You may subscribe yourself at the Ascension site here and receive notifications in your email, or just follow along on my blog. Bible in One Year Readings Index
Chapter 16: The Conclusion of the Samson Narrative
Chapter 16 is divided into 3 parts:
- Samson's adventure at Gaza (16:1-3)
- The story of Samson and Delilah (16:4-22)
- Samson's revenge and victory in death (16:23-31)
Notice that the word "woman" (issa) continues to be a key theme word in the narrative of Samson.
Judges 16:1-3 ~ Samson's Adventure at Gaza
Samson is God's consecrated Nazirite and chosen deliverer-judge, but he is also a deeply flawed man who falls easily into temptations of the flesh. The Philistine city of Gaza is a walled city with a fortified defensive gate in which travelers and townspeople enter and exit the city. Samson goes to Gaza to keep a rendezvous with a harlot; he saw a prostitute woman (issa) in the literal text, perhaps sneaking into the town at night or he is so confident of his great strength that he doesn't care.
The Philistines attempt to trap Samson by waiting for him at the town gate, the only way in and out of the town, but he breaks out of their trap by tearing down the town gate and supporting posts.
Tearing down the town gate and taking it with him is probably a message to the Philistines of Gaza that they have no power over him and he will come and go as he pleases. He has made the city of Gaza defenseless.
Question: What does Samson do with the gate to Gaza?
Answer: He takes it as a trophy of his victory and carries it to a hill across from the city of Hebron.
Carrying the town gate the forty miles to a hill across from Hebron is truly a Herculean feat.
This is Samson's third betrayal:
And this is his third victory over his Philistine enemies (14:19-20; 15:14-16 and 16:2-3).
Samson and Delilah (Jose Etxenagusia)
Samson and Delilah
Up to this point Philistine women have been the cause of Samson's misadventures, and yet he has escaped thanks to God's gift of super-human strength which is due to Samson keeping the secret of his Nazirite vow to not cut his hair. But the day is coming when a Philistine woman named Delilah will break his heart and cause him to break his vow, leaving him without his strength and in the hands of his enemies.
The Philistines will not threaten Delilah like they threatened Samson's Philistine bride. This is a different sort of woman. Her betrayal will be strictly a business opportunity and she will try unsuccessfully to collect her promised reward three times before she is successful on the fourth attempt. Notice the repetition of threes and sevens in the narrative. They are two of the "perfect" numbers. Three symbolizes perfection and is often used to show the perfection of God's divine plan while seven is the number of the perfection of fulfillment or completion. See the document "The Significance of Numbers in Scripture."
Judges 16:4-9 ~ Delilah's First Attempt at Betrayal
Question: What is different about Samson's interest in the woman Delilah?
Answer: Samson's interest in Delilah is more than the lust he felt for his Philistine bride or the harlot of Gaza. He loves Delilah.
Delilah lived in the Vale of Sorek, a valley that formed a natural access corridor between the coastal plain controlled by the Philistines and Israelite territory to the east. The villages of Zorah and Eshtaol and the "camp of Dan" are just north of the valley of Sorek. The city of Timnah (where Samson married his Philistine bride) and Ekron, the northernmost of the five Philistine cities, are just south of the valley. Samson is literally and metaphorically standing between two worlds and as in this first affair with a Philistine woman (14:1) he has traveled "down" from the camp of Dan to visit Delilah in the Valley of Sorek. Some commentators accuse Delilah of being a prostitute, but that word is not used to describe her in the Hebrew text. Delilah is his mistress whereas the other two women were a wife and a harlot. If there is to be a profession associated with her it may be that of a professional weaver since there was a large loom in her home (16:13-14).
The Philistines probably remained hidden because there is no mention of a fight. This is why Delilah successfully convinces him to reveal his secret three times before she is successful. There is no sign of treachery. The Philistines will not come out of their hiding place until Samson is completely neutralized in verse 21.
Judges 16:10-12 ~ Delilah's Second Attempt at Betrayal
She tries again to bind Samson but again he breaks his bonds.
Question: What is repeated from the first incident?
Answer: His reply that he "should lose my strength and become like any other man" (16:8 and 11) and Delilah's warning words "the Philistines are on you, Samson" (16:9 and 12).
