loon, and web too, beam and all. You can do anything, don't be afraid: you have strength enough to do anything; you can accomplish any feat you set your will upon." How softly the devil will do all that; how will he be rubbing the poll while the razor is moving softly along and the locks are dropping off, and he is treading them in the dust. "You have done all this, and you can do anything else." Every drop of grace distils from heaven. O my brethren, what have we that we have not received? Let us not imagine that we can create might wherewith to gird ourselves. "All my springs are in thee." The moment we begin to think that it is our own arm that has gotten us the victory, it will be all over with us our locks of strength shall be taken away, and the glory shall depart from us. So, you see, self-sufficiency, as well as pride, may be the razor with which the enemy may shave away our strength. There is yet another, and a more palpable danger still. When a consecrated man begins to change his purpose in life and live for himself that razor shaves clean indeed. There is a minister; when he first began his ministry he could say, "God is my witness I have but one object, that I may free my skirts from the blood of every one of my hearers, that I may preach the gospel faithfully and honour my Master." In a little time, tempted by Satan, he changes his tone and talks like this, "I must keep my congregation up. If I preach such hard doctrine, they won't come. Did not one of the newspapers criticise me, and did not some of my people go away from me because of it? I must mind what I am at. I must keep this thing going. I must look out a little sharper, and prone my speech down. I must adopt a little gentler style, or preach a new-fashioned doctrine; for I must keep my popularity up. What is to become of me if I go down? People will say, 'Up like a rocket, down like the stick;' and then shall all my enemies laugh." Ah, when once a man begins to care so much as a snap of the finger about the world, it is all over with him. If he can go to his pulpit, and say, "I have got a message to deliver; and whether they will hear or whether they will not hear, I will deliver it as God puts it into my mouth; I will not change the dot of an i, or the cross of a t for the biggest man that lives, or to bring in the mightiest congregation that ever sat at minister's feet" that man is mighty. He does not let human judgments move him, and he will move the world. But let him turn aside, and think about his congregation, and how that shall be kept up; ah Samson! how are thy locks shorn? What canst thou do now? That false Delilah has destroyed thee thine eyes are put out, thy comfort is taken away, and thy future ministry shall be like the grinding of an ass around the continually revolving mill; thou shalt have no rest or peace ever afterwards. Or let him turn aside another way. Suppose he should say, "I must get preferment, or wealth, I must look well to myself, I must see my nest feathered, that must he the object of my life." I am not now speaking of the ministry merely, but of all the consecrated; and as sure as ever we begin to make self the primary object of our existence our locks are shorn. "Now," says the Lord, "I gave that man strength, but not to use it for himself. Then I put him into a high position, but not that he might clothe himself about with glory; I put him there that he might look to my cause, to my interests; and if he does not do that first, down he shall go." You remember Queen Esther: she is exalted from being a simple humble maiden, to become the wife of the great monarch Ahasuerus. Well, Haman gets a decree against her nation, that it shall be destroyed. Poor Mordecai comes to Esther, and says, "You must go in to the king and speak to him." "Well," says she, "but if I do I shall die." "Ah," says he, "If thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther was not made Queen Esther that she might make herself glorious, but that she might be in a position to save the Jews; and now if she prefers herself before her country then it is all over with her Vashti's fate shall be as nothing compared with her destruction. And so, if you live in this world, and God prospers you, you get perhaps into some position, and you say, "Here I am; I will look out for myself; I have been serving the church before, but now I will look to myself a little." "Come, come," says human nature; "you must look after your family," (which means, you must look after yourself). Very well, do it sir, as your main object, and you are a ruined man. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these shall be added to you." If you keep your eye single, your whole body shall be full of light. Though you seemed as if you had shut out half the light by having that single eye, yet your body shall be full of light. But begin to have two masters, and two objects to serve, and you shall serve neither; you shall neither prosper for this world, nor for that which is to come. Oh, Christian, above all things take care of thy consecration. Ever feel that thou art wholly given up to God, and to God alone. IV. And now, lastly, there is THE CHRISTIAN'S DISGRACE. His locks are cut off. I have seen him, young as I am, and you with grey hairs upon your brows have seen him oftener than I; I have seen him in the ministry. He spake like an angel of God; many there were that regarded him, and did hang upon his lips; he seemed to be sound in doctrine and earnest in manner. I have seen him turn aside; it was but a little thing, some slight deviation from the ancient orthodoxy of his fathers, some slight violation of the law of his church. I have seen him, till he has given up doctrine after doctrine, until, at last, the very place wherein he preached has become a bye-word and a proverb; and the man is pointed out by the grey-headed sire to his child as a man who is to be looked upon with suspicion; who, if he lectures, is to be heard with caution; and if he preaches, is not to be listened to at all. Have you not seen him? What disgrace was there! What a fall! The man who came out in the camps of Dan, and seemed to be moved by the Spirit of the Lord, has become the slave of error. He has gone into the very camps of the enemy, and there he is now, grinding in the mill for the Philistine, whom he ought to have been striking with his arm. Now there are two ways of accounting for this. Such a man is either a thorough hypocrite or a fallen believer. Sometimes, people say of persons who turn aside to sin, "There now; look, there is a Christian fallen, a child of God fallen." It is something like the vulgar, when at night they see a bright light in the sky, and say, "Ah, there is a star fallen." It was not a star; the stars are all right. Take a telescope; they are every one there. The Great Bear has not lost a star out of it's tail; and if you look, there is the belt of Orion all safe, and the dagger has not dropped out of it. What is it, then? We do not know exactly what it is. Perhaps it may be a few gases up there for a little while, that have burst, and that is all; or some wandering substance cast down, and quite time that it should be. But the stars are all right. So, depend upon it, the children of God are always safe. Now these men who have turned aside and broken their consecration vow, are pointed at as a disgrace to themselves and dishonour to the church. And you who are members of Christ's church, you have seen men who stood in your ranks as firm soldiers of the cross, and you have noticed them go out, from us, "because they were not of us," or like poor Samson, you have seen them go to their graves with the eyes of their comfort put out, with the feet of their usefulness bound with brazen fetters, and with the strength of their arms entirely departed from them. Now, do any of you wish to be backsliders? Do you wish to betray the holy profession of your religion? My brethren, is there one among you who this day makes a profession of love to Christ, who desires to be an apostate? Is there one of you who desires like Samson to have his eyes put out, and to be made to grind in the mill? Would you, like David, commit a great sin, and go with broken bones to the grave? would you, like Lot, be drunken, and fall into lust? No, I know what you say, "Lord, let my path be like the eagle's flight; let me fly upwards to the sun, and never stay and never turn aside. Oh, give me grace that I may serve thee, like Caleb, with a perfect heart, and that from the beginning even to the end of my days, my course may be as the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day." Ay, I know what is your desire. How, then, shall it be accomplished? Look well to your consecration; see that it is sincere; see that you mean it, and then look up to the Holy Spirit, after you have looked to your consecration, and beg of him to give you daily grace; for as day-by-day the manna fell, so must you receive daily food from on high. And, remember, it is not by any grace you have in you, but by the grace that is in Christ, and that must be given to you hour by hour, that you are to stand, and having done all, to be crowned at last as a faithful one, who has endured unto the end. I ask your prayers that I may be kept faithful to my Lord; and on the other hand, I will offer my earnest prayers, that you may serve him while he lends you breath, that when your voice is lost in death, you may throughout a never ending immortality, praise him in louder and sweeter strains. And as for you that have not given yourselves to God, and are not consecrated to him, I can only speak to you as to Philistines, and warn you, that the day shall come when Israel shall be avenged upon the Philistines. You may be one day assembled upon the roof of your pleasures, enjoying yourselves in health and strength; but there is a Samson called Death, who shall pull down the pillars of your tabernacle, and you must fall and be destroyed and great shall be the ruin. May God give you grace that you may be consecrated to Christ; so that living or dying, you may rejoice in him, and may share with him the glory of his Father.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

