Wednesday Bible Study: Picking through Judges part 8

 

I had one big hangup in starting the story of Samson, the almost super-heroic, fallen judge.  It came from this passage:

Jdg 14:3  But his father and mother said to him, "Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives, or among all our people, that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?" But Samson said to his father, "Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes."
Jdg 14:4  His father and mother did not know that it was from the LORD, for he was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines. At that time the Philistines ruled over Israel.

I said to myself, "Where is the line between God using sin to work His will, and CAUSING it?"  Was Samson a sinner that blundered into God's will, or was he a victim of sin who still was faithful to God and used mightily?  And after a week of praying, debate, and watching my own life and habits, I saw where the line lay- in the Russia of the early twentieth century.

Excuse me?

Consider:  In those days, it was known as Holy Russia for its devotion to the Orthodox Church- but, like Israel in Samson's time, it was anything but holy.  It was full of internal worms- maggots like Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky.  It had an external enemy, like the Philistines, in the "Germanophile" party that sat at the highest seats of government, including the Empress Alexandria.  Where Israel  "...in those days there was no king in Israel; Everyone did what was right in his own eyes", Russia's Czar- Nicholas II- was so weak, so pushed by every tide, wanting less to govern and more to be the nation's "Little Father", it was a very similar situation.  And for something to be an opposite, it has to be equal in all respects except direction.

 

Meet Samson's opposite, Grigori Rasputin.

Hear me out.  Both men were, apparently, called by a supernatural force; both men claimed to serve God.  Both men were granted at times supernatural power.  Where Samson had phenomenal strength, Rasputin held sway over people in an almost hypnotic way, had incredible resistance to injury, and was the only one able, with a word, to save the young czarevich Alexi from his bouts of hemophilia.  But now, look at the opposites.

Where Rasputin had an undeniable control over women (despite, it is said, his anything to do anything about it), women had an undeniable control over Samson.  Where Samson would willingly go to his own death to serve the Lord, Rasputin had to be poisoned, stabbed, shot repeatedly, beaten with sticks, put in a sack and dumped into a freezing river (all in the same night!) to kill him.  Where Rasputin's greatest ally was a woman who was ruling over her husband, Samson's worst enemy were the men ruling over his women.  Where we know Samson's story from his conception, "...according to historian Douglas Smith, Rasputin's youth and early adulthood are "a black hole about which we know almost nothing" (Wiki).  And while Samson was to save his nation, Rasputin was a significant cause of the destruction of his.

But the biggest difference is the one that answered my question.  Rasputin's philosophy was, as I read recently from a source I don't quite remember, "Sin, that you may obtain grace", totally ignoring the words of Paul:

Rom 6:1  What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?
Rom 6:2  By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Samson, however, continually received filling by the Spirit of God, so that even as he stumbled, God provided him a victory.  You see, there is a difference between a willful sin and a weakness.  And a weakness, as I mentioned in a way in the week's Better Part, is like an attack, or a natural disaster; within it lies an opportunity to learn God's will.  And when we learn that, we are just as strong as Samson.

But now, let's try to set the stage for what we can learn from Samson.  Once again, Israel had fallen away from God.  Strangely enough, there is no mention in Judges 13 of "the people cried out", just that they were in the midst of a 40-year domination from an enemy they seemingly couldn't shake- the Philistines.  Nor did God speak to the people first, just one woman:

Jdg 13:2  There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah. And his wife was barren and had no children.
Jdg 13:3  And the angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her, "Behold, you are barren and have not borne children, but you shall conceive and bear a son.
Jdg 13:4  Therefore be careful and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean,
Jdg 13:5  for behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines."

 

Unpacking here, we note, "no razor, no alcohol"- two of the three restrictions when one took a Nazrite vow.  But this child wasn't going to be like the Nazrites prescribed by Moses, who chose it for a period as adults, but from his very birth, all through his life.  Note also that the third restriction- to not touch dead bodies- is absent, which will come into play later.  This might have been why Manoah himself wanted a hearing:

Jdg 13:8  Then Manoah prayed to the LORD and said, "O Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come again to us and teach us what we are to do with the child who will be born."
Jdg 13:9  And God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field. But Manoah her husband was not with her.
Jdg 13:10  So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, "Behold, the man who came to me the other day has appeared to me."
Jdg 13:11  And Manoah arose and went after his wife and came to the man and said to him, "Are you the man who spoke to this woman?" And he said, "I am."
Jdg 13:12  And Manoah said, "Now when your words come true, what is to be the child's manner of life, and what is his mission?"
Jdg 13:13  And the angel of the LORD said to Manoah, "Of all that I said to the woman let her be careful.
Jdg 13:14  She may not eat of anything that comes from the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, or eat any unclean thing. All that I commanded her let her observe."

Another thing I need to point out- that part in v 5 about "He shall BEGIN to save Israel".  This reminds us of two things- in the previous 40 years, it doesn't seem Israel had done anything to divest themselves of Philistine domination, and that it was a process that would only start with Samson.  It would take another of the Lord's Annointed- David- to finish that.

And here I'll end with what may be the biggest lesson from Samson- God's way of working.  Say Samson didn't have the Achilles' Heel of women.  He may well have stayed in Dan, married a "nice Jewish girl", and settled down.  It was only through his weakness that God drove him to the deeds he did- which were the Lord's purpose.  And like all other lessons in the Bible, it doesn't just show up in one place:

2Co 12:8  Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.
2Co 12:9  But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
2Co 12:10  For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.