Judges 16:13-14 ~ Delilah's Third Attempt at Betrayal
Delilah lulled Samson to sleep, perhaps with a song or by stroking his head on her lap (see verse 19), and then she wove his seven locks of hair into the textile on her loom that she was already weaving. It must have been a large loom that was bolted to the floor. She wove his hair into the "wrap" of parallel strands of the textile and pushed the hair with the shuttle tightly against the previous rows of fibers, but once again he broke free.
Judges 16:15-22 ~ Delilah Betrays Samson
Perhaps the Philistines are growing restless and so Delilah becomes more persistent in nagging Samson until "his heart grew sick" of it. The expression "his heart grew sick" is the same as in Judges 10:16 when Yahweh's "heart grew sick" because he could not bear to hear Israel's cry of suffering any longer. Samson cannot bear to have his beloved accuse him of not loving her by his refusal to reveal his innermost secret.
Question: Where has Samson heard the same charge that in withholding a secret he is withholding his love? What should he have remembered and what does this tell us about him?
Answer: It is the same accusation his bride made against him in 14:16. He should have remembered how revealing a secret turned out the last time. Clearly he is a man who does not learn from his mistakes.
This is the fourth time Samson has repeated the phrase "like any other man." Is this perhaps his real longing to just live with Delilah "like any other man"? Is he worn out by his life as Israel's deliverer and is this a contributing factor to Samson revealing his secret? It could also be that he really doesn't believe he will lose his strength. After all, he has never tested it before. All Nazirites kept their long hair as a sign of their Nazirite vow, but none of them had his super-human strength. This time her intuition tells her that he has revealed the truth of his strength and she is so confident of this that she demands her payment from the Philistines.
This woman is so cold hearted that she lulls Samson to sleep with his head on her lap like a child. When he is asleep she motions for a Philistine to bring her a razor and she shaves the seven locks of hair from Samson's head herself.
Question: Why did Samson lose his strength? Did his hair provide some kind of magical power?
Answer: No. His strength came entirely from Yahweh, but his uncut hair was the sign of his Nazirite vow and his commitment to Yahweh as God's special Nazirite-deliverer-judge of Israel. It was when Yahweh's Spirit left him that his strength left him.
Question: What is ironic concerning the torture in gouging out Samson's eyes? There are three points of irony concerning his sight and his blindness.
Answer:
- When he was supposed to begin his career as a deliverer he was misdirected from his mission when he "saw" a Philistine woman and exclaimed that she was "right in his eyes." Later he "saw" the prostitute of Gaza. Now he has lost the sight that continually led him into sin and away from God.
- Samson in his blindness has become like what he did to gateless Gaza: he has become violated and defenseless.
- Samson's love for Delilah figuratively "blinded" him to his danger, and now he has been literally blinded by her betrayal.
Question: What are at least two other points of irony concerning Samson's fate?
Answer:
- Samson being taken "down" to Gaza by the Philistines (16:21) is the climax of his continual "going down" to the women of Philistia that began the Samson adult narrative in 14:1 (also see 14:5).
- It is exactly as he predicted four times in that he is "like every other man" and no longer has superhuman strength.
This is Samson's fourth betrayal:
- Betrayed by his Philistine bride (Judg 14:17)
- Betrayed by the men of Judah (Judg 15:12)
- Betrayed by the unknown person of Gaza (Judg 16:2)
- Betrayed by Delilah, the woman he loved (Judges 16:2-3)
The mutilation of prisoners of war was common in the ancient Near East (i.e., Judg 1:6-7; 1 Sam 11:2), and blinding was a common form of punishment for a rebellious vassal (i.e., 2 Kng 25:7). The Philistines considered themselves to be the overlords of the Israelites and Samson has been a rebellious vassal for twenty years. To further humiliate him, the Philistines made him a slave in the grinding mill at Gaza. Grinding houses were places where slaves would grind grain for their masters. In such public mills, large mill stones were turned by an animal or by slave labor to grind grain into meal.
Question: But this episode ends in what note of hope?
Answer: Samson's hair began to grow back.
Judges 16:23-31 ~ Samson's Victory in Death
The Philistines attribute their victory over Samson to their god Dagon. They are wrong, of course.
Question: Why are they wrong?
