Dancing with the Stars: Samson and Delilah
Judges 16:4-6
March 9, 2008
I need to talk to men for just a minute. This is no big secret, but our wives like to do stuff like “cuddle” and “talk.” They expect us to notice stuff like new clothes and new hairdos. When we go out to movies together, they expect us to choose a chick flick like “27 Dresses” over the new Rambo movie. They don’t understand why we like the Three Stooges or movies like “Blazing Saddles” or “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.” They don’t understand how important our garden tractor is to us, why we insist on changing the oil in our car more frequently than every 10,000 miles, or why teaching our sons to burp and play the “Star Spangled Banner” with our arm pits is simply helping them through a significant rite of passage.
Just the other night, I was sitting on the couch watching an MSNBC special on Charles Manson. Toni came over, sat on the other end of the couch, and put her feet up on my lap. This, no doubt, was an effort on her part to engage in some sort of non-verbal communication. I, of course, missed the sign. I was too engaged in the ways that Manson used the Beatles White Album to signal the coming global race war, out of which he and his follower would emerge to rule the world. Somehow Toni thought that I ought to pay more attention to her than I was paying to Charlie Manson. But I missed that.
Then last Wednesday, I surfed through the AOL Personals column on the internet, and found a story from AskMen.com. Here is the answer to my - to men’s - problems. Under the heading, “The Latest in Love and Dating News” was a column titled, “How to Flatter Women.” I finally think I may have found the answers to the problems that men have. If I can just remember these tips when I need them, I’ll be alright - I think. The opening paragraph of the story went like this.
In the man’s arsenal for scoring brownie points, the stalwart has always been flattery. Unfortunately, women know the “flattery will get you nowhere” cliché and are apt to use it when you’re being too obvious. Most men don’t know how to flatter women properly, as females can be extremely shrewd characters when it comes to detecting manipulation. However, if you follow our advice on how to flatter women, your girl will be dumbfounded at just how sweet you can be.
So, for the purpose of furthering men’s education, here are the ways to flatter women.
The article ends with this word of advice. “Luckily, the extra effort involved in sincerity is minuscule, and the return on that investment is considerable.” I guess that next time, I’m going to have to massage her feet and flip over to the Hallmark channel.
I have taken the biology and psychology classes, and so I think I have at least an elementary understanding of hormones and the emotions that surround the relationships between men and women. I’m amazed at the power of hormones in the male of our species. They can take an otherwise rational human being and turn him into a raving lunatic. Hormones can strip us of our ability to think. They have the power to change us from civilized individuals into half-crazed, over-sexed, loud-mouthed, crude and rude, leave-our-underwear on the floor cretins. If you want a biblical example, I would simply point you to Samson.
The book of Judges tells us that Samson was a judge in Israel for twenty years. He in fact, was the last judge. He was such a disaster as a leader that the whole system broke down.
Samson’s mother had been unable to have children until she was visited by an angel who told her that she would give birth to a son. But he would be a special son. He would never drink wine or strong drink. He would not eat anything that was unclean. He would never cut his hair. He would be a Nazirite, one specially set apart for service to God. God’s obvious intention is that this boy will be out of the ordinary.
We know nothing about Samson’s boyhood. There is only one verse that gives us a glimpse into his early life. Judges 13:24 says this. “The woman bore a son, and named him Samson. The boy grew, and the Lord blessed him.” That’s it. Not much of an early biography there.
The next sight of Samson is of him as an adult. We don’t know how old he was except that he was of marrying age. Here is his first encounter with a woman and the place where his hormones began to get him in trouble.
He was out one day when he happened to see a certain woman. She must have been really something because he fell for her instantly. So he went home and told his parents about this beauty. There were a couple of problems with his presentation. First of all, she was a Philistine. Israelites hated Philistines and even God considered them to be unclean. The faithful man was to have nothing to do with foreign women, especially if that man was a Nazirite like Samson, especially if a man was given special status in God’s sight to be a faithful servant, especially if wine, women, and song were off limits.
The second problem was that Samson was having trouble with the fourth commandment: Honor your father and your mother…” It doesn’t seem, to me at least, that honoring your father and mother allows you to make demands on them. Samson didn’t tell them that he met this really pretty girl and, boy, would he like to get to know her better. That’s not what he did. He came home and said, “I saw a Philistine woman…now get her for me...Get her for me, because she pleases me.” Combine a sense of entitlement with raging testosterone, and that is what you get.
So he married the woman, but it didn’t last. He got angry with her one day and gave her to one of his best friends; a guy who had been his best man. Apparently you could do that back then. After awhile, he decided that he wanted her back, so he went to her home to fetch her. Too late for that, he was told by her father. Samson had given her away and so now she was married to this other guy.
Samson was mad and driven to revenge. He caught three hundred foxes, tied torches to their tails, and set them loose in the grain fields of the Philistines. The Philistines were, understandably I think, pretty miffed about that, and so they put both the girl and her father to death. Then they came after Samson, captured him, tied him up, and were ready to kill him.
