Judges Chapters 13-15

13:4-5 - The Nazerite vow is typically a voluntary vow that lasts for a specified period of time. God is calling for Samson to be a Nazerite for his entire life. It is also interesting to note that the angel has to tell the mom not to eat unclean food...this means she is not keeping the food laws. It gives us a little clue about how far the people of God have fallen. Where the judges were once being called from God honoring families...God now has to make due with people who don;t even really honor Him.

13:8 - We see that Manoah lacks faith...he doesn't believe his wife and has to see for himself. (Kinda reminds me of Gideon and the fleece incident) Just another clue about how faithless the parents of Samson are, which may be an indicator of why he turns out to be one of the worst judges as we will see later.

13:15-17 - Here we see Manoah actually trying to manipulate God by manipulating the angel God has sent. First he trues to get him to stay for dinner, which in their culture would have meant that God "owed" Manoah, so that Manoah could cal in the chips later to get what he wanted. The angel will have nothing to do with being manipulated, he says, "Why don't you make a sacrifice to God?" God followers always trying to bring focus back to God! Next we see Manoah tries to know the name of the angel. In the ancient near east, they believed that if you knew the real name of a god, you would have power over that god. Manoah is trying again to manipulate and again the angel will have none of it.

13:24 - How crazy are these people? After meeting the angel of the Lord, they still don't have enough faith to give Samson a traditional, God-honoring Hebrew name. They name him Samson after the Canaanite sun god. God really shows patience and mercy with this family!

14:4 - Samson demands a foreign bride, even after his parents try to persuade him to look for an Israelite bride. He is such a far cry from Othniel the greatest of the judges. Othniel lived to honor God and married a God-honoring woman. Samson lives only for himself and lusts after foreign women his entire life. He is controlled by his lust, and God chooses to work His plan out through Samson's shortcomings.

14:6 - Nazerites are not supposed to touch anything dead. If a Nazerite ever accidentally came in contact with something death (Like by killing a lion while defending themselves), they would have to go to the tabernacle and go through a cleansing ritual that would take 8 days. Samson is to preoccupied with his lust and his own agenda, so instead of doing what was right, he just doesn't tell anybody.

14:9 - He is even so sick as to take other people down with him...he feeds his parents unclean food from a corpse!

14:17 - Samson gives in to lust and finds out where his future bride's loyalty really lies. He is blinded by lust, so he cannot see that she does not love him and that he deserves better from a marriage partner.

14:18 - Clever way to say - YOU CHEATED! People just don't have that kind of creativity in their arguments anymore!

14:19 - Samson reacts out of anger and violence purely to meet his own needs. He is not fighting for God's people or for freedom...his is fighting because the men cheated him out of a bet. God chooses to use Samson for his own ends, but this is not an example of God-honoring behavior.

15:4ff - Again, he reacts out of vengeance and anger and he completely destroys the Philistine economy.

15:8 - Revenge is now in full swing. Samson tells the men a riddle they cannot solve, so they get his wife to tell them. He reacts by killing 30 men. They react by marrying off his wife to somebody else. He reacts by destroying their economy. They react by killing his wife and father-in-law. Samson reacts by mercilessly slaughtering them (great blow, hip and thigh - means great slaughter). Violence begets violence and revenge begets revenge. None of this is ever done out of motivation other than revenge, so there will be no end to this cycle.

15:15- 16 - Even when he fights, Samson uses an unclean object as a weapon - he cares absolutely nothing about his vow and nothing about honoring God. Let's compare him to Shamgar. Shamgar's motivation was to save Israel - Samson was revenge. Shamgar honors God with his victory - Samson honors himself (see his victory poem - no mention of God). Shamgar uses a clean weapon - Samson use a dead body part. Samson never even acknowledges that God is with him.