Judges 16 - A Sign of Things to Come

Judges 16 concludes the saga of Samson.  It's one of the most striking and dramatic stories in Scripture.  As I noted in my last entry, Samson's character has been a source of debate.  Some have called him arrogant and, though physically strong, spiritually weak, and some have even claimed he could not have been a judge of Israel.  But there wouldn't be four chapters of Scripture devoted to someone so flawed if there weren't a larger reason for us to know his story.  Yes, he did have weaknesses, as all humans do, the saints included, but his strengths and feats were so astounding that only a supernatural explanation makes sense.  God clearly chose Samson, as He chose all the judges and the prophets.  Samson's mission was to deliver his people from bondage, in much the same way Moses or Joshua did.  Even as Jesus has done!  And here we get to Samson's ultimate significance.  He pre-figured the Christ in as awesome a fashion as we find in Scripture.  From his miraculous birth to his being besieged by tempters to his sacrificial death.  That death, described in chapter 16, shows Samson at his most powerful.  He had undergone a period of penance after the weaknesses and even sinfulness of his time with Delilah.  He was imprisoned, his eyes gouged out, and he reemerges a man intent on doing God's will:  "O Lord God remember me, and restore to me now my former strength, O my God, that I may revenge myself on my enemies, and for the loss of my two eyes I may take one revenge" (Judges 16:28).  God answers his prayers and Samson destroys the building and all the thousands of Philistines in it.  And so Samson's story ends.  He's a remarkable figure, some even saying he is actually the inspiration behind Hercules (the similarities are quite striking, from the killing of the lion to being ultimately betrayed and undone by a woman).  But it's as a sign pointing towards things to come that Samson becomes something more than just an intriguing historical figure.  Jesus's destruction of the enemy and his freeing of humanity from the bondage of sin didn't play out in the same sort of material, physical sense that Samson's acts did, but what we will eventually see in the New Testament was far more dramatic on the cosmic stage.  Samson's story is a lesson, an example, in material terms that we can understand, so that we may have some grasp of Jesus's even more miraculous and powerful acts in saving us.  Samson may have lifted the gates of the earthly city of Gaza, but Jesus opened for all mankind the eternal gates of heaven.