Samson

The twelfth and last judge of Israel, from the tribe of Dan, and raised up by God to deliver Israel from the Philistines who had ruled the land for some four decades. His exploits, over the twenty years he led Israel, are reported in Judg 13-16. They are set in the early 11th Cent BC, about half a century before Israel asked Samuel for a king to rule over them.

Samson's birth to his aged parents came about as a result of divine pronouncement to them through an angel of the Lord, with the strict instructions that he was not to consume anything that came from the vine, his hair was not to be shaved, and that he was to be a Nazirite all his life, and the declaration he would "begin" to save Israel from the hands of the Phistines (Judg 13). He grew up a man of incredible strength and just as terrible discipline and self-control. Inspite of the former (which allowed him to do the Philistines some serious damage) and because of the latter, he was eventually betrayed into the hands of the Philistines. Blinded and chained between the pillars of the Philistine temple where they had gathered for a festival, he prayed (for the first time in his life, it seems) asking God for renewed strength to bring down the temple. With that he "killed many more when he died than while he lived" (16:30).

The exploits of the first eleven judges took up the first twelve chapters of the book of Judges. Samson's occupies four chapters; i.e., one-third of the judges' story, and one-fifth of the 21 chapters in the entire book. This suggests that Samson's plays a central place in the book. With all that he was endowed, both physically and literarily, one is led to ponder what he could have accomplished had he sought the Lord for a central place in his life. Four chapters to tell his story was perhaps the author's way of highlighting how even the judges themselves were not much different from the people when it came to working with the Lord. Samson's story, therefore, is one of those poignant and tragic "if only".