“A Contradicted Man, Samson I Am”
Part Two
“Samson went down to Timnah, and at Timnah he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines. Then he came up and told his father and mother, “I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah. Now get her for me as my wife.” 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.” Judges 14:1-3 (ESV)
So I Google the name “Dagon” and then surfed over to Wikipedia and research how many people worship this Pagan god. The account that sticks out the most, however, is in 1 Samuel 5:2-7. The Philistines capture the Ark of Yahweh and the following morning their silly statue of “Dagon the fish god” is lying face down before the Ark.
So this tidbit of information has me wondering why on earth Samson wants to marry a woman whose people worship a fish rather than the Creator of the fish, knowing that he is under the Nazirite vow and that his parents had an encounter with the angel of the Lord, but God has a bigger plan against the Philistines. So apparently there was a great festival in “Timhath” that Flavius Josephus recorded and Samson sees a damsel…who like Samson’s mother will remain nameless and Samson says to his parents, “Now get her for me as my wife.”I can imagine Samson’s mother just saying, “Why can’t you just marry a good Jewish girl from the neighborhood?”
Now in the recordings of Josephus there seems to be a going back and forth that Samson and his parents are doing. Samson is continually visiting with this damsel’s parents when he encounters the Biblical story of the meeting with the infamous loin.
Both accounts have Samson killing the loin with both hands and then returning to the carcass of the beast and reaching in to take out honey that a swarm of bees has produced there. Now I am going to take a roadside view here for a moment. He kills this loin and then goes back to its dead body and basically defiles himself with it if I run this through the Nazirite Vow.
I find no mention of Samson going to what would have been the Tabernacle at this time and making the necessary sacrifices to bring him back into alignment with God. Now I am sure that his parents have told him about the life he is suppose to lead but he does not tell his parents where the honey, which he has just shared with them, came from. Hmm, here lies contradiction in full color.
When Samson poses the riddle, “Out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong came something sweet” to the Philistine men it is no surprise that, unless you were Samson (who is halfway confessing the wrong he has done and is the only one that knows the answer), those who seek to gain an advantage over him would find a way to manipulate getting the answer.
So since he is married to a Philistine girl why not go to one of their own and get her to use her position as Samson’s wife to obtain the answer to the riddle. And once they get the answer and recite it back to Samson he says something really odd back to them, “If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle.”What does that mean?! In any case Samson is wise to the fact that his wife has given away the answer. After all she only pressed him for seven days. I guess in the modern day dialog we would call this nagging.
Samson strikes down thirty men and returns the wife to her father’s house. I can say that there is so much drama going on in just these two chapters of Judges that it makes my head spin. But isn’t it the way we use drama to hide those ugly contradictions in our lives?
I attribute this as to someone being chased down an alley after committing a wrong that they know they should be punished for. As they run they throw obstacles along the way to trip their punishment up. And with all the manipulation that goes on around Samson early in his life it has made me wonder if he ever thought that one day he would be undermined and left for blind.
I still have some more of this contradicted man, Samson I am to work out with you but let’s ponder a few things together this day. One, why start off down the path of the day with an unseen act of disobedience. God has already seen it and why fool ourselves into think that we can share the fruits of it with those we love.
Second, why try to be wise in our own eyes by asking questions that actually hold the confession of that disobedience to those around us who wish to do us harm. And thirdly…can we put off the drama that so ensnares us? They didn’t give out Oscar’s for the best performance of manipulation done by a Philistine woman or her people let alone the best man versus beast fight scene back in the days of the Judges. All that happened was the undermining of the will of God…that’s all. — Chris Hughes is a graduate of the Colony of Mercy and a frequent contributor to Freedom Fighter
Dig This Quote: Because in our present thought world the horror is “hidden,” “sin” as a condition of the human self is not available as a principle of explanation for those who are supposed to know why life goes as it does and to guide others. For example, why do around half of American marriages fail, or why do we have massive problems with substance addiction and with the “moral” failures of public leaders. Those who are supposed to know are lost in speculation about “causes,” while the real sources of our failures lie in choice and the factors at work in it. Choice is where sin dwells.” Renovation of the Heart — Dallas Willard
Determined Praying: God likes to see His people shut up to this, that there is no hope but in prayer. Herein lies the church’s power against the world. — Andrew Bonar
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