"The Death of the Deliverer"

Judges 16



Who do you identify with in this story?

Think about that as we go through our text this evening!



Introduction: Samson in Gaza (16:1-3)

These three verses are enigmatic.

There are many questions that emerge from this text.

Why does Samson go to Gaza?

(It is the Philistine city furthest south-furthest away from his home)

Why does Samson get up at midnight?

(Does he know that there is an ambush?)

Why do the Philistines not notice that Samson is leaving?

(carrying the gate of their city on his shoulders, no less)

And why does Samson carry the gate to Hebron?

(rather than his own home town)



Our author does not explicitly answer these questions.

In fact, our author provides no interpretive glosses at all.

There is no reference to the Spirit of the LORD.

There is no comment as to what God was doing.

But this is because the point should be clear by now.

Samson is in Gaza because he is drawn to Philistine women.

He is wandering further and further from home to fulfill his lusts.

But that is not the only reason Samson is in Gaza.

Samson's reason for being in Gaza is not an honorable one.

But God's reason for having Samson in Gaza is to foreshadow what is coming.

1) Gaza is where Samson will die

but 2) Samson's carrying the gates to Hebron foreshadows

the connection to David, who ruled in Hebron for 7 years.

Gaza may (for a time) triumph over Samson,

but the gates of Gaza will fall before David, the one who finishes what Samson started.



But why do the Gazites fail to notice that Samson is walking off with their city gates?

Who says they failed to notice?

Some scholars think that God put all of them to sleep.

But that is nowhere suggested in the text.

The text suggests that they were sitting quietly waiting for him.

So they saw him, all right.

And no doubt, as he approached the gate, they gripped their weapons,

ready to attack.

But then, rather than lift the bar and unlock the gate,

Samson just lifts up the gate.



Sure, maybe nowadays we'd say, "huh, he's carrying the city gates away,"

and then attack him;

but in those days they believed in things like divine power.

They've heard stories of what happens to people who attack Samson.

Maybe they would have been willing to attack him

if he had simply tried to walk out the gate,

but when he picks up the city gate, posts, bar and all,

and nonchalantly walks forty miles to Hebron,

the Gazites decide that this is not a fight they can win!

If Samson killed 1,000 men with the jawbone of a donkey,

imagine how many he could kill with a city gate!



1. The Betrayal of the Deliverer (16:4-22)

My explanation of the reaction of the Gazites is confirmed by verse 5.

The lords of the Philistines have given up on attacking Samson.

Direct attack doesn't work (1,000 dead)

Ambushes don't work (their men are too terrified to attack Samson,

because he seems to know that they are there.)

So they decide to go back to the only method that seems to work against Samson.

Blackmail or bribe the women in order to get Samson to reveal his secrets.

Now Samson loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek.

Delilah is the only woman named in the Samson narrative.

Not his mother

Not his wife

Not the prostitute

but Delilah-which may mean "flirtatious one" or "of the night"



Who was this Delilah?

Was she a Philistine or an Israelite?

We don't know.

But she lived in the valley of Sorek,

which would include both Philistine and Israelite populations.

But the contrast is clear.

Samson was just up on the hill in front of Hebron.

But he will not remain on the heights.

He will "go down" once again into the lands dominated by the Philistines.



But did you notice the verb?

Samson "loved"

In the case of the Timnite, Samson "saw"

In the case of the Gazite prostitute, Samson "saw"

but with Delilah, Samson "loved."

It's tempting to say that this is an improvement!

He is not merely following his eyes, but his heart!

But his heart is as misguided as his eyes.

And he entrusts himself to a woman who is not trustworthy.

She will sell the man who loves her for 5500 pieces of silver.



The lords of the Philistines refer to the rulers of the 5 cities of the Philistines.

Samson has become "public enemy #1"

and the rulers of the five cities will stop at nothing to eliminate him.

So they offer 1100 shekels apiece in order to learn the secret of his strength.

30 shekels was the price of a slave (Ex 21:32)

Abraham purchased a burial plot for 400 shekels of silver

5500 shekels is an extravagant amount of money

But Samson is an extravagant problem.

