The Strongest Man

Again the children of Israel did what was evil before the Lord, and for forty years the Philistines ruled over them. In a town called Zorah there lived a man named Manoah, and his wife had never been able to have a baby. And a messenger of the Lord came to her out in the field and said, “You have never had a child — but you are going to have a son. Be careful now: drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean. For the boy will belong to God from the day he is born, and no razor is ever to touch his head. And he will begin to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.” She ran and told her husband, “A man of God came to me! He looked like a messenger of God — I was almost afraid of him. I did not ask where he came from, and he did not tell me his name.” And Manoah prayed and asked God to send the man again, so that they would know what to do for the boy. And God listened, and the messenger came back. And Manoah said to him, “What is your name, so that we can give you honor when your word comes true?” And the messenger said, “Why do you ask my name? It is wonderful.” And Manoah brought an offering and laid it on a rock; and as the flame went up toward heaven, the messenger of the Lord went up in the flame of the altar. And Manoah and his wife fell on their faces on the ground, and they never saw him again. And Manoah was frightened and said to his wife, ‘We shall surely die — we have seen God.’ But his wife said, “If the Lord had wanted us dead, he would not have taken our offering from our hands, and he would not have shown us all this, and he would not have told us such things.” And she had a son, and she called his name Samson. And the boy grew, and the Lord blessed him, and the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him.

Samson grew up to be the strongest man anybody had ever seen — and his strength was not really his own. His long uncut hair was the sign that he belonged to God, and it was God’s Spirit that made him strong. One day, walking down to a town called Timnah, he came through a vineyard, and a young lion came roaring out at him. And the Spirit of the Lord came on him, and he took hold of that lion with his bare hands, the way another man might handle a young goat — and he never told his father and mother what he had done. And a while later he came back that way and turned aside to look at the place where the lion had lain — and a swarm of bees had made their home there, and it was full of honey. So he scooped it out in his hands and ate it as he walked, and gave some to his father and mother, and did not tell them where it came from.

Some time after that, at a feast, Samson said to thirty Philistine men who were there, “Let me give you a riddle. If you can tell me the answer in the seven days of the feast, I will give you thirty fine linen sheets and thirty sets of clothes. But if you cannot, then you will give them to me.” And they said, ‘Give us your riddle. We are listening.’ And Samson said, “Out of the eater came food. Out of the strong came something sweet.” For three days they could not work it out — because nobody in the world knew about the lion and the honey but Samson himself. So they went to Samson’s young wife and frightened her into finding out the answer. And she cried and begged him for the whole seven days, until at last he told her; and she told her own people. And on the seventh day, just before sundown, the men came to him and said, “What is sweeter than honey? And what is stronger than a lion?” And Samson said, “If you had not plowed with my young cow, you would never have found out my riddle.” And he paid them what he had promised. But he was burning with anger, and he went home; and while he was gone his wife’s father gave her to somebody else. So Samson caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs with a torch between every pair, and set the torches alight and let the foxes loose in the Philistines’ standing grain, and the whole harvest burned — the fields, the sheaves, the vineyards and the olive trees. And the Philistines paid it back on his wife and her father, and killed them. And Samson paid that back too. That is how it went: hurt for hurt, and each one worse than the last, until nobody could remember who had started it. And from that day there was war between Samson and the Philistines, and every time they came against him the Spirit of the Lord came on him and he was too strong for them.

Once the Philistines came up in a whole army just to catch him, and three thousand men of Judah came to the rock where Samson was hiding and said, “Do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? What have you done to us?” And they tied him up with two brand-new ropes and led him out to hand him over. And when the Philistines came shouting to meet him, the Spirit of the Lord came on Samson, and the new ropes on his arms went soft like burnt string and fell off his hands. And he caught up the jawbone of a donkey lying on the ground, and with that one bone he beat a thousand men, and the rest of them ran. And afterwards he was so thirsty he thought he would die, and he called out to the Lord, “You have given this great rescue by the hand of your servant — and now am I to die of thirst?” And God split open a hollow place in the ground there, and water came out of it, and Samson drank, and his strength came back to him. And he was Israel’s judge for twenty years.