Samson was a son of Manoah, a Danite, and Manoah’s unnamed wife. When Israel again did evil in God’s sight, God gave them into Philistine hands for forty years. God’s messenger appeared to Manoah’s wife, who had been unable to have children, and announced that she would bear a son. During pregnancy she was not to drink wine or strong drink or eat anything unclean, and no razor was to touch the child’s head. He would be a Nazirite dedicated to God from the womb and would begin to save Israel from the Philistines.
Manoah prayed for the messenger to return and teach them how to raise the child. The messenger appeared again and repeated that the woman should observe the earlier instructions. When Manoah offered food, the messenger told him to present a burnt offering to God and ascended in its flame. Manoah feared that they would die because they had seen God, but his wife reasoned that God would not have accepted the offering or announced these things if he intended to kill them. She bore a son and named him Samson. He grew, God blessed him, and God’s spirit began to stir him.
At Timnah Samson saw a Philistine woman and told his parents to obtain her as his wife. They asked whether no woman among his own people would do, but Samson insisted that she pleased him. Judges explains that his parents did not know the matter was from God, who was seeking an occasion against the Philistines. On the road to Timnah a young lion charged him. God’s spirit came powerfully upon Samson, and he tore it apart with his bare hands. Later he found bees and honey in the carcass, ate some, and gave some to his parents without telling them its source.
At the wedding feast Samson posed a riddle to thirty Philistine companions. If they solved it within seven days, he would give them garments; otherwise they would give garments to him. Unable to find the answer, they threatened Samson’s wife and pressured her to discover it. She wept and urged him until he explained, then told them. Samson said they had solved it by using his wife. When God’s spirit came powerfully upon him, he went to Ashkelon, killed thirty men, and supplied their clothes as payment. He returned angrily to his father’s house, and his wife was given to a companion from the feast.
When Samson returned with a young goat, his father-in-law said that the woman had been given away and offered her younger sister instead. Samson caught three hundred animals described as foxes or jackals, tied them tail to tail in pairs, placed torches between their tails, and burned Philistine grain, vineyards, and olive groves. After learning why, the Philistines burned the woman and her father to death. Samson retaliated fiercely and stayed in a cleft at Etam. Afraid of Philistine revenge, three thousand men of Judah bound Samson and handed him over. As the Philistines shouted, God’s spirit came upon him and the ropes broke. He killed one thousand men with a fresh donkey’s jawbone.
After the battle Samson became very thirsty and cried out to God. God split a hollow place so that water came out, and Samson revived after drinking. Judges says that he judged Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines. His strength, however, did not produce settled government or the full expulsion of Philistine power. He repeatedly acted through personal conflict and retaliation while their rule continued. The account records both his extraordinary strength and the activity of God’s spirit, while leaving visible the results of strength used amid anger and desire.
Samson went to Gaza and entered the house of a prostitute. The people waited at the city gate through the night to seize him, but at midnight he tore out the gate doors, posts, and bar, carried them on his shoulders, and took them to the top of the hill facing Hebron. Later he loved a woman named Delilah in the Valley of Sorek. The Philistine rulers each promised her eleven hundred pieces of silver if she discovered the source of Samson’s strength and how to overpower him. Delilah repeatedly asked how he could be bound.
Samson first lied that seven fresh bowstrings would weaken him. Next he named new ropes never used for work. Then he said that the seven locks of his hair should be woven into the fabric on a loom. Each time Delilah cried that the Philistines were upon him, and Samson snapped the bonds or pulled his hair free. She pressed him with her words day after day until he finally disclosed everything: no razor had touched his head because he had been dedicated to God from the womb, and shaving him would take away his strength.
Delilah summoned the Philistine rulers again. She let Samson fall asleep on her knees and had a man shave the seven locks of his head. Samson awoke expecting to escape as before, but he did not know that God had left him. The Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes, took him to Gaza, and bound him with bronze shackles. He ground grain in prison. The hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved. The Philistine rulers held a great sacrifice to their god Dagon and celebrated, saying their god had delivered their enemy.
The people brought Samson out to entertain them and stood him between the temple pillars. About three thousand men and women watched from the roof. Samson asked the boy guiding him to let him feel the supports. He prayed that God would remember him and strengthen him once more so he could avenge his two eyes. Grasping the two central pillars, he asked to die with the Philistines and pushed. The temple collapsed on the rulers and crowd. He killed more at his death than during his life. His brothers and family recovered his body and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. Samson’s life includes not only a promised birth and astonishing strength, but also violence, betrayal, captivity, revenge, and death.