The betrayal of Samson points us in contrasting ways to the betrayal of Jesus.

The deliverer of Israel is betrayed by a kiss.

But here it is the kiss of the woman he loves-

there it is one of his chosen disciples.

The betrayer is lured by the clink of silver.

Here it is a royal ransom-

there it is but the price of a slave.



Three times Delilah coaxes and wheedles, and gets Samson to tell her the "secret" of his strength.

And in each episode Samson is toying with Delilah,

but moving ever closer to the brink of disaster:

Three times Samson lies, telling her that the secret is

that he must be tied with fresh bowstrings

or that he must be bound with new ropes

or that his hair must be woven together

(already he is getting dangerously close to the truth).

Each time she has Philistine soldiers lying in ambush,

but they never reveal their presence.

As far as Samson knows,

this is just a game.

This man is both extraordinarily powerful and extraordinarily stupid.



In his love for this woman he is blind.



Once again, the coaxing and wheedling are too much for Samson

(Read verse 15)

Like his Timnite wife, Delilah insists that his love for her depends upon the truth.

His wife had sought the answer to his riddle.

Delilah now seeks the answer to the riddle that is Samson.

If you love me, then tell me your inmost heart.



She's right, of course.

The problem is not that Samson tells the woman he loves about his secret.

There was no requirement of secrecy in the Nazirite vow.

The problem is that Samson loves the wrong woman.



And so she pressed him hard with her words day after day, and urged him,

until his soul was vexed "to death."



"To death" is an apt way of putting it!



And so he reveals all his heart to her.

Read verse 17.



He had violated all the other parts of his Nazirite vow.

Only one was left.

And now he jeopardizes his calling all because of his misplaced love.



But Delilah sees that he has told her all his heart.

The lords of the Philistines had asked her to "Seduce him, and see where his great strength lies"

Now she sees.

The verb is not accidental!



Now the lords of the Philistines come with their money,

and Delilah has Samson sleep on her knees.

Once again "sweetness" has triumphed over strength,

and the most powerful man in Israel's history

is proven to be a weakling in the hands of a woman.

Once his head is shaved Delilah begins to torment him.

This is the same word she had used in verse 6-

"How you might be bound that one could subdue (or torment) you"

She had been up front with her agenda!

He is subdued, and his strength left him.



Some have wondered, how could he sleep through all these episodes.

Whether being tied up, having his hair woven, or having his hair cut,

was this a normal sleep, or did God put him to sleep?

The text is not especially interested in this question.

The point is that Samson was unafraid.

He slept soundly because he had always woken up in time.

Who cares what is going on-the LORD is with him-right?

God gives to his beloved sleep! (Ps 127:2)

He sleeps secure because he has no fear.



When Delilah again wakes him saying "the Philistines are upon you"

he said, "I will go out as at other times and shake myself free,"

but he did not know that the LORD had left him.



Yes, it is by his own folly that the LORD had left him.

But while foolish in so many ways, Samson here reveals what is to happen to our Lord.

The LORD had left him.

We hear in Samson the anguished cry "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Seized by his enemies, bound in shackles, humbled and humiliated,

the one who was to deliver Israel is brought low.

The way of deliverance is the way of the cross-

the way of suffering, the way of weakness.

And in Samson's weakness, the power of God is revealed.

Humiliation must precede exaltation.



Samson is indeed humbled.

His eyes are gouged out-a fitting punishment for one who did what was right in his own eyes-

one whose eyes had led him to this pass.



Once again, Samson is the embodiment of Israel.

In those days Israel had no king, everyone did what right in his own eyes.

God had warned them of the result of this attitude.

In Dt 28:28 God said that if they did not obey his voice,

"The LORD will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind"

Samson represents the nation.

The covenant curse has come upon the deliverer-

and even so, it will come upon the nation.

Like Samson, the nation will be seized, blinded, exiled, imprisoned,

and humiliated with forced labor.

But this is not the end of the story-

because once again, "the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved."

Why should this matter?

He had broken the last remnant of his Nazirite vow.

Why does it matter that his hair is growing again?

Was his hair magical?

As his hair grows, so grows his strength?





