Lent 2025 Day 10: Sat 15 Mar
Judges 15:1-8
15 Later on, at the time of wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat and went to visit his wife. He said, ‘I’m going to my wife’s room.’ But her father would not let him go in.
2 ‘I was so sure you hated her,’ he said, ‘that I gave her to your companion. Isn’t her younger sister more attractive? Take her instead.’
3 Samson said to them, ‘This time I have a right to get even with the Philistines; I will really harm them.’ 4 So he went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs. He then fastened a torch to every pair of tails, 5 lit the torches and let the foxes loose in the standing corn of the Philistines. He burned up the shocks and standing corn, together with the vineyards and olive groves.
6 When the Philistines asked, ‘Who did this?’ they were told, ‘Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law, because his wife was given to his companion.’
So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father to death. 7 Samson said to them, ‘Since you’ve acted like this, I swear that I won’t stop until I get my revenge on you.’ 8 He attacked them viciously and slaughtered many of them. Then he went down and stayed in a cave in the rock of Etam.
Before Samson became judge Israel had been punished by God to forty years of submission to the Philistines. Samson was a very special person. He’d been promised by God through an angel to his parents and had been placed under a vow of abstention from unclean food and fermented drink.
Although we are told that God blessed him and God’s Spirit stirred him it seems that he had what I might call unfortunate attractions towards Philistine women. However, this is what desired of him to enable him to get close to the enemy.
Our reading above shows how fractious relationships were between Samson and the Philistines. There were a number of skirmishes, and Israel relied on this man of superhuman strength to champion them in battle.
His weakness for women would become his downfall.
Why would God choose such a volatile person as Samson?
Father God, you do move in mysterious ways. Give us faith to trust in the mystery of your ways rather than in the human wisdom of our own. Amen.
36:40 Ich will hier bei dir stehen (Choral)
17. Chorale
I will stay here with you,
do not scorn me!
I will not leave you,
even as your heart breaks.
When your heart grows pale
at the last stroke of death,
Then I will hold you fast
In my arm and bosom.
Ends at 39:35
Paul