My object being no more than a sketch, as most of you know, I desire to say but a few words on such of the chapters as bear a similar character to that which has been already pointed out in the early portion of the book. We see that God was faithful; but the fidelity even of those whom He used in deliverance is another matter. Their faith was owned; but it was of a sadly mingled and imperfect character. Indeed this is found regularly throughout the book of Judges. In the case of Abimelech it is seen most conspicuously, yet is it always true, though it may be occasionally more marked than at other times. In him we have a man who took advantage of the reputation for the power of God that had wrought by his father; but where anything of the sort is used for self, and not for God, bitter disappointment must be the result; and if there be anything more marked than another in his history, it is the solemnity of divine retribution. This is always true in the ways of God. What a man sows he must reap: if he sows to the flesh, of the flesh he reaps corruption. And this is just as true of the saint as of the man who rashly or lightly bears the name of the Lord Jesus. In the latter case it is nothing but flesh, which becomes manifest in the long run; but even in the case of him who is truthful, whatever is carnal, whatever lets out that nature which is already judged, the confession of whose judgment is the very starting-point of a Christian, but which it is his calling to act upon and treat as a dead and condemned thing to the end if he forgets this, then, in the measure in which he does so, it brings in that which the Lord must infallibly deal with. Now; in Abimelech's history we see that he had begun with the most intense selfishness taking an utterly reckless advantage of those who had a better claim to represent their father than himself. The end was that he met with the judgment least of all to be coveted by man, most of all detestable to a proud spirit like his own. (Judges 9:1-57)

On Tola and Jair (Judges 10:1-18) we need not pause; but in Jephthah again we have solemn issues brought out But here again is found the same brand of what was worthless or untowardly in the instruments that God used in a day of declension "Jephthah the Gileadite," we are told in Judges 11:1-40, "was a mighty man of valour, and he was the son of an harlot." Abimelech was no doubt the son of a concubine; but here we descend lower still. Nevertheless he "was a mighty man of valour," who lived a kind of freebooter's life the chief of a reckless company of outcasts and desperadoes. So low were things now in Israel, that even this man becomes an instrument of God's deliverance; and so evidently in all this was God stamping on the people His moral sentence of their state. He could not in their then condition employ vessels of greater moral worth. He plainly intended to testify to their state by the agents whom He used for their good. (Judges 11:1-40)

Nevertheless we learn even from the lowest He deigned to work by that, while doubtless there was a most humiliating condition in Israel, God's rights were maintained for His people. Jephthah takes the greatest pains to prove, when he comes forward, that he has clear right on his side. This is an important principle. It was not merely that the people were unworthily oppressed by the Ammonites, but Jephthah does not venture to go to war, nor does the Spirit of God clothe him with energy for the conflict, until he had the certainty in his soul that the cause was a righteous one, and this founded upon the dealings of God with the children of Israel and with Ammon respectively. This is exceedingly instructive.

Nothing justifies, in the work of the Lord, a departure from His mind or will. It does not matter what the line taken may be, no good end will ever be owned by God unless the way be according to His word and righteousness. Even the man who above all others perhaps illustrates the danger of rash vows in the joy of a divine deliverance, and that affecting him in the nearest possible way, was the very reverse of rash in entering on his service for the people of Israel. Hear what a solemn appeal Jephthah makes to the elders before he acts. Undoubtedly the desire of his own importance and aggrandizement is but too manifest; but when he enters upon the service itself, he not only takes care that the right should be felt by Israel to be indisputably with them, but that this should be known and pressed on the conscience of his adversary.

So he "sent messengers unto the king of the children of Ammon, saying, What hast thou to do with me, that thou art come against me to fight in my land? And the king of the children of Ammon answered unto the messengers of Jephthah, Because Israel took away my land, when they came up out of Egypt, from Arnon even unto Jabbok, and unto Jordan: now therefore restore those lands again peaceably." The answer however was incorrect. The king of the Ammonites did not speak candidly. It was not true that the children of Israel had taken those lands as was pretended. The Ammonites had lost them before the children of Israel took them from others whom they might lawfully attack and despoil; but God had forbidden that the children of Israel should spoil either Ammon, or Moab, or Edom. God held even to the distant tie of connection a most striking proof and witness of the ways of our God. There had been in ancient times a link between Ammon and Moab with the children of Israel: a cloud of dishonour and of shame overhung them; yet a link there was, and God would have this at least to be never forgotten. Years might pass, hundreds of years roll over, but moral principles and even natural relationships do not lose their power. And it was of the greatest importance that His people should be trained in this. The lands might be good pasture, the temptation great, the provocation given by Moab or Ammon very considerable. On human grounds there might be a just right of conquest; but all this would not do for God, who must decide everything even in the battles of His people. God does not permit Israel, because this one or that is an enemy, to take the place of enemies to them. He stands to it that they must never have an enemy unless it be God's enemy. What an honour when Israel are permitted to take up only the cause of God! They are not allowed to enter on campaigns out of their own head. What courage and confidence may they not then cherish!

So it was pressed on Israel then. The king of Ammon had forgotten, or had never enquired after the real righteousness of the case. What he felt was that these lands had once been his lands, and that the children of Israel now possessed them. More he knew not, nor wished to learn. But this was far from the true and full history of the case. The fact was that some other races and peoples had dispossessed the Ammonites of these lands. Now it was perfectly lawful for the children of Israel to treat them as intruders and strangers, who had no rightful claim, no valid plea why they should be restored. For we must remember carefully this, in looking at the dealings of God with the holy land and with His people Israel, God had always destined the land of Palestine for the chosen people. Had not He a right to do so? The Canaanites might have retreated from it; the Ammonites might have sought other lands. The world was large enough for all. There was at this time, as at every other, ample space for occupying here and there; and if the reason why they did not move was because they cared not for the word of God, they must take the consequences of their unbelief. They did not believe that God would enforce His claims. They had no faith in the promise on God's part to Abraham or to his seed. But the time came when God would act upon that promise, and when those that disputed the title of God must pay the penalty.

Undoubtedly the children of Moab, Ammon, and Edom, for reasons of relationship at least, were exempted from the sentence to which God subjected the races of Canaan. If some of these had taken away lands that belonged to the Ammonites, it was open and perfectly lawful in this case for Israel to put these intruders out of the land, and to take possession of whatever was their spoil. If Ammon could or would not seek to recover it previously, they had no title to claim now from Israel. It was on this principle then that Jephthah pleads the righteousness of the cause that was now to be decided by the sword between Ammon and Israel. Therefore is it explained with great care.