Answer: They were not victorious over Samson because their god gave Samson into their hands but because Yahweh's Spirit had left Samson.
Dagon was an ancient Semitic fertility deity worshipped in northern Mesopotamia, in Syria and along the Mediterranean coast. The Philistines adopted Dagon as their principal deity when they settled in their cities along the Mediterranean coast. T
While celebrating what was probably a harvest festival to Dagon, the people want to gloat over their victory in conquering their greatest enemy, Samson. He is brought from the grain house to amuse the crowd. Even though he has been deprived of his superhuman strength, he is still strong enough to perform feats of strength to entertain the crowd. In his blindness, they do not perceive him to be a threat.
Question: During a lull in the celebration, what two requests will Samson make?
Answer: He asks the lad who is assigned to guide him to take him to the two central pillars of the temple, and he petitions God to give him great strength one last time.
Only limited excavations have been undertaken at Gaza which is now under the control of the Palestinian authority. However, at Tel Qasile a Philistine temple has been discovered where the roof of the building was supported by two central columns only seven feet apart, very similar to the description of the temple in this passage. The temple complex where Samson was taken was probably surrounded by an open court and had a flat roof or terrace on which a large number of people could gather for festivals. When God granted Samson's petition and returned his great strength, Samson pushed what were probably wooden pillars off their stone bases and the entire temple was demolished.
Question: What is the irony of Samson's victory?
Answer: In Samson's final victory, he killed more of his Philistine enemies in death than in life.
Samson's kinsmen from the tribe of Dan and his father's household (slaves and retainers) brought Samson's body back to bury him in the tomb of his father which was located between the towns of Zorah and Eshtaol. It was where Samson's story began and where God's Spirit first stirred Samson to take up his destiny as Israel's judge-deliverer (13:2, 25). The narrative ends with the type of formula statement used for the minor judges, indicating that there was no real "peace" in his twenty years of judgeship.
Question: What is the final irony concerning the first and last woman in Samson's life?
Answer: The first woman was his mother who truly loved him. She kept the secret of his strength even from his father, and tried to help him observe the restrictions of his Nazirite vow. It was a love he did not appreciate and did not honor. He only saw her love and the love of his father as interference in his life and he rebelled. The last woman in his life was Delilah. She was a woman he loved but he was too blind to recognize the difference between genuine love and false love. Delilah, the woman he loved, betrayed his secret for money.
Delilah is the last "named" woman in the Book of Judges along with Achsah, Deborah, and Jael.
Question: What do these women have in common? How are they different?
Answer: All these women think and act for themselves; they shape their own destinies through their courageous actions. The first three women take action that will benefit their family or the people of Israel as a whole, while Delilah acts only out of her own self-interest.
"everyone did as he saw fit" or literally "everyone did what was right in his eyes" (17:6 and 21:25.).
Part III: Israel's Cycle of Depravity in Sinning like the Canaanites
Chapter 16 is the end of the history of the leadership provided by Israel's twelve Judge-Deliverers. Chapters 17-21 provide a summary of the conditions in Israel during this period by providing examples of the failure of the Israelites in sinning like the Canaanites both as individuals and as members of the unified covenant people. In terms of chronology, the events in chapters 17-18 are set at the beginning of the Age of the Judges (see 17:6 and 18:30), but is placed at the end of the book to emphasize that the people did not heed God's warning in the covenant lawsuit delivered by the messenger of Yahweh at the beginning of the Age of the Judges in 2:1-5 and the summary of the peoples failures in 2:6-19.
The events in chapters 19-21 probably take place during the end of the period. This last section begins with the statement that in those days there was no king in Israel to unify the people (19:1) and ends with the same statement coupled with the repeated statement that "everyone did as he saw fit" or literally "everyone did what was right in his eyes" (17:6 and 21:25.).