2. The Death of Deliverer (16:23-31)

To understand this, we must turn to the final episode in our story.

Samson has been transferred to Gaza-the southernmost city in Philistia-

perhaps to move him as far away as possible from any that might try to rescue him.



And they have a great feast-a great sacrifice to Dagon their god, to rejoice over the capture of Samson

And they claim that "our god has given our enemy into our hand,

the ravager of our country, who has killed many of us."

In the midst of the worship of Dagon and their celebration over Samson's demise,

they call Samson to "entertain" them.



The now blinded and nearly bald Samson is led out to entertain the people.

He asks to be led to the pillars, so that he may "lean against them."

Some commentators point to the self-centered focus of Samson's prayer:

"O Lord Yahweh, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God,

that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes."

And sure, Samson remains the flawed redeemer.

There is no sinless Savior until you get to Jesus!



But do not dismiss the prayer of this humbled deliverer.

He knew that death was near him.

The Philistines would not keep him around forever,

and he knew that having broken the last requirements of his Nazirite vow,

his days as a judge in Israel were over.

In his life God had used his folly to begin to save his people from the Philistines.

Now, possibly for the first time in his life, he acts by faith.

He has no promise from God that God will hear his prayer.

Indeed, the most likely outcome will be that the Philistines will see him pushing in vain

against the pillars of their temple-and they will laugh and mock him for his impotence.



Hebrews 11:32-34 tells us that by faith the judges and the prophets

"conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,

quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword,

were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war,

put foreign armies to flight."

Samson stopped the mouth of a lion, became mighty in war, and put foreign armies to flight.

And in some sense, that was by faith.

But the premier act of faith in Samson's life, was when he was made strong out of weakness.



Would God hear the prayer of this miserable failure of a judge?

Would God listen to the cry of a man who was called to be the deliverer of his people,

but who had spent his whole life chasing after foreign women?



Humbled and contrite,

Samson now says "let me die with the Philistines."

He lays down his life-yes, with a certain amount of selfishness and pride-

but nonetheless, in faith.

And through his death he kills more than he had killed in his life.



Conclusion

Who are you in this story?

I hope you are not the Delilah-betraying the Deliverer of Israel for the wealth of this age.

I know you are not Samson-the bumbling deliverer, redeemed in the end.

I trust you are not the Philistines-unbelieving, uncircumcised and hostile to the God of Israel.

Who are you?

You are Samson's brothers.

Samson had brothers?

We haven't heard anything about them through all this narrative.

Only at the end, after their elder brother is dead,

do we discover that the barren woman had more children.

Manoah's wife was barren.

The promise was that she would have one son.

But God then blessed her with more.

And these brothers appear at the end of the story to bury the one who had "begun"

to deliver Israel from the Philistines.

They had not stood with him in his life,

but they stood with him in his death.

While he lived, they hid from the Philistines-

they would not follow him into battle against the enemies of God.

But when he died, then they owned him as their brother.



Jesus's brothers deserted him too.

His disciples-those whom he had just called "friends"-fled when

the "Philistines" came to crucify him.

When the chief priests played the part of the lords of the Philistines,

and Jesus was called to come and "perform" for Herod, Pilate, and the priests,

no one stood with him.



You are the brothers of the deliverer.

Abandoned in death, alone and deserted-without any sign from heaven that he was heard-

yet God did not forsake his anointed one.

And in his death he destroyed more of his enemies than he ever could have in his life!



But unlike the brothers of Samson,

your elder brother did not remain in the grave.

And Jesus's strength did not die with him.

In his last act of laying down his life,

he destroyed not just the lords of the Philistines,

but all the powers that held you captive.

Sin, death and the devil have been overthrown,

and now you have been set free to live as becomes the children of God-

no longer hiding in terror from your enemies,

but walking boldly and openly as the people of God,

shining brilliantly as lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.



We may march down into the strongholds of the enemy,

we may enter into Gaza, to the ruined temple of Dagon-

not to pick up the dead body of our elder brother-

but to proclaim his triumph over his and our enemies.

It is the resurrected and living Jesus that goes before us,

and in his might we proclaim the defeat of the gods of the nations.