"Thus saith Jephthah," was his answer, "Israel took not away the land of Moab, nor the land of the children of Ammon." Nothing justifies departure from the word of God. It matters not what is the apparent good that is to be gained, or what may be the mischief that is to be avoided: the only place that becomes a believer is obedience. So says he: "When Israel came up from Egypt, and walked through the wilderness unto the Red Sea, and came to Kadesh, then Israel sent messengers unto the king of Edom, saying, Let me, I pray thee, pass through thy land; but the king of Edom would not hearken thereto. And in like manner they sent unto the king of Moab: but he would not consent: and Israel abode in Kadesh."

And what did Israel? Resent it? Not so: they took the insult patiently; and these were persons who were called to be the witnesses of earthly righteousness. How much more are we, brethren, who are the followers of One who knew nothing but a life of continual sorrow and shame for the glory of God! This is our calling; but we see even in Israel that outside the limits, the very narrow limits, in which God called them to be the executors of divine vengeance even they calmly bear and brook as they best might; and there were those that understood the mind of God, and knew perfectly well why they were not so called to do. They took it quietly, and passed along their way. "Then they went along through the wilderness, and compassed the land of Edom, and the land of Moab, and came by the east side of the land of Moab, and pitched on the other side of Arnon." It was a great way about, and extremely inconvenient. Who doubted the unfriendliness of Moab and of Edom? It was known, but intended to be so; but for all that the children of Israel, as Jephthah showed, would not go against the word of God.

Now the moral importance of this was immense, for if they were simply doing the will and word of God, who could stand in their way? The object of the king of Ammon was to put the children of Israel in the wrong. Jephthah proves in the most triumphant way that the right was all on their side. "And Israel sent messengers unto Sihon king of the Amorites, the king of Heshbon; and Israel said unto him Let us pass, we pray thee, through thy land into my place." They did not wish to quarrel with the king of Heshbon, Amorite as he was, unless he were actually in the holy land; but it was of God that these Amorites, to their own ruin, would not let them pass peaceably through. This again makes the case of Israel still more clear, because it might have been supposed that surely the Amorite must be put out of the way, seeing that that most wicked race was devoted expressly to destruction. But no "Sihon trusted not Israel to pass through his coast: but Sihon gathered all his people together, and pitched in Jahaz, and fought against Israel. And Jehovah God of Israel delivered Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel, and they smote them: so Israel possessed all the land of the Amorites, the inhabitants of that country. And they possessed all the coasts of the Amorites, from Arnon even unto Jabbok."

There was the plain and sure title of Jephthah. Israel had not taken these lands from Ammon at all They had taken them from the Amorite. If the Amorite got them from Ammon in the first instance, as was no doubt the fact, this was an affair not between Israel and Ammon, but between Ammon and Sihon. It was the business of the Ammonites to have defended their claims as best they could against the Amorites. If they could not make them good, if they had lost their land, and could not recover it, what had Israel to do with their affairs? The children of Israel were in no way responsible for it. They had won the land by the provoked fight which the Amorite had drawn them into. They had sought peace, and Sihon would have war. The result was that the Amorite lost his land. Thus in fact Sihon had assailed the Israelites against their will, who had taken the land from him. The title of the children of Israel therefore to that land was indefeasible.

God Himself had ordered things so. He knew right well that the presence of the Amorites upon their skirts would be a continual snare and evil. He permitted that there should be no confidence in the peaceable intentions of Israel, for the very purpose of putting them in possession of the land. Thus the king of Ammon had lost his old claim, and had no present title to question Israel's right of conquest. "So now." says Jephthah, "Jehovah God of Israel hath dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel, and shouldest thou possess it?" The king of Ammon might assail the Israelites, and renew the arbitrament of the sword, but he was unrighteous in demanding the land from Israel. "Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever Jehovah our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess."

After having thus completely refuted his claim over the land on the ground of its being Ammonite, whereas in point of fact it had been won from them by the Amorite, and as such had passed into Israel's hand, now he gives them a warning from the blows that God had inflicted on a mightier king than himself. "Art thou any thing better than Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab? did he ever strive against Israel, or did he ever fight against them, while Israel dwelt in Heshbon and her towns, and in Aroer and her towns, and in all the cities that be along by the coasts of Arnon, three hundred years?" Thus it was proved that Israel had, in whatever light regarded, a valid title, not only from long-continued possession, but from a right founded on their conquest of one of the enemies devoted to destruction by God Himself, but an enemy who had wantonly attacked them, when they would have left him unharmed, as they would the Ammonite now. In every point of view therefore the ground taken by Israel was solid, and could not be disputed righteously. The king of Ammon had no just claim whatever

Being thus proved to be in arms without right, the king of Ammon was only so much the more fierce, as is usual with people when convicted of a wrong to which their will is engaged. "Then the Spirit of Jehovah came upon Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead, and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from Mizpeh of Gilead he passed over unto the children of Ammon. And Jephthah vowed a vow unto Jehovah." Here the rashness of the man enters the scene, the consequence of which is a display of what was painful in the extreme. We have had the power of God acting in deliverance, but man alone is incapable even of a safe vow to Jehovah; and who could fail to foresee the bitter fruit of rashness here? Man is as weak and erring as God is mighty and good: these two things characterise the book from beginning to end. So in this rash vow says Jephthah, "it shall be that whatsoever," etc. The same word means whosoever. There is no difference as to form. I do not myself doubt that it was put in the broadest way. "It shall be that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me." He could, if he had reflected, hardly expect an ox or a sheep to walk out of the house. It was quite evident therefore that Jephthah was guilty of the greatest rashness in his vow. "Whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be Jehovah's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering." What came out we know too well. It was his daughter and I do not doubt that he, in his determined unbending spirit, fulfilled his vow.

All are aware there are a great many who try to explain the difficulty away or soften it down. They need not be at the trouble. Scripture does not in any way vouch for the immaculateness of those even who wrought in faith. It does not throw a veil, as man loves to do, over that which is uncomely and distressing in those that bear the name of the Lord; especially as the very object the Spirit of God has here in view is to show the frightful results of a vow so little weighed before God, not at all drawn from His guidance. On the other hand, is there not real beauty in the obscurity in which Scripture treats a matter so painful? We know that men make it a question for ingenious minds to speculate on. The spiritual man understands how it was. As the vow was without God, so an issue was permitted most offensive to the Holy Spirit. We can easily therefore comprehend how the holy wisdom of Scripture avoids details on a fact so contrary to the mind of God, as a man dealing thus with a human being, yea, with his own daughter. It seems to me then that the reserve of the Holy Spirit is as strikingly according to God as the rashness of Jephthah is a solemn warning to man.

After this we find how the pride of the men of Ephraim takes fire at a person of such an origin as Jephthah, spite of the signal deliverance by his means for Israel, so that they come forth to fight. (Judges 12:1-15) Jephthah might little desire such a conflict; nevertheless, where do we see meekness, where patience? And be assured, brethren, that in an evil world patience is morally much beyond power. Thus we may find the most striking manifestations of power in men as disorderly as the Corinthian Christians; but the same persons are a plain proof that it is a far harder thing to do the will of the Lord, and harder still to suffer according to God, than to work any miracles whatever.