Chapters 17-21 can be divided into three parts:
Results of Israel's Spiritual and Moral Decay in Sinning like the Canaanites
Part I: The Sin of Idolatry
- An Example of Personal Idolatry (Judg 17:1-13)
- An Example of Tribal Idolatry (Judg 18:1-31)
Part II: The Sin of Immoral Conduct
- An Example of Personal Immorality (Judg 19:1-10)
- An Example of Tribal Immorality (Judg 19:11-30)
Part III: The Failure of Israel Through Disunity and Civil War
- War Between Israel and the tribe of Benjamin (Judg 20:1-48)
- Failure of Israel After the War (Judg 21:1-25)
Micah and the Danites (Johann Christoph Weigel)
Chapter 17: Micayehu's Forbidden Shrine
The subject of chapter 17 is one man's sin of apostasy in erecting a personal shrine and installing idols to rival God's one Sanctuary as well as establishing his own priest to rival the chief priests of the hereditary priesthood of Aaron.
Chapter 18 covers the migration of the tribe of Dan to the northern region of Israel where they founded the illicit sanctuary of Dan and their own idols representing Yahweh served by an illegal priesthood. The events recorded probably took place prior to Samson's judgeship and perhaps during the judgeship of Deborah and the war with the northern Canaanite king when the tribe of Dan is mentioned with the northern tribe of Asher in not coming to aid in Barak's battle against the Canaanite king Jabin (Judg 5:17). After Deborah and Barak conquered the major Canaanite presence in the north, it would have been safe for the majority of the tribe of Dan to finish their migration. It would also account for why the Philistines went to the men of Judah to arrest Samson as well as why Samson was not able to muster a force of Danites to go to war against the Philistines and was forced to wage a one-man war. The episodes in chapters 17 and 18 are linked by the sin of idolatry.
Judges 17:1-6 ~ Micayehu's Double Sin
The highlands of Ephraim are the central hill country immediately north of Jerusalem. This episode concerns the wealthy Ephraimite family of a man named Micayehu and his mother. The son is also called Micah in the story; it is the short form of the name Micayehu, which means "who is like Yahweh." The name itself is ironic since this man is certainly not "like Yahweh."
At first this appears to be the story of a domestic dispute that is peacefully resolved:
- Eleven hundred pieces of sliver are stolen from Micah's mother.
- She utters a curse on the person who took it, not knowing it was her son.
- Micah hears his mother utter the curse and is fearful.
- He confesses his sin to his mother and promises to return the silver.
- On hearing his confession, his mother blesses Micah in the name of Yahweh.
- Micah returns the money to his mother.
- His mother tells him she had consecrated the money to Yahweh to be made into an idol for her son before it was stolen.
- She takes two hundred pieces of silver of the eleven hundred pieces to a silversmith to make an idol for her son.
- Micah established the idol and other cult objects in a shrine in his house and appointed his son to be the priest of his personal shrine.
Question: On the surface all seems to end well, but what are the problems with this episode?
Answer:
- There is no required atonement for the theft and instead a blessing is given to the thief rather than requiring him to go to Yahweh's Sanctuary with a sin offering and to confess his sin to Yahweh's priest (only an ordained priest can forgive sins).
- Micah and his mother are breaking the first commandment in making and accepting an idol for purposes of worship.
- The mother has promised to dedicate all eleven hundred pieces of silver to Yahweh but only spends two hundred to make the idol. What happened to the rest of the money?
- Micah has established a shrine in opposition to the one Sanctuary of Yahweh and has appointed his son, who is not a descendant of Aaron, as his priest.
Question: Where was the sum of eleven hundred pieces of silver mentioned previously and under what conditions? What is the connection to the last time the sum was mentioned in chapter 16?
Answer: It was the sum the Philistine lords each paid Delilah to betray Samson. Now it is the sum that motivates a mother and her son to betray God.
Question: Finally, to complete his shrine as a place to offer worship, what does Micah do?
Answer: He consecrates one of his sons to become his priest in violation of the Law.
Question: Instead of offering obedience to what God ordained as "right worship" according to the Sinai Covenant, what has Micah done?
Answer: He has created his own idea of what God should be and how He should be worshipped, including his own idea of a priest to lead his family in worship.
Judges 17:7-13 ~ Micah's Levite
This young Levite (repeated three times in 17:7; 18:34 and 15) was living in Bethlehem in Judah as a "resident alien."
Question: What was the difference between chief priests and Levites?
Answer: Only descendants of Aaron were to be actual priests who served at God's altar in offering sacrifices and in ministering in the Tabernacle. The rest of the members of the tribe of Levi were to be their assistants. They could not approach the altar, enter the Tabernacle, or even touch the sacred vessels.
