So he told her his whole secret. He said to her, “No razor has ever touched my head, because I’ve been a nazirite for God from the time I was born. If my head is shaved, my strength will leave me, and I’ll become weak. I’ll be like every other person.”
18 When Delilah realized that he had told her his whole secret, she sent word to the rulers of the Philistines, “Come one more time, for he has told me his whole secret.” The rulers of the Philistines came up to her and brought the silver with them.
19 She got him to fall asleep with his head on her lap. Then she called a man and had him shave off the seven braids of Samson’s hair. He began to weaken,[d] and his strength left him. 20 She called out, “Samson, the Philistines are on you!”
He woke up from his sleep and thought, I’ll escape just like the other times and shake myself free. But he didn’t realize that the Lord had left him. 21 So the Philistines captured him, put out his eyes, and took him down to Gaza. They bound him with bronze chains, and he worked the grinding mill in the prison.
22 But the hair on his head began to grow again right after it had been shaved.
23 The rulers of the Philistines gathered together to make a great sacrifice to their god Dagon and to hold a celebration. They cheered, “Our god has handed us Samson our enemy!” 24 When the people saw him, they praised their god, for they said, “Our god has handed us our enemy, the very one who devastated our land and killed so many of our people.” 25 At the height of the celebration,[e] they said, “Call for Samson so he can perform for us!” So they called Samson from the prison, and he performed in front of them. Then they had him stand between the pillars.
26 Samson said to the young man who led him by the hand, “Put me where I can feel the pillars that hold up the temple, so I can lean on them.” 27 Now the temple was filled with men and women. All the rulers of the Philistines were there, and about three thousand more men and women were on the roof watching as Samson performed. 28 Then Samson called out to the Lord, “Lord God, please remember me! Make me strong just this once more, God, so I can have revenge on the Philistines, just one act of revenge for my two eyes.”[f] 29 Samson grabbed the two central pillars that held up the temple. He leaned against one with his right hand and the other with his left. 30 And Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” He strained with all his might, and the temple collapsed on the rulers and all the people who were in it. So it turned out that he killed more people in his death than he did during his life.
31 His brothers and his father’s entire household traveled down, carried him back up, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. He had led Israel for twenty years. (Common English Bible)
“The Philistines are Upon Us: The Sea People’s Impact in God’s Word,” Week Four
The Boston Marathon is one of the pinnacles of long-distance running (or so I am told by people who actually do long-distance running). It’s known now for the terrorist attack several years ago, but it is the sort of thing professionals and amateurs alike spend months training and then qualifying for.
It most certainly is not a race you would do all that for just to exit eight miles in. But one exceptionally talented runner in last year’s Boston Marathon, Megan Roth, had no choice: she went into sudden cardiac arrest and collapsed right there on the pavement. She doesn’t even remember it—her memories first pick up with the ambulance.
A pair of fans who were both nurses and were there cheering along the side of the road leaped in to help. Then, a pair of marathoners stopped—they were a paramedic and a physician, both competing. They took over until on-duty paramedics could arrive at the scene.
I want to consider what was given up in those moments for what was gained. A woman’s life was saved. She gave up her marathon dreams in spite of being talented enough to run a sub-2:45 marathon. Then, think about the two marathoners who stopped to help—the paramedic and the physician. That was a choice they made. Like the travelers did in the parable of the Good Samaritan, they could have kept going. But they chose to stop.
And I think that choice boils down to a basic moral reality: would you rather say you shaved several minutes off your personal best time, or would you rather have saved another person’s life? The former may be in harmony with yourself, but the latter is at harmony with others and ultimately, with God.
This is a new sermon series for a new year, and it represents a labor of love on a topic I had been hoping to preach on for a while, and I think now is an especially relevant moment to scratch that proverbial itch: the cataclysmic impact of the Philistines upon ancient Israel in the Tanakh, or Old Testament.
You are likely already familiar with the Philistines, one of the Sea Peoples, as the martial opponents of famed Biblical heroes like Samson and David. What I always found interesting about the Philistines is how they seem to quite literally show up on Israel’s shores one day, wreak absolute havoc, and then we essentially never hear of them again.
So, much like in the song (forgive me) Cotton-Eyed Joe, we ought to ask of the Philistines, where did you come from and where did you go? These, I think, are important questions not simply for the sake of ancient history, but for the sake of the themes the stories of the Philistines evoke, of God’s providence and guidance in the face of overwhelming adversity that materializes seemingly overnight. I see in all of that echoes of the circumstances of our pandemic, as covid-19 materialized in just a few short months and has been a lethal threat to the world ever since. Questions around God’s grace and care in that circumstance are more than warranted, they are vital, and so I think the stories of the Israelites and the Philistines can act as a Biblical mirror of sorts for our own selves.
We will stay with it through February, by spending time with the Samson and David narratives, in which the Philistines figure prominently. Last week we read the angelic heralding of the birth of Samson, and this week we jump to the other bookend of Samson’s life and narrative: his capture and death at the hands of the Philistines.
I could do an entire sermon series just on Samson—just go verse-by-verse through his story—because it is dramatic and compelling stuff. He is not merely an unthinking killing machine, he is able to best others with his riddles and thinks of his parents even as he disobeys their edicts. Samson, as with so many people in both the Bible and life, is not one-dimensional, even if one thing—his strength—defines him.
But his strength was a means, not an ends. As the angel proclaimed at the start of the Samson narrative, the ends was to deliver Israel from the Philistines. And—I believe this is