The truth of all we find in our Lord Jesus. He was the power of God and the wisdom of God; but what shall we say of His obedience on the one hand, and on the other of His patience? Others may have shown as mighty works, as great displays of power; nay, even the blessed Lord Jesus Himself said, "Greater works than these shall ye do." But where was there such devotedness in doing His Father's will? and where such a sufferer? Indeed, for Him to obey in such a world must have been suffering It could not be otherwise. As long as the world is under the usurped rule of the enemy of God, the path of obedience must always be one of suffering, and this, I may add, increasingly, as we see in Him. Jephthah knew little if anything of this; so the result was, that the Ephraimites, in their pride, meddled with this rude warrior, who dealt with them, we may be very sure, not more mildly than with his own daughter. He not only turned with the grossest insults on their speech, but fell on themselves, and slew at the passage of Jordan forty and two thousand men of one of the chief tribes of Israel. Such then was the bloody crisis at which a deliverer of Israel arrives in his unsparing resentment. Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon follow.

In the next chapter (Judges 13:1-25) we begin a new kind of instrument God raised up for His purpose; and in this case the state of the people was such that God severs him to Himself as a Nazarite. A stronger proof there could not be desired, that the people, as a whole, were far from God. In all ordinary cases a Nazarite was one who had taken a peculiar vow of separation to God, but lasting only for a short time. In the instance before us it was an extraordinary Nazariteship, stretching through the whole life. But what a Nazarite was Samson! Outwardly indeed he was separate. We have here one of the strangest and most humbling of histories recorded in Scripture, and withal singularly marking that very truth that we have so often ere this referred to: how little moral strength keeps pace with physical power as it wrought in and by Samson. Of all the deliverers that grace ever raised up, there was not one who for personal prowess was to be compared with Samson; but of all those, where was the man who fell so habitually below even that which would have disgraced an ordinary Israelite? Yet was he a Nazarite from his mother's womb! It seems therefore that the two extremes of moral weakness and of outward strength find each its height in this extraordinary character.

But we must look a little into the great principles of divine truth that meet us in weighing the history of Samson. His very birth was peculiar, and the circumstances too before it; for there never had been as yet a time when Israel had been so enslaved; and undoubtedly the deliverer, as we have traced regularly hitherto, so here again to the last, is seen to be according to the estate of the people, with whatever might or success God might be pleased to clothe him. "And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of Jehovah; and Jehovah delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years." It was a long time, we might have justly thought, in the days of Gideon, to have known seven years' subjection; but we hear of a far longer period in the case of the Philistines, the hottest and most pertinacious of the hostile neighbours of Israel, and so much the more galling as being within their border. For forty years the people groaned under their hard mastery. We shall find too that Samson's feats of power, great as they were, in no way broke the neck of Philistine oppression. For on the contrary after Samson's days, the sufferings of the children of Israel reached even a higher degree than they had ever attained under Samson or before.

However this may have been, we may notice first the quarter whence deliverance was to come: "There was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites." It was ordered of God that it should spring from that tribe, which was more than any other marked, not merely by a weakness that portended danger to themselves, as we shall see, but by a moral laxity which would finally afford a suited subject, as indeed from the beginning it had been intimated prophetically in the last words of their father Jacob a-dying, for the fatal result of departure and apostasy from God. Of this tribe Samson was born.

The circumstances also were highly remarkable. "His wife was barren, and bare not. And the angel of Jehovah appeared unto the woman" with the promise that a child should be born, at the same time enjoining that she was to drink no wine nor strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing; and that, when the child was born, no razor was to come upon his head. "For the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines."

There was another whom God would employ at a later date to destroy the power of the Philistines, a man of another spirit, and of a hand very different from Samson's. I speak of course of David, the son of Jesse. Whatever might be wrought now was but the beginning of deliverance for Israel. God would magnify His power, but only as a witness now and then; nothing more. Anything like full deliverance must await that day, itself a type of the day of Jehovah.

The woman then tells her husband of the angel's visit, and they both entreat Jehovah, Manoah particularly, that the man of God might be sent again. Jehovah listens, and His angel appears to the woman, who summons her husband, when both see the angel as he repeats his message with its solemn injunction. Separateness from what was allowed to an Israelite was not only commanded but made life-long in Samson's case, as I cannot but believe it significant of what was due to God in consequence of the state in which the people of God then lay.

In due time the child was born, "and the Spirit of Jehovah began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol." His chequered history follows. "And Samson went down to Timnath, and saw a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines, and he came up, and told his father and his mother, and said, I have seen a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines: now therefore get her for me to wife" (Judges 14:1-20). His father and mother remonstrate in vain. ''Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?" Samson was just as self-willed as he was strong. "And Samson said unto his father, Get her for me; for she pleaseth me well. But his father and his mother knew not that it was of Jehovah, that he sought an occasion against the Philistines."

Now that the occasion calls for it, one may notice by the way the transparent boldness of Scripture, as wonderfully instructive as the reserve we have already remarked. If man had the writing of the story, would he have dared to speak out thus plainly? I doubt that any believer, without inspiration, would have felt it desirable to write that verse, and many more, as God has done it. If unveiling the fact at all, he would have apologized for it, denounced its evil to clear himself, spoken much perhaps of God's permitting and overruling. Now I am far from denying that it is right for us to feel the pain and shame of Samson's ways. But there is one thing that God's Spirit always assumes the perfect goodness and the unswerving holiness of God. And this, beyond all doubt or fear, we are entitled always to keep before our hearts in reading the Bible.

Never then let the breath of suspicion enter your soul. Invariably, when you listen to the written word of God, range yourself on His side. You will never understand the Bible otherwise. You may be tried; but be assured that you will be helped out of the trial. The day may come when nobody appears to lend you a helping hand. What is to become of you then? Once allow your soul to be sullied by judging those living oracles, and real faith in the Bible is gone as far as you are concerned. If I do not trust it in everything, I can trust it in nothing.

So dangerous is apt to be the reaction against one ever so honest; the more you have trusted, when you begin to doubt, the worse it is apt to be, even with poor erring man, who knows not what a serious thing it is. Nor ought anyone to allow a suspicion until he has the certainty of that which can be accounted for in no way save by guilt. And this, I need scarce say, is still more due on the score of brotherly relation and divine love, not merely on the ground of that which we might expect for our own souls.

But when God and His word are in question, it ought to be a simple matter for a child of God. How often it is ourselves who make the difficulties of which the enemy greedily avails himself against our own souls and His glory! For objections against scripture are always the creation of unbelief. Difficulties, where they exist for us, would only exercise faith in God. The word of God is always in itself not only right, but fraught with light. It makes wise the simple; it enlightens the eyes. "The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple."

Undoubtedly there are many things in scripture of which we are ignorant; but then we are not entitled to interpret the word of God by ourselves. There is such a thing as to be taught of God. The Holy Ghost is given for this as for other purposes. It may often be doubtless that we are obliged to wait, and a wholesome thing too for our souls it should be. It is well sometimes for all those who teach that they should be obliged to learn; well that they should be forced to feel that they do not know; an excellent moral lesson that they should confess it not only be conscious of it, but own it; for indeed the necessary claim of scripture is that it be confided in as the word of God, though it does not thence follow that we are competent to explain all. By the Holy Spirit only can we enter in and enjoy.

It is not here meant that there is any special difficulty in that which has been the occasion of these general remarks; still less is it implied that he who speaks makes any pretension to know anything as he ought to know, more than those he sees around him. If through the unction from the Holy One we know all, it is equally true that we all are but learners.