Both chief priests and Levites were provided a living by the tithes paid by the twelve tribes and by the firstborn of every male animal from the flocks of the tribes. They lived communally in their cities and took turns serving at God's Sanctuary. The first thing that is odd about this young Levite is that he has separated from his family and his clan and is looking for a home and a way to earn a living.
Question: What offer does Micah make the young man and why should his answer have been to refuse the invitation?
Answer: Micah offers to give him a home and to make him the priest of his private shrine, and to pay him an annual wage of ten pieces of silver in addition to food and clothing. The Levite should have refused the offer since it was in violation of the Sinai Covenant to have any other shrine other than the Sanctuary of Yahweh and for a Levite to serve as a priest.
The question is what motivated the young Levite to accept Micah's offer to become a priestly "father" to his family. Perhaps he harbored resentment that only the descendants of Aaron from the tribe of Levi were ordained as priests. He wouldn't be the first Levite think that all the Levites should be of equal status with the sons of Aaron. During the wilderness journey from Mt. Sinai a Levite name Korah led a rebellion against Moses and Aaron, demanding that the Levites be given equal status with the priests including the right to offer incense in the Sanctuary's sacred Tabernacle.
Question: What happened to the Levites who rebelled against the chief priests and demanded that they be allowed to perform the same ministerial services in the Sanctuary like the offering of the sacred incense in the Holy Place of the Tabernacle? What was God response?
Answer: God destroyed them with holy fire. The message was that it is God who determines what is defined as "right worship" and not what is perceived as "right worship" by men with their own agenda.
Chapter 18: The Danites' Migration North and their Descent into Idol Worship
Judges 18:1-6 ~ The Danites Send Men to look for new Territory
This is the second time we have the statement that in the days of the Judges there was no king in Israel. This episode recalls a time before the Danites completed their migration north and therefore a time prior to the judgeships of both Deborah and Samson. In Deborah's song of victory the Danites are linked to the northern tribe of Asher (Judg 5:17). The tribe of Dan was given fifteen cities in the allotment situated to the west of the territory of Benjamin, between Ephraim and Judah. However, they were unable to take the territory and were only able to conquer the city of Leshem (Josh 19:40-47). The clans of Dan were squeezed out of the land by Amorites and later by the Philistines. Since they were not strong enough to resist the pagan advances into their territory, they decide to send out spies to find better territory for a homeland. This episode has some similarities to the spies sent out to reconnoiter the land of Canaan in Numbers chapter 13. The inspired writer will vacillate between the designations "tribe" (18:1, 19, 30) and "clan" (18:2, 11, 19) when referring to the Danites. Several clans comprise a tribe. It may be that the tribe of Dan is so reduced in number that only one "clan" remains.
Judges 18:7-10 ~ The Danite Spies Convince the Tribe to Migrate to the North
Laish (see Josh 19:47) was a town located at the sources of the Jordan River about 29 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. It was located just outside what was designated as Israelite territory and therefore was not included in the land allotted the twelve tribes.
Judges 18:11-20 ~ The Theft of Micah's Idols and False Priest
The five spies have convinced many of the people of Dan to migrate north to take possession of the territory they scouted. The Danites leave the territory of Judah and head north to Mount Ephraim, eventually coming to Micah's house. This is the point where all three episodes in chapters 17-18 now come together.
Question: When they arrive at Micah's compound, what is the mission of the five Danite spies?
Answer: They raid Micah's shrine and steal all his idols.
Question: After a mild protest what does the Levite do?
Answer: He betrays Micah and decides to become the hired priest of the Danites.
The Danites have shrewdly exploited the ambition of the Levite who cannot resist the Danites offer to become a "father and priest" (verse 19) to an entire tribe and clan instead of to just one man and his family. The Levite's next two actions are symbolic; he takes the ephod, teraphim and idol from the five men who have stolen them and then "went off among the people." He becomes complicit in the crime and completely abandons Micah.
