Samson

Judges 13-16:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=judges%2013-16&version=NIV

            Samson is one of the least likeable judges—to me, at least.  He is headstrong, lustful,  and angry.  He insists on the woman from Timnah, regardless of his parents’ or his countrymen’s concerns.  He justifies his violent actions under the cloak of having been wronged himself.  He even demands that the Lord give him water.  He is the most un-Christ-like figure you can imagine.

            Yet, in one of those only-God moments, Samson becomes a type of Christ.  One hymn writer likened Samson tearing the gates off of Gaza to Jesus ripping off the gates death and hell.  The line goes, “Our Samson storms death’s citadel and carries off the gates of hell.”  And, a little more obviously, Samson dies, and in dying, destroys his enemies.  That event foreshadows the death of Jesus, which destroys sin and death itself.  In high school, I read John Milton's poem Samson Agonistes (1671), in which he described Samson's death like this:

                                                            all this
With God not parted from him, as was fear'd,
But favouring and assisting to the end.
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.

With Samson, the Lord was with him at the end and enabled him to perform a feat of strength one more time.  With Jesus, although He cried out in abandonment on the cross, in the end He committed His spirit to the Father.  So God was not parted from Him, either--truly a 'death so noble!'

            I find myself strangely comforted by men like Samson.  I confess, I feel a little superior to Samson.  I generally have my temper under control (with some notable exceptions), and I married a good Lutheran girl.  So, I haven’t got the obvious character flaws that Samson exhibits.  (I have other flaws.)  Then, I figure, if the Lord can accomplish his purposes through an instrument so bent as Samson, He can surely work with me.  Samson slaying 1000 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey reminds us that it’s not the tool that matters—it’s the One who wields it.