Again, it is not of course any attainment of mine that leads me to speak as I have done now. If I have spoken strongly, it is only, I trust, what becomes every believer. I have taken no ground beyond your own, my brethren; but surely this is a ground that calls you to assert the very same inestimable privilege that I boast as by grace a man of faith. It is not the vanity of setting up oneself as possessed of exclusive powers or special means of attaining or explaining anything; for I should distrust anyone who pretended to anything of the sort, no matter who or where he might be. But that which does good to every saint and to every soul is the unqualified confidence in God and His word, which, if it does not reproduce itself in hearts purified by faith, at least deals with the consciences of all others till utterly blinded by Satan. Nor are you thus called to believe anything like an extravagance, though it surely would be so if the Bible were a human book, and so to be treated like any other, which after all even infidels do not: witness their occupation with it and zeal against it. Who troubles himself with the Koran or the Shastres, save their votaries?

But scripture claims always to be the word of God never the word of Isaiah or Ezekiel, of Peter or Paul (1 Corinthians 14:37; 2 Peter 3:15-16); for, whatever the instrument may be, it is as truly God's word as if the Holy Ghost had written it without a single instrumental means. If this be submitted to (and you might more consistently reject the Bible altogether, if you do not submit), one sees the hollowness and falsehood of sitting in judgment upon it: for who can question that to doubt that which comes directly from God Himself would be to take the place, not merely of an unbeliever, but of a blasphemer or an atheist? And if unbelief be probed home, it comes to this: it is a virtual denial of God's veracity, of His revelation, if not of His being.

But returning from this to the simple tale of Samson's life, I take it as the plain fact that God meant us to learn that He saw fit at that time to deliver by an unworthy instrument, by a man who showed how low he was, if only by the moral incongruity of an Israelitish Nazarite seeking a wife from the fiercest of Israel's uncircumcised enemies. The grossness of such conduct is left to tell its own tale; and yet God, by the man that was thus pursuing his own self-willed course, meant to overrule the occasion for His glory, snapping the more violently the ties which Samson's ungoverned passion and low thoughts induced him to form. The descent is great, when one bearing the name of the Lord slights His word and seeks a path of his own. If God permits him for a season to do his own will, what shame and pain he must reap ere long! Meanwhile the man, morally speaking, is ruined his testimony to His name being worse than lost. Even if God interfere and produce the direct opposite of the fleshly enjoyment which self-will had sought, it is in no way to the man's praise if God effects his purposes by his acts, spite of wrong and folly. Never indeed is good the fruit of man's will, but of God's. This only gains the day; for it alone is as wise and holy as it is good. I take it therefore, that in the present case there is nothing to stumble the simplest believer, though no doubt there may be to one who knows not God and His word. Alas! how many there are in these days of audacious free-thinking who are disposed to sit in judgment on His word, and give His revelation no credit for telling us the truth as it was and is.

Whatever then might be Samson's motives and conduct, it was the Holy One, as we are told, who prompted him against the aggressors of Israel. "It was of Jehovah, that he sought an occasion against the Philistines: for at that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel. Then went Samson down, and his father and his mother, to Timnath, and came to the vineyards of Timnath: and, behold, a young lion roared against him." Thus there was an arrest on the road. We know that the spirit of ease and self-indulgence readily finds a lion in the way can make one where none is; but here was a real lion that roared against the self-willed youth. "And the Spirit of Jehovah" to some minds a marvellous fact under the circumstances "came mightily upon him." It is the expression of the agent of divine power in no way the seal of redemption or the earnest of the inheritance, as we know Him dwelling in us now since the shedding of the blood of Jesus. It was the energy of His Spirit who thought of His people showing out by the way, as we have remarked, in that wayward man the fallen state to which they were reduced by their own sin, with the highest claims outwardly but morally in as low a condition as could then be conceived. "And the Spirit of Jehovah came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand."

Samson stands alone; of Israel none with him, as with the others before him. There was the plainest proof of what God could be, even where there was but one man to work by; but this very fact showed to what a depth was Israel now sunk. It was bad enough when Gideon had only three hundred that God would employ. What was it when there was only one, and such an one as Samson? In order to have communion, we must have some good which is shared together. There was, there could be, none any longer as Israel was.

What a picture of the true state of things! Even his father and mother knew nothing about their son's movements. Everything was out of course. Scanty honour paid he to his parents, but ardently gave himself up to the pursuance of his own plans. Yet was God behind and above all; and God, deigning to employ even such a man, at such a time, and under such circumstances, to accomplish, or at least to begin, the deliverance of His people.

Samson was afterwards about to put a riddle to the Philistines from this lion. But did he heed the lesson conveyed in the fact himself? Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Treat Satan as Satan when he betrays himself; and what can he do against the name of the Lord? Yet is the victory won by God's Spirit, without anything in the hand; but it is by direct antagonism to the enemy, not by guilty connection with his instruments. Grave truth! Ah! why did not the strong man learn wisdom in the fear of Jehovah, as he again visited the place where his first lesson was given? His victories had then been as holy as they were brilliant; for he surely needed not to have defiled his Nazariteship by an unholy marriage in order to have punished the Philistines.

Alas! we next hear of Samson's visit to the Philistine woman who pleased him well: no small sin for an Israelite, as it is worse for a Christian, to marry one of the world. "And after a time he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the carcase of the lion: and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion. And he took thereof in his hands, and went on eating, and came to his father and mother, and he gave them, and they did eat: but he told not them that he had taken the honey out of the carcase of the lion. So his father went down unto the women: and Samson made there a feast; for so used the young men to do." Then follows the story of his companions and the riddle a riddle which he was clever enough to put, but which he had little faith to understand or appropriate himself. Is it not evident that Samson feebly knew what God was teaching him by the lion which he slew, and by the lion's carcase which he found with the honey in it? Carried away by his uncurbed feelings (to whatever end God might turn all, for He always governs), he was mighty to act; but as to intelligence, little more than an unconscious instrument. yet did he propose a most instructive riddle, which set forth justly the then condition of the people of God.

In that image we have the enemy in great power, but God infinitely above him, able as well as seeing fit to use the least worthy vessel of His power, and out of the slain enemy to furnish the sweetest refreshment. How triumphantly has it been done in Christ our Lord, but in how different a way! Absolutely immaculate Himself, He was made sin for us, that we might become God's righteousness in Him who for us by death annulled him that had the power of death, and gave us out of that defeat our unfailing comfort. Bright contrast between Samson and the man that overthrew Satan on that cross where He Himself reached the very climax of weakness! For He won by no external strength but by suffering. He was crucified in weakness, but rose in the power of God; but there, instead of folly, instead of shame, instead of unhallowed alliance with the enemies of God, how does unsullied perfection shine in Him of whom we boast! The result in the type alas! is that, whatever might be the victory over the lion and whatever the sweetness of the honey, the effort to connect himself with the woman of Timnath turns out no small trouble to the man of might, whose anger was kindled at the treachery which sold his riddle, and, when his wife was given to the companion he had used as his friend, issued in such vexation for the Philistines as is known to us all. (Judges 15:4-5)

This again leads to a bitter vengeance of the Philistines on those of Timnath who had served him so ill the very fate befalling them at last, to escape which at first the woman had lent herself to the basest treachery. (Compare Judges 14:15 with Judges 15:6.) Now it was that God wrought for His glory. He extricated failing Samson from the direct consequences of his sinful association; but He dealt retributively with treachery by the hands of their own people. For "the righteous Lord loveth righteousness"; and in its measure it is very striking to see the way in which this came out even in the case of the worldly uncircumcised enemy. We can all understand righteousness where the ground is clearly sanctioned of God; but is it not also strengthening to our hearts to find that, even where all was dark and faulty, God knows how to give effect to His principles? He has no doubt secrets of grace above all difficulties and wrongs: of this we cannot doubt for a moment; and indeed we have abundant proofs of it here. The earth is destined to be the theatre where God will display righteousness reigning; but even now, while things are out of course, and His enemy is in power, He holds to His own character, owning and using all He can.

