Samson was an Israelite judge dedicated to God as a Nazirite who fought the Philistines. He was the son of Manoah, a Danite, and his wife. After Israel did evil in God’s sight, God gave them into Philistine hands for forty years. The LORD’s angel appeared to Manoah’s wife, who could not have children, and announced that she would bear a son. She was not to drink wine or strong drink or eat anything unclean. No razor was to touch the boy’s head. He would be dedicated to God from the womb and begin to save Israel from the Philistines.
Manoah prayed for instruction about the child. The angel returned and told him that his wife must observe the earlier commands. When Manoah offered food, the angel told him to present a burnt offering to God instead. As its flame rose, the angel ascended in it. Manoah feared they would die because they had seen God. His wife replied that God would not have accepted their offering or given these promises if he intended to kill them. She bore a son and named him Samson. God blessed him as he grew, and the LORD’s Spirit began to move him.
Samson saw a Philistine woman at Timnah and asked his parents to obtain her as his wife. They asked why he would not marry among his own people, but he insisted that she pleased him. Judges says they did not know the matter was from the LORD. On the journey to Timnah, a lion appeared. The LORD’s Spirit came on Samson, and he tore it apart with his bare hands. Later he found bees and honey in its carcass. He ate some and gave some to his parents without telling them where it came from.
At the wedding feast, Samson gave thirty companions a riddle. If they solved it within seven days, he would give them thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothing. Otherwise they would give him the same. They threatened to burn his wife and her father’s house unless she obtained the answer. After she wept and pressed him, Samson told her, and she passed it on. He said they had found the answer through his wife. The LORD’s Spirit came on him, and he killed thirty men at Ashkelon and took their clothes to pay his debt. He returned angrily to his father’s house, and his wife was given to another companion.
When Samson returned with a young goat, his father-in-law said the woman had been given away and offered her younger sister instead. Samson caught three hundred foxes, tied them tail to tail in pairs, and placed a torch between each pair. He set the torches alight and released them into Philistine fields, burning the gathered and standing grain and olive groves. When the Philistines learned the reason, they burned the woman and her father to death. Samson took revenge, killing many, and stayed in a cleft of the rock at Etam.
The Philistines encamped in Judah to seize Samson. Three thousand men of Judah went to him, saying the Philistines ruled them and they had come to hand him over. Samson obtained a promise that they would not kill him themselves. They bound him with two new ropes and brought him out. At Lehi, as the Philistines approached, the LORD’s Spirit came on him and the bonds fell away. Samson picked up a fresh donkey’s jawbone and killed a thousand men.
Very thirsty, Samson cried out to God. God opened a hollow place at Lehi, and water came out. Samson drank and revived. The spring was named En Hakkore. Judges records that he judged Israel for twenty years during the Philistine era.
Samson went to Gaza and visited a prostitute. The people waited at the gate to kill him at dawn, but at midnight he pulled out the gate doors, posts, and bar and carried them on his shoulders to the mountain before Hebron. Later he loved Delilah in the Valley of Sorek. Each Philistine ruler offered her eleven hundred pieces of silver to discover the source of his strength and how to bind him.
Samson first told Delilah that seven green cords which had never dried would weaken him, but he broke them after she bound him. Next he named unused ropes and broke those too. The third time, he told her to weave the seven locks of his hair into fabric on a loom. She did so and called that the Philistines were upon him. He woke and pulled out the pin and fabric. After she pressed him daily until he was deeply troubled, he disclosed that he had been a Nazirite from the womb and shaving his head would take away his strength.
Delilah summoned the Philistine rulers, who brought the money. She made Samson sleep on her knees and called a man to shave his seven locks. Samson expected to escape as before but did not know the LORD had left him. The Philistines seized him, put out his eyes, took him to Gaza, and bound him with bronze fetters. He ground at the mill in prison. His hair began to grow again.
The Philistine rulers celebrated with a great sacrifice to Dagon, saying their god had delivered Samson. The people called him from prison to entertain them. The rulers and crowd filled the building, while about three thousand men and women watched from the roof. Samson asked the boy holding his hand to let him find and lean on the pillars supporting the building.
Samson asked God to remember him and give him strength once more to avenge the loss of his eyes. Holding the two middle pillars, he said he wished to die with the Philistines and bent with all his might. The building fell on the rulers and people. He killed more at his death than he had during his life. His brothers and father’s household recovered his body and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol at Manoah’s burial place.