Judges 18:21-27 ~ Micah Demands the Return of His Idols
The Danites expect Micah to come after his property and so they place the women, children, livestock and baggage in the front while the fighting men take up their positions in the rear of the column. Micah does attempt to reclaim his property but his idols do not protect him. When he caught up with the Danites and they threatened his life, he realized that he had no choice except to retreat. The Danites have acquired gods and a priest by theft and intimidation. Micah's story began with his confession that he had stolen his mother's silver and it ends here with his having to accept that the Danites have stolen his gods, which he admits I have had made. This is poetic justice: the robber is robbed and gets what he deserves; he now has nothing.
Judges 18:27-31 ~ The Danites Capture Laish and set up a Pagan Shrine
The town of Laish was outside of the territory promised to the Israelites. It was in a valley belonging to Beth-Rehob which was about five miles to the east and which later became a city-state that was hostile to Israel (2 Sam 10:6). The Danites had no authority to make war on people outside of the Promised Land unless those people were the aggressors. The Danites have violated "a peaceful and trusting people" who have become their victims and have moved from a true inheritance in the Promised Land to idolatry and the illegal confiscation of land that is not theirs. They have fulfilled Jacob-Israel's deathbed prophecy and have become the serpent who strikes the unprotected from ambush (Gen 49:16-17).
The inspired writer saves this shocking revelation for the end of the narrative.
Question: What is the name of the young Levite who wanted to be a chief priest and from what hero of the Exodus was he descended?
Answer: The Levite who was not a descendant of the chief priests was Jonathan the son/descendant of Moses' eldest son Gershom. Moses' two sons served as Levites and not as chief priests.
Gershom was Moses' eldest son, born to Zipporah in Midian (Ex 2:22), and he is a member of the Levite clan of Kohath. Since he was born before Moses returned to Egypt, and since Moses died at age 120 after the forty years of wilderness wandering, it is unlikely that Jonathan the "young Levite" (17:7; 18:3, 15) was the "son" of Gershon but more likely the grandson or great-grandson even if this episode takes place in the earlier years of the era of the Judges.
Question: What were the duties of the Levitical clan of Kohath? Num 3:27-31.
Answer: The Kohathites had the duty of moving the Ark of the Covenant, the table of the Bread of the Covenant, the lampstand, the altars, the sacred vessels used in the liturgy, and the curtain with all its fittings but only after the chief priests had wrapped them. Like all the Levites, they could not touch the sacred objects on pain of death.
This descendant of Moses is a heretic who has abandoned the truth faith. Perhaps he harbored resentment that only the descendants of his great ancestor's brother Aaron were eligible for the ministerial priesthood and this resentment caused him to separate from his clan. His descendants will remain heretic priests in the service of Dan and the Northern Kingdom until the Assyrian conquest in the last quarter of the 8th century BC.
CHALLENGE: “Miracles are part of a prescientific worldview. Today we understand that the universe operates by the laws of nature, not miracles.”
DEFENSE: The ancients knew as well as we do that nature obeys particular laws. The idea that there is no room for miracles today reflects a bias against miracles, not real science.
People in the ancient world were more in touch with nature than we are. They knew it behaved according to regular cycles and that things happened in predictable ways. They knew that the sun rises every day, that they could use the motions of the stars at night to predict the seasons and the correct times for planting crops, and they were aware that stones fall down rather than up, and so on.
They also were aware that virgins do not give birth, that water does not turn into wine, that loaves do not spontaneously multiply, and that people who have been dead for several days do not come back to life—much less ascend into heaven.
It was precisely because they knew the regularities of nature that they were able to identify the latter events as miracles.
The difference between then and now is that we have a more detailed knowledge of the regularities of nature. We have precise measurements of many of them, and these allow us to describe them with mathematical formulas. Some are so well established we refer to them as scientific laws.
But these “laws” are merely descriptions based on observations of how nature usually works. Nothing says the world always acts that way.
Science is based on observation, and the only way we could know that the world always behaves a certain way would be to observe the entire history of the universe and see what nature does at each moment, but we can’t do that.
Consequently, the idea that nature must always behave in the ways that it normally behaves goes beyond what science can establish. It’s a philosophical assumption, not a scientific fact. The open-minded way to approach this issue would not be to make that assumption but to look at the evidence, acknowledging that nature normally works in certain ways but leaving open the possibility that unusual, miraculous events might occur.
Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense: 365 Days (Plus One) to Becoming a Better Apologist
No comments:
Post a Comment