Samson's Plea
24 The woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew and the Lord blessed him, 25 and the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him while he was in Mahaneh Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol. (Judges 13:24 - 25)
The book of Judges presents the ever compelling story of Samson, from chapters 13 to 16. A man who was given extraordinary strength by Yahweh so that he may drive out the Philistines, his fall would come at the hands of his wife, Delilah. Stripped of his power and left to his last resort, he prays to the Holy One of Israël: “Sovereign Lord, remember me. Please, God, strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines” (Judges 16:28). He would proceed to destroy the Philistines one last time with his dying act. But what can the youth of today learn from Samson?
There are many lessons that can be taken from the story of Samson; one of the most important being that of listening to the commandments that Yahweh gave. The Lord gave specific instructions to his parents for him to live by (Judges 13:3 - 5, 14) and it can be deduced that by the fact that he hadn’t lost his power before, that he had never transgressed those commandments before. God wants all of his children to keep His commandments (1 John 5:3a). However, as easy as the Bible says they are to follow (1 John 5:3b), the temptation is there to make people fall and sin (James 1:13 - 18) - sometimes they succumb, just as Samson did.
Samson fell when he started loving Delilah, a Philistine woman that he had met (Judges 16:4). She would ask for the source of his strength and Samson would lie to her every time; she’d discover the lies once she betrayed him to her fellow Philistines and his strength was still there (Judges 16:5 - 15). While he would reveal his secret and be arrested by the Philistines once they cut his hair, the important lesson to be learned is the importance of Yahweh in decision-making. Samson knew of the Lord and of what he was capable of doing, but decided to go about it alone - when he fell for Delilah, spoke to Delilah and revealed his secret. Yahweh gave us freedom (Galatians 5:13), but we can not walk alone without Him, or we will fall (2 Corinthians 4:9).
But what stands as the legacy of Samson’s plea isn’t just the story that stands before it, but the precedent that it creates. By the time Samson was chained and imprisoned, he understood that he needed Yahweh to accomplish his destiny and defeat the Philistines (Judges 16:28). It is the same thing for all of us; we will fall, but we need to be able to acknowledge that we need the Holy One to do what He called us to do. We need Him to guide us away from danger and bring us into His holy plan, or else we are doomed to failure.