Why Samson?

How do we choose which Bible heroes will be celebrated in kids’ books and Sunday school classes? One year at my church, the theme for kids’ summer camp was “Samson Brings Down the House.” That’s a fun theme idea. We get to celebrate this incredibly strong man who led Israel until he was unfairly duped by his devious, foreign girlfriend and exacted revenge in one last act of strength from God by knocking down a building!

At least, that’s how the story is usually told.

In movies we watch in Sunday school, Samson is portrayed as a gentle giant who was the victim of Delilah’s greed. He comes across as kind and sensitive.

Not so, in the Bible.

In Judges 14, Samson is on his way to be married when he notices a lion carcass (left from a lion he had previously ripped apart with his bare hands) filled with honey. He eats some of the honey from it, and continues on his way. During his wedding feast, he tells his thirty companions that if they can answer his riddle, he’ll give them all linens and clothes, but if they cannot, they’ll owe him linens and clothes. Then he makes up this riddle:

“Out of the eater, something to eat;
    out of the strong, something sweet.”

The answer is honey in a lion – a riddle based on a very specific experience that he had and told no one about (v. 9). It would be impossible for his comrades to solve this riddle, aside from wild guessing. So, his wife pesters him for the full week of the party until he tells her the answer. When his friends in turn present the answer, he throws a temper tantrum. He complains that they haven’t played fair. And then, to get all of the linens and clothes that he owes them, he goes to Ashkelon, kills thirty men there, steals everything they had, and gives that to his friends. Then he goes home, “burning with anger” (v. 19).

Samson’s tantrums don’t end there. Seeing his rage at the way his wife coaxed the riddle answer out of him, Samson’s father-in-law figures that he must hate his wife and gives her to Samson’s friend. Since his now ex-wife is a Philistine, he decides to exact revenge on the Philistines by tying foxes together by the tails, attaching lit torches to them, and setting them loose in Philistinian territory, effectively destroying all of their crops (ch. 15).

Then, of course, is the story of Samson and Delilah. Samson falls in love with a woman named Delilah who is bribed by the Philistinian rulers to find his weakness so they could subdue him. In church, we talk about her being driven by greed and treating Samson unfairly. But, to be fair, if I was a Philistinian woman who had the opportunity to find the weakness of this loose cannon who had destroyed most of our land and killed many of our people, I would be eager to do so! Delilah isn’t a heartless person who finds joy in deceiving people for monetary gain – she’s a person who cares about her people and is willing to do the dangerous work of an undercover spy to help them.

After several failed attempts to subdue Samson, he finally tells Delilah the truth, and by shaving his head, the Philistines are finally able to shackle him, gouge out his eyes, and take him to jail.

That brings us to the infamous day when Samson brought down the house. As the Philistines gather to worship their god and celebrate their freedom from Samson’s violence, Samson decides that he must get even for losing his eyes. Apparently unfamiliar with the mantra, “an eye for an eye,” Samson thinks it fair to destroy the temple that the festivities are taking place in. He prays for strength and then knocks over the central pillars supporting the temple, effectively acting as a suicide bomber (ch. 16). Read these three chapters yourself and you’ll find that these are only a few examples of Samson’s typical behavior.

So, there you have it – the story of our hero, Samson. A man who throws petty fits, is terrible with international relations, acts violently in his rage, traps his friends with impossible riddles, sleeps with prostitutes, demands whatever he wants from his father, and takes his gift of strength for granted.