3. Charisma and corruption (13:1-16:31)

Israel’s unremitting apostasy, continued from 10:6-9, brings on the Philistines, who broke down Israel’s loose tribal confederacy, ultimately forcing Israel to choose a king. Likewise, Israel continues alienated from Yahweh, who had rejected Israel’s plea (10:10-16). Thus no outcry is heard here. Apostate Israel stands mute before its offended Lord. The book’s progressive exposé of the weaknesses of charismatic leadership culminates with Samson, whose birth narrative (13:2-25) also climaxes the book’s increasingly detailed description of each judge’s background. Like Jephthah, Samson lives under a vow, though not one of his own making. Samson’s anonymous mother receives God’s promise of a child (13:2-5, 7), which decrees the child a Nazirite, requiring abstinence from alcohol, strict avoidance of the dead, and uncut hair (Nu 6). Although Nazirites undertook these obligations voluntarily for a limited period, prenatal divine election foreordains Samson a lifelong Nazirite. Annunciation stories usually herald the arrival of salvation. Samson, however, will barely begin this task. With Jephthah, the deliverance became disaster; with Samson, deliverance itself slips away.

Rather than receive Yahweh’s word from his wife, Manoah requires direct confirmation (13:8). The ensuing encounter reveals Manoah’s spiritually insensitive assertiveness. The confirmation emphasizes the primacy of the original word to his wife, but Manoah attempts to fit Yahweh’s word into a set of religious and traditional expectations: he injects an offering, demands the messenger’s name, and fears for his life upon realizing his impertinence (vv.8-23). Samson’s birth and blessing (vv.24-25) fulfill God’s promise and sound a warning. The NIV’s “The Spirit of the Lord began to stir him” conceals the awful oppressiveness of Samson’s experience of the Spirit. “Harass, plague, afflict” render the Hebrew better.

The first phase of Samson’s life recounts his harassment of the Philistines (14:1-15:20) in a tight, cause-effect sequence emphasizing riddles (14:1-20) and revenge (15:1-21). Jdg 14:1-9 sets the stage, characterizing Samson’s headstrong insistence on marrying a Philistine woman, despite parental protest, as Yahweh’s opportunity to confront the Philistines. Samson’s secret, Spirit-energized slaying of a lion inspires the riddle at the heart of the story. The wedding banquet reveals Samson’s rarely noted cleverness as he frustrates his Philistine companions with an impossible riddle (14:10-14). Only threats to burn Samson’s financée and her family alive persuade her to nag him into telling his secret (vv.15-17). Confronted with humiliation and betrayal, Samson explodes in Spirit-energized rage, murdering thirty Philistines to pay off his wager and abandoning his new bride (vv.18-20). The Philistines won their bet, but at a frightening cost to their nation.

Samson’s anger, by prompting the loss of his bride, triggers the next episode, which circles around Samson’s revenge (15:1-19; see esp. vv.3, 7). Samson avenges his loss by burning the crops of the Philistines, who avenge themselves by burning Samson’s erstwhile fiancée and her family alive, per their original threat (vv.1-6). Samson’s vengeful slaughter sends him into hiding and exposes Judah, an innocent bystander, to Philistine military wrath. As the Judeans hand Samson over to the exuberant Philistines, the Spirit of Yahweh energizes Samson to break his bonds, seize the nearest weapon, a donkey’s jawbone, and kill a thousand Philistines (vv.7-17), leaving him mortally exhausted and thirsty. Dying of thirst or falling captive to the Philistines would negate all his triumphs. His bold prayer for deliverance and vindication is heard (vv.18-19).

Superficially, 14:1-15:20 seems to exult in its roguish hero. The total context, however, suggests several warning signs. (1) Jdg 3:5-6 damns intermarriage with Gentiles as compromise and defeat. (2) The NIV obscures the Hebrew idiom behind “She’s the right one for me” and “He liked her” (14:3b, 7). The same idiom in 17:6 and 21:25 is traditionally translated “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes,” denoting wanton self-will. (3) Samson violates two provisions of his vow noted in ch. 13: touching the dead and drinking alcohol. Feast in Hebrew actually refers to drinking. Also, by concealing the source of the honey, Samson causes his mother to violate her vow (cf. 13:4, “you”). (4) Samson is one “afflicted” by the Spirit (13:25), and the account’s driving force is the Spirit. Strangely, the three occasions of the Spirit’s onrush affect the narrative negatively. By enabling the slaying of the lion, the Spirit sets up the first violation of the vow—touching the dead—and suggests the riddle dominating ch. 14, thus initiating the chain of recrimination driving chs. 14-15. Samson’s Spirit-stimulated violent rage left his fiancée abandoned (14:19-20), triggering the revenge motif of ch. 15. The use of the jawbone of a donkey in the climactic battle (15:15-16) involves another Spirit-inspired breach of Samson’s vow. (5) Samson himself seems trapped in his own Spirit-instigated violence. In 15:7 the NIV’s “I won't stop until I get my revenge” is better translated “I will be avenged upon you, and after that I will quit” (RSV). Samson expects one final act to end the cycle of vengeance. Bondage always cries, “Once more, and I'm through!” (6) The periods of peace were longer than the periods of oppression from Othniel to Gideon but ceased with Jephthah’s career, which was much shorter than the time of oppression. Stepping further down, the period of Philistine oppression fully encloses Samson’s twenty-year career (v.20).

The undercurrent of impending ruin in chs. 14-15 breaks out unambiguously in 16:1-31, whose structure runs roughly parallel to chs. 14-15. Both units begin with Samson’s relationship with a Philistine woman. The liaison narrated in 16:1-3 suggests a deterioration, however. The former relationship was marital, but here Samson consorts with a harlot. In 2:17 and 8:27, 33 harlotry is an image for apostasy. Like chs. 14-15, 16:4-22 depicts Samson, now in a second immoral relationship, divulging a secret to a persistent paramour. Delilah plays for keeps, probing not for the answer to a party puzzle, but for the key to Samson’s destruction. Ironically, Samson willfully, even enthusiastically, violated the first two provisions of his vow. The last provision, however, was secretly snapped as he slept in Delilah’s bosom. Such is the fragility of human spiritual freedom. Shorn of his strength, Samson awakes, expecting to defeat the Philistines in the sudden energy of the Spirit as always. But Samson did not know that the Lord had left him. The text provides one small sign of hope: as Samson labors in the Philistine prison, powerless and blind, his hair silently returns. The final scene (16:23-30) parallels 15:18-19. No longer a triumphant charismatic, Samson occasions the praise of a pagan god. While Samson’s death provokes awe in readers, he nevertheless appeals to God only for vengeance for his eyes. To the end, Samson champions not God but himself. The best thing the last charismatic judge does for Israel is die (16:30). Samson remains the emblem of a self-will that denies its addiction to lust, revenge, and power and refuses to face its own bondage.

E. Summary of 3:7-16:31

Jdg 1:1-3:6 asserts the progressive failure of the Hebrews to build faithfully on the achievements of Joshua and the Conquest generation. Jdg 3:7-16:31 depicts Israel’s deepening apostasy and traces its expanding consequences. Oppressions deepen, political crises grow in gravity, tribal discord increases, and Israel’s saviors become destroyers (Jephthah) or disasters (Samson) as the divine protest grows in stridency (6:7-10; 10:11-14). The theme of Spirit-led leadership epitomizes Israel’s collapse. As matters worsen, references to the Spirit of Yahweh multiply and the Spirit’s onrush actually contributes to the tragedy.