The only consequence of tying Samson up was that it made him mad. He was able to break the cords with which he was bound and then went on a killing spree, slaughtering a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey. All of this happened because he couldn’t control his passions around a beautiful woman. He forgot about his upbringing. He forgot about his vow. He forgot about his place in God’s plan. He forgot about his own faithfulness to God. It looks to me like he thought that women were there just for the pleasure of men. Their well-being didn’t count. They were there only to please and serve men. He followed his hormones, and the result was tragedy.
The sixteenth chapter of Judges opens with a scene in which Samson is in Gaza. While there, he visited a prostitute. Again, the old hormones got hold of his brain and short-circuited the wiring. His pursuit of woman number 1 turned out to be a disaster. His contact with woman number 2 drove him further from his holy vows. And then he met Delilah.
Delilah was the third woman in a row who as outside the acceptable bounds of respectability for a Nazirite like Samson. She too, was a foreign woman, a Philistine. Her name means “flirtatious” and he began a dance with this woman, quite unlike anything else we have ever witnessed.
The Philistines, who had long been after Samson, came to Delilah and promised to make her rich if she could tell them the source of his strength, and how to overpower him. So begins this really strange dance, or sparring match, or tease.
She asked him what made him so strong and what it was that would make him weak enough to be bound. He said that if he were bound with seven fresh bow strings, he could be defeated. So she got her hands on seven fresh bow strings and tied him up. All of this sounds a little creepy to me, they continued their dance. When the Philistines came to take him away, he quickly and easily broke free of his bindings.
It seems to me that most normal guys would be getting some sort of clue that something is indeed rotten in Denmark. But then, this is Samson. Apparently the payoff of being with a beautiful woman was better than admitting to himself that she might be up to no good. Then Delilah pouted.
I’ll admit that I don’t have much experience with a lot of women because Toni and I have been a couple since high school. But I think I would have begun to wonder what was going on at this point. Delilah said that he was mocking her when he didn’t tell her the truth. It becomes pretty clear that her motives are less about loving him, and more about the new chariot she can buy with her blood money.
So he told her that if he were tied up with seven new ropes that had never been used, then his strength would leave him and he could be captured. So she tied him up with the seven ropes and, just like before, they could not hold him.
Delilah pouted some more, complaining that he was continuing to mock her by not telling the truth. So Samson told her that if her hair was weaved into a tight web, then he would become weak like ordinary men. But once again the hair weave failed to take away his strength.
Delilah then turned up the heat by using the big “L” word. She wanted to know how he could pretend he was in love with her when he wouldn’t tell her his deepest secrets. My intuition tells me that Samson was in lust and not in love, and his lust was making him stupid.
She kept nagging him. Day and night, she nagged and pouted and cried. Finally he told her the truth. He said that the secret of his strength was found in his hair. If his hair was cut, then he would be defenseless. This proved to be true. She gave him a haircut and the Philistines burst in the door. They took him captive, gouged out his eyes, and put him to slave labor.
If you were paying attention to your Sunday School lessons when you were a kid, you will remember that after awhile, his hair began growing back. When they tied him up between two pillars of their Temple, his strength returned and he was able to pull the building down, killing not only himself, but everyone else in the place. Thus ends the story of Samson, who had judged Israel for twenty years.
So what do we say about our Bad Boy Samson? He was a man of dubious moral character. He chose time and time again, to disobey and disregard the vows of purity under which he lived. He thumbed his nose at God and thought that he could do so with impunity. He was utterly and completely clueless in regards to the real intentions of Delilah. Or maybe he was just so controlled by his emotions and by his physical desires, that he is blinded to reality.
In the final act of his earthly life, he continued to exhibit the one overarching theme of the rest of his life: his incredible selfishness. His feat of pulling down the Temple was accomplished as much for revenge on the Philistines than it was for the deliverance of him or his people. Judges 16:28 says, “Lord God, remember me and strengthen me only this once, O God, so that with this one act of revenge I may pay back the Philistines for my two eyes.”
I’m having some trouble with Samson. I’m having trouble finding some redeeming qualities. I’m having some trouble finding a lesson in his life that can benefit us. But in the end, Samson’s story is so much more about God than it is about him.
Samson’s final request of God was to have his strength restored. The fact that God granted this wish is an act of incredible patience and grace on the part of God. Throughout his life, Samson frequently and repeatedly forgot about God, but God did not forget about him.
If ever there were a truer representation of II Corinthians 4:7, I don’t know who it would be. Paul says in his second letter to the church at Corinth, “But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.”
In the end, the story of this Bad Boy is a story of hope and a statement of grace. It is a story about the ability of God to work wonders regardless of our intentions and actions. In the season of Lent, we are assured that God continues to work in our midst on our behalf. As we work through our sins, God holds before us the promise of the empty tomb of Easter.
Let’s face it. We can be an awful lot like Samson. We can disregard God, forget God, look the other way, and fail to respond to God’s overtures of love. Our passions often get in the way of obedience and faithfulness.
The hymn “Amazing Grace” is such a wonderful testament of God’s love. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” This amazing grace is the centerpiece of Lent.
God refused to give up on Samson. God refused to give up on the Israelites. The good news for us is that God also refuses to give up on us. Out of the ashes of Lent, my prayer is that you find redemption and healing in God’s grace that will not let us go.