After this we see the Philistines the object of the severest chastisement from Samson, who smote "them hip and thigh with a great slaughter, and went down and dwelt at the top of the rock Etam." There he encounters a new trial, which sets before us the state of Israel in the most painful light. Is it not increasingly true that we can go no lower, whether we look at the people of God or the last deliverer in the book of Judges? Is it possible to conceive a conjuncture of its kind more humiliating? Not till they desired a king like the nations. But alas! even when God gave them one in a man after His own heart, we then trace greater abominations under the lines either of those who broke off in self-will or of those who turned the line of promise to nothing but corruption. We are arrived at the end of this sad history. Picture in imagination, if you can, how God could descend more to meet a degraded people; yet was it just then that the outward exploits against the foe were so brilliant. But if God's people have got into subjection to the world, none are so heartless about, if not bitter against, him who breaks fully with the enemy.

Samson is now absolutely isolated on the rock Etam. There is not a man that sympathizes with him, not even in Judah; yet Judah, we know, was the royal tribe in the purpose of God from the beginning, as in fact its type followed in David. This makes their behaviour the more remarkable here. "Then the Philistines went up, and pitched in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. And the men of Judah said, Why are ye come up against us? And they answered, To bind Samson are we come up, to do to him as he hath done to us. Then three thousand men of Judah went to the top of the rock Etam, and said to Samson, Knowest thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us?" Judah! is this the tribe for the praise of Jehovah? is this the tribe that men praise? Could, at the beck of the Philistine, there be found at once three thousand men so willing and prompt to betray the champion of Israel? three thousand men of Judah! One could understand three thousand men of the Philistines; but to what a deplorable pass in Israel were things come, when three thousand men of the worthiest tribe were thus obedient to the Philistines, and joined against the strong deliverer to hand him over, bound a prisoner, to the tender mercies of those that hated him and despised them! Is it they who say to Samson, "Knowest thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us?" Not only were they in slavery, but content to be slaves, yea, traitors. Could a people descend lower in human things?

Alas! it is no new thing to faith; Jesus knew it to the bottom. It was His brethren who sought to lay hold on Him as beside Himself, His brethren who did not believe on Him. It was not for their lives, but for the truth He confessed, that His own people would have Him die.

"What is this that thou hast done unto us? And he said unto them, As they did unto me, so have I done unto them." There is little moral elevation in Samson, little in any way to command respect or love. "As they did unto me, so have I done unto them." We see a man, not without faith indeed (Hebrews 11:32), though his confidence was largely in the strength with which God had invested him, rather than in Him who would yet prove Himself the sole source of it; a man who was roused by personal affront and desire of vengeance, not by a solemn duty; a man who slowly and weakly wakes up to any sense of his mission, who is ever too ready to sink down again into the lowest indulgence of fallen nature among the enemy. In short Samson appears to me a man with as little, or as low, an appreciation of what it was to fight the battles of the Lord, as God had been pleased to use in any epoch throughout inspired history. "And they said unto him, We are come down to bind thee, that we may deliver thee into the hand of the Philistines. And Samson said unto them, Swear unto me, that ye will not fall upon me yourselves." What an opinion he had of them! And as naturally as possible too they take it. They have no shame nor resentment on their part at this accusation of treachery. Their moral condition indeed was the very lowest, below nature itself, towards their deliverer. "And they spake unto him, saying, No; but we will bind thee fast, and deliver thee into their hand: but surely we will not kill thee. And they bound him with two new cords, and brought him up from the rock. And when he came unto Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him: and the Spirit of Jehovah came mightily upon him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands. And he found a new jawbone of an ass and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men."

Nor was this the only intervention of the Lord, but personal succour follows at His hand. For "it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramathlehi. And he was sore athirst, and called on Jehovah, and said, Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised? But God clave an hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water thereout; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: wherefore he called the name thereof En-hakkore, which is in Lehi unto this day." We have seen before, from the earlier part of the book, the remarkable manner in which, either personally or in the weapons that were employed, God was acting mysteriously at this period of Israel's history. To those who discern what a witness it is that the people were far gone from Him here the principle reappears in all its strength the isolation of the man himself, the circumstances that had brought about the rupture with the foe, the mind of Judah, if not treacherous to the Israelite, cowering before the uncircumcised, and now the strangest of weapons for war that Samson uses against them the jawbone of an ass.

Never was there failure of divine power with Samson against the foe; but moreover the pitifulness of Jehovah is marked towards His poor servant (for did He disdain when the thirsty man called on Himself, as he cried to God in his distress?). Bad as were the features we have seen, we have to see even worse still; yet he was heard and answered when he called.

We do not find in Samson the generous disinterestedness of grace that could suffer affliction with the people of God, and is willing to be a sacrifice upon that faith. We have nothing like a Moses in Samson. Not without faith, he was a combatant ready to fight the Philistines at any odds. No doubt it was a wonderful display of physical force on the one hand; as on the other those he vanquished were the unrelenting enemies of God's people. Still the overt thing to Samson seems to have been that they were his enemies. This certainly stimulated him though I am far from insinuating no better underneath. But the good was hard to reach or even to discern, the evil abundant and obvious, "And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years." It appears to me that the Spirit of God brings in this little notice of his judging Israel here in order to show that this is the normal close of his history. Nor should we wonder at it. Not that God did not work mightily afterwards, and even more in his death than in his life. But it need surprise none that the proper history of this judge terminates according to the mind of God here; for what has the Lord to tell in the next chapter? We have seen how grace overruled, broke up an evil association before it was consummated, and gave him righteous ground to take vengeance on the Philistines, followed by his judging Israel for twenty years.

"Then went Samson to Gaza, and saw there an harlot;" yet here, though fallen lower than ever, we find power put forth under these deplorable circumstances. "And they compassed him in, and laid wait for him all night in the gate of the city, and were quiet all the night, saying, In the morning, when it is day, we shall kill him. And Samson lay till midnight, and arose at midnight, and took the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts, and went away with them, bar and all, and put them upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of an hill that is before Hebron." The man thus went forth in the confidence of his strength, and to outward appearance did things just to make the enemy feel what he could do, with as little exercise toward God as could well be found in one that feared Him.

