Samson: Strength, Riddles, and the Pillars

A judge before Israel had a king

Samson (Hebrew שִׁמְשׁוֹן) is named a judge, a man who lived before Israel's monarchy, in the era placed at around 1451 BC to 1095 BC (era placed on Ussher's chronology, 1650). His name first appears in Judges 13:24 and his story runs through Judges, thirty-seven verses in that book, with one further verse in the New Testament. The dossier names Manoah as his father and Delilah as his partner. No tribe or people is recorded for him here, and no children are named.

A wife in Timnah's shadow and a riddle that turned deadly

The narrative opens with a woman. Judges 14:1 begins the account of what Samson saw and wanted, and Judges 14:3 records the exchange that followed. Judges 14:5, 14:7, 14:10 and 14:12 carry the story forward to a feast and a riddle, and here the quoted text picks up the pressure that built around it: "On the seventh day, they said to Samson's wife, 'Entice your husband, that he may declare to us the riddle, lest we burn you and your father's house with fire. Have you called us to impoverish us? Isn't that so?' Samson's wife wept before him, and said, 'You just hate me, and don't love me. You've told a riddle to the children of my people, and haven't told it to me.' He said to her, 'Behold, I haven't told my father or my mother, so why should I tell you?'" (Judges 14:15-16). Notice how quickly a wedding game becomes a threat of burning. Judges 14:20 closes the chapter's account.

Foxes, fire, and three thousand men of Judah

Judges 15:1 resumes the story, and Samson's answer to what he found is a settled resolve: "Samson said to them, 'This time I will be blameless in the case of the Philistines when I harm them.' Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the middle between every two tails" (Judges 15:3-4). Judges 15:6-7 records the retaliation and his reply.

Then his own countrymen come after him. "The men of Judah said, 'Why have you come up against us?' They said, 'We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he has done to us.' Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave in Etam's rock, and said to Samson, 'Don't you know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?' He said to them, 'As they did to me, so I have done to them.' They said to him, 'We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines.' Samson said to them, 'Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves'" (Judges 15:10-12). His whole defense is symmetry: as they did, so I have done. Judges 15:16 records his own words after what came next.

Gaza, and a woman named Delilah

"Samson went to Gaza, and saw there a prostitute, and went in to her. The Gazites were told, 'Samson is here!' They surrounded him and laid wait for him all night in the gate of the city, and were quiet all the night, saying, 'Wait until morning light; then we will kill him.' Samson lay until midnight, then arose at midnight and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city, with the two posts, and plucked them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders and carried them up to the top of the mountain that is before Hebron" (Judges 16:1-3).

With Delilah the questioning begins in Judges 16:6-7 and continues in 16:9-10, and the pattern is plain in what is quoted: "So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them, then said to him, 'The Philistines are on you, Samson!' The ambush was waiting in the inner room. He broke them off his arms like a thread. Delilah said to Samson, 'Until now, you have mocked me and told me lies. Tell me with what you might be bound.' He said to her, 'If you weave the seven locks of my head with the fabric on the loom.' She fastened it with the pin, and said to him, 'The Philistines are on you, Samson!' He awakened out of his sleep, and plucked away the pin of the beam and the fabric" (Judges 16:12-14). He plays with the question that is aimed at his life. Judges 16:20 and 16:23 record what came of it.

Between the pillars

"When their hearts were merry, they said, 'Call for Samson, that he may entertain us.' They called for Samson out of the prison; and he performed before them. They set him between the pillars; and Samson said to the boy who held him by the hand, 'Allow me to feel the pillars on which the house rests, that I may lean on them.' Now the house was full of men and women; and all the lords of the Philistines were there; and there were on the roof about three thousand men and women, who saw while Samson performed. Samson called to Yahweh, and said, 'Lord Yahweh, remember me, please, and strengthen me, please, only this once, God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.' Samson took hold of the two middle pillars on which the house rested and leaned on them, the one with his right hand and the other with his left" (Judges 16:25-30). He is in prison, led by a boy's hand, his two eyes gone, and the last thing recorded in the quoted text is his grip on the pillars.

The failures, named

Scripture does not protect him. He went in to a prostitute at Gaza (Judges 16:1). He answered his weeping wife with a cold question (Judges 14:16). His stated principle of action was retaliation, "As they did to me, so I have done to them" (Judges 15:11), and his claim to be blameless came just before he set three hundred torches loose (Judges 15:3-4). Delilah's charge against him is that he mocked her and told lies (Judges 16:13), and he kept answering a question that was hunting him. Even his final prayer asks strength for vengeance for his two eyes (Judges 16:28).

What we do not know

No children of Samson are named. No tribe or people is given for him in this record.

The one New Testament word

Samson's name surfaces once outside Judges, at Hebrews 11:32. That single reference is the whole New Testament line drawn to him here, and this dossier supplies no text for it. So the honest thing is to say only this: the man of the riddle, the foxes, and the pillars is not left behind by the New Testament writers. He is named there, and the God he called on in Judges 16:28 is the God who is still remembered in Hebrews 11:32.