But again, "And it came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah." And here we confront not simply the old offence repeated, and in the grossest form of fleshly corruption, but along with it an infatuation as extraordinary as his degradation. This indeed becomes distinctly the moral of the tale. Delilah sells herself to the Philistine lords to entangle the champion of Israel, now beguiled by his lusts: else the various efforts to seize him must have otherwise opened his eyes to her guile and their murderous malice. But the wages of transgressors are hard, and the guilty man falls under the strange woman's spell again and again. Such is the blinding power of sin; for was he ignorant of her vileness or of his own danger? But the crisis came; and we see that at last, pressed by the harlot's toils, he tells out the secret of Jehovah. On his unshorn locks hung his invincible might by divine will. There was but one thing really involved obedience. Alas! he fell, as did Adam at the beginning, and all since save one Christ. But how perfectly He stood, though tried as none ever was or could be but Himself! Do we know what a thing obedience is in God's eyes, even though it may be displayed in the simplest manner? It is the perfection of the creature, giving God His place, and man his own; it is the lowliest, and withal the morally highest place for one here below, as for the angels above. In Samson's case, tested in a seemingly little sign but a sign of entire subjection to God, and this in separation from all others, it was obedience; not so in our case, where we have the highest treasure in earthen vessels, but obedience in everything, and this formed and guided by the Spirit according to the written word, now set in the fullest light, because seen in the person, and ways, and work, and glory of Christ. It is no mere external sign for us who know the Lord Jesus. But the secret of the Lord in our case involves that which is most precious to God and man. We are sanctified both by the Father's word and by Christ glorified on high. But we are sanctified by the Spirit unto the obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus, and are called to obey, as the wife her husband. Therein are involved thus the very highest and deepest privileges that God could communicate to the souls of men on earth.

To Samson, as we see, it was far different. His secret was to keep his hair uncut, with all strength annexed to it. But if it was his hidden power, it acted also as a test; and now the enemy possessed it, disclosed to a harlot, who had wrung it for gold from his foolish heart. Whatever might have been his low state through unchecked animal nature, whatever his delinquencies before, so long as he kept his secret with God, strength never failed him from God, be the strain what it might. Jehovah at least was could not but be true to the secret. But now, as we know, the one whom he had made partner of his sin wheedled it from him that she might sell it to the Philistines.

Degraded to the utmost, Samson becomes their sport as well as their slave. But God was about to magnify Himself and His own ways. "And it came to pass when their hearts were merry that they said, Call for Samson, that he may make us sport. And they called for Samson out of the prison house; and he made them sport: and they set him between the pillars. And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand, Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth, that I may lean upon them. Now the house was full of men and women; and all the lords of the Philistines were there; and there were upon the roof about three thousand men and women, that beheld while Samson made sport. And Samson called unto Jehovah, and said, O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes." Again we see the man, and his character in its weakness is before us, even at that solemn moment.

I am far from doubting that God wrought in him whom He had made the champion of His people. Let no man question that Samson was in prison or that he lost his eyes for nothing. I feel pretty assured that he saw clearer morally without them than he had seen in any sense with them. He had far too often made a wretched use of them in times that were past; and even now, in spite of the work of God in his soul, was there nothing weightier, was there nothing deeper, was there nothing to lament over more than the loss of those two eyes? It was Samson feeling for himself, yet not unpitied of the Lord; for there was One above Samson Who heard. And this is the great point for us that we can and ought to count on. Let us not forget that we have got a nature exempt from nothing we deplore in Samson, and the person that does not believe it may live to prove it, especially if a believer, who should know himself better; whilst he who does take it home to his soul is thereby enabled to judge himself by the Spirit before God.

But what a God we have to do with, as Samson had! and how He magnified Himself in that hour of supreme chagrin and of his deep agony, when he was made to sport before those uncircumcised haters of Israel, and the witness, as they fondly hoped, of their idol's triumph over Jehovah. Samson felt it easier to die for His name than to live thus in Philistia. But God reserved great things for his death. What a figure of, but contrast with, His death who only pursued to that final point His absolute devotedness to the will of God, not doing it only but suffering it to the uttermost, and thus righteously by His death securing what no living obedience could have touched!

Nevertheless, I have little doubt that, though the dying hour of Samson brought more honour to God than all his life, its manner was in itself a chastening in its character; and in this, too, may one discern a representation of the condition to which Israel had come similar to what was noticed in the life and person of Samson. For what can be more humiliating than that one's death should be more important than one's life? Such was the point to which things had come (an inglorious one it was for those concerned), that the best thing for Israel and Judah, the best thing for God's glory and for Samson himself, was that he should die. "And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood, and on which it was borne up, of the one with his right hand, and of the other with his left. And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life." And his brethren, as we find, came up, took him away, and buried him. "He judged Israel twenty years," is the repetition of the word at this point.

The end of the book and it is important to make this remark consists of an appendix. It is in no way a carrying forward of the history. We have come to the close as far as the sequence of persons and of events is concerned. We could not go lower than Samson; but we have what was. exceedingly necessary for us to learn the fact that the dismally wretched condition that we have seen throughout all the Judges was true even from early days; and therefore the Spirit of God giving us this as a sort of supplement, or a conclusion, but with such marks of time as show that it was of a comparatively early date (and this can be proved before we have done with the book), is, I think, of considerable interest and importance. I presume that the reason why these incidents are not given before in the order of time may have been that, if inserted earlier, it would have completely interrupted the course of the history, and the main instruction of the book of Judges. It is only another proof of what we have always to assume in reading the Bible that not only the things given are divine, but that the arrangement, even when they look somewhat disorderly, is just as divine as the communication itself. There is not a single jot in the Scriptures that God has written or ordered which is not worthy of Himself; nor is there the least possibility of improving either.

Here then we have certain facts, apart from the historic course, introduced in these words: "There was a man of mount Ephraim." The great point of the preface is that "in those days there was no king in Israel" the opening words of Judges 18:1-31. "And in those days the tribe of the Danites." It is the Danites again; only the account of Samson is chronologically at the close, whereas the new tale, as we have remarked, was comparatively early.

There was then "a man of mount Ephraim whose name was Micah," who, not satisfied with carrying out the impiety of his mother in making a graven and a molten image of silver dedicated to Jehovah, for this purpose gets a Levite to be consecrated as his priest. What avails the show of Jehovah's name, or form of consecrating a Levite to be priest? Ceremony is easy and attractive to the flesh, and there may be the more, as there usually is, where there is least power or reality. It is at least certain that the whole business was heinously evil, and none the less because Micah settles down with the persuasion, "Now know I that Jehovah will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest" (ver. 13).

Judges 18:1-31 shows that the moral condition, especially of the priest-Levite, was as bad as the religious state. His heart was glad of a better living and of a larger sphere (verses 19, 20), as he goes off from the house of Micah with the lawless children of Dan to blot out Laish with fire and sword, and call their new city after their own name, where the graven image was set up, and a succession that failed not till the day of the captivity of the land; for error takes root faster, and bears fruit more luxuriantly as well as permanently than the truth.* Yet there is little reason to suppose that the exile of the land means Shalmaneser's, but rather under the Philistines; for it was merely all the time the house of God was in Shiloh. There being no king is in contrast with other lands which had kings, as Israel themselves subsequently. (Compare Psalms 78:60-61) Such are the prominent points of instruction in this appendix. The first and gravest departure is that Jehovah could be so forgotten and so shamelessly dishonoured as to set up in His name a rival; and the more seriously it was set about, so much the worse. It was flying in the face of His law and word to have an idol; it was adding profane insult to enter on its worship with such ceremony as to get a Levite consecrated priest in order to invest it with solemnity. We have seen the political confusion: here is the religious aspect of Israel so soon after entering the holy land!

* It is possible that verse 30 may be one of those later additions which Ezra or one of the prophets was inspired to make in putting together at a subsequent epoch the books of Scripture. If this be so, the captivity might be the Assyrian, and not that of the Philistines. But verse 30 seems adverse to this view. There is no difficulty in principle either way.

Is it then a matter of wonder that men went wrong in early days under the Christian profession? The danger was incomparably greater where the trial was to stand to the truth fully revealed and to walk in the Spirit, and not subjection to commandments and ritual observances. The ruin of Christianity was when two systems so distinct got confounded. And be assured that if the people of God fail in their responsibility to God, they are not to be trusted elsewhere. I am not speaking of what men of the world may be, for they may be conscientious and honourable in their own way; but it is different with God's people. Never trust those that bear the Lord's name, if they are false to Him. The case before us, in Judges 17:1-13; Judges 18:1-31, is one where God was openly, deliberately, and systematically dishonoured.

But there follows a second tale of excessive atrocity in a moral way, which begins in Judges 19:1-30. in terms expressly similar to the beginning ofJudges 18:1-31; Judges 18:1-31: "And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in Israel, that there was a certain Levite sojourning on the side of mount Ephraim, who took to him a concubine out of Beth-lehem-judah." The fact which comes out first is that Gibeah of Benjamin was scarce better than Sodom or Gomorrah, on which Jehovah rained fire and brimstone for their uncleanness. I need not dwell on the deplorable details. Suffice it to say that even in such a state the immediate feeling of the common conscience in Israel (roused, it is true, by an awful appeal to the twelve tribes) could not but reply that "there was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day: consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds." So it was. "Then all the children of Israel went out, and the congregation was gathered together as one man."

Be it remarked, that what drew out their unanimous condemnation was not an outrage done to God's name. Where was the just horror at the idolatry of Micah? Contrariwise it was courted and continued down to the captivity. Men then, as now, feel not for a lie or a libel of God; they are sensitive when their own rights are touched. But He knows how to wake them up from such disgraceful insensibility. Therefore does the second part of the appendix (Judges 19:1-30; Judges 21:1-25) find a place directly afterwards. And we see that those who cared not for the injured name of Jehovah have all their feelings drawn out when man was wronged. But God takes means to make them feel what such a state comes to. O what a mercy it is to have God to take care of our walk! But, in order for us to know the sweetness of that care, it becomes us to care for Him, His name and glory. Not as if He could not care for His own; but our strength, comfort, and blessing are in His name. In Him we may confide, who loves us to the end. Should we not then rejoice in the Lord? The truest deliverance from self is in that work where all was judged, and evil put away for ever. Then can we joy in Him, and it is our strength for all service, and is the spring of worship. There is nothing good without His name.

Alas! how the very thought of Jehovah's name seems lost at this time among the children of Israel. Their keenest feelings were in favour of the Levite and his concubine, wounded to the quick by the abominations of the men of Gibeah; and therefore, whatever of human affection may be in evidence, we certainly learn how little faith Jehovah could then find in the land of Israel. As man then was so prominent before their minds, so also their revenge was merciless to the bitter end. God was in none of their thoughts. They spread abroad the revolting tale; they readily respond to the call for their advice and counsel. The result is that "the people rose as one man, saying, We will not any of us go to his tent, neither will we any of us turn into his house. But now this shall be the thing which we will do to Gibeah; we will go up by lot against it; and we will take ten men of an hundred throughout all the tribes of Israel, and an hundred of a thousand, and a thousand out of ten thousand, to fetch victual for the people, that they may do, when they come to Gibeah of Benjamin, according to all the folly that they have wrought in Israel. So all the men of Israel were gathered against the city, knit together as one man. And the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, What wickedness is this that is done among you? Now therefore deliver us the men, the children of Belial, which are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death, and put away evil from Israel. But the children of Benjamin would not hearken to the voice of their brethren the children of Israel: but the children of Benjamin gathered themselves together out of the cities unto Gibeah, to go out to battle against the children of Israel."

Undoubtedly the iniquity was beyond measure on the part of the men of Benjamin, and an utter disgrace to God or even to Israel. But there can be no question that the course taken by the men of Israel was calculated to increase the difficulty a thousand-fold. It was purely human. Where was their humiliation and grief before the Lord? They decide on matters first, and the case becomes only another instance of man's folly in dealing with evil. Having decided out of their own heads, they then turn to God, and ask Him to bless them in their efforts to exterminate Benjamin. Thus, after having made all their arrangements, "the children of Israel arose and went up to the house of God, and asked counsel of God, and said, Which of us shall go up first?" Is not this an instructive as well as striking fact? Still more is what follows; for God fails not to deal with us on our own ground. According to our folly He may answer us, as well as withhold an answer. But in the end He acts in His own way, which will ever be what we little expect.

Here God had to rebuke the people, even when morally right in the main, until the wrong their state and haste mixed up with it was purged out. In judgment He must have righteousness; but He remembers mercy. It is an instance of the same thing that we have often seen before in other forms. Thus He bids the men of Judah go; but the men of Judah were shamefully beaten, and were forced to weep before Jehovah. This, at least, was right. "Then all the children of Israel, and all the people, went up and wept before Jehovah until even, and asked counsel of Jehovah. saying, Shall I go up again to battle against the children of Benjamin, my brother?" another point, still more important, going along with it. When we really are found in sorrow, and in circumstances that call for sorrow, before Jehovah, the heart is open to feel for the wrong-doer. They were filled with thoughts of destruction against Benjamin, and the remembrance that he was their brother had not even entered their minds before.

Now, broken down before God who had ordered their defeat, they are made to feel for their brother, guilty as he was, no doubt. Still this became their relationship, yet the children of Israel have the answer from Jehovah, "Go up against him." Nevertheless they were beaten the next day; for they must be disciplined before the Lord before He could use them to deal with their brother. "Benjamin went forth against them the second day, and destroyed down to the ground of the children of Israel again eighteen thousand men; all these drew the sword. Then all the children of Israel, and all the people, went up, and came unto the house of God, and wept, and sat there before Jehovah, and fasted that day until even, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before Jehovah. And the children of Israel enquired of Jehovah, for the ark of the covenant of God was there in those days."

Here is the proof of the time when all this occurred. It has been already said to have been an early fact in the history of the "Judges," and not chronologically near the close of the book. The evidence is stated here very clearly. Phinehas, we know, was alive during the days of the wilderness, being the leader against Midian before Moses died, and one of those that crossed the Jordan. Yet he is still alive when the tragic deed was done which had nearly uprooted the tribe of Benjamin in its results. "And Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, stood before it in those days, saying, Shall I yet again go out to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother, or shall I cease? And Jehovah said, Go up; for tomorrow I will deliver them into thine hand." They had been at length brought down to their right place before God; they had taken the shame to themselves; the Lord had chastised them, and they had needed and deserved it righteously. Now they could deal with guilty Benjamin. We are not in a position to deal with another until God has dealt with that which is contrary to His name in our own soul; and so it was that the men of Benjamin were utterly smitten and well-nigh exterminated.

The last chapter of the book shows us the ways and means in which their hearts were drawn out, in order to repair the dismal gap which divine judgment had wrought in Benjamin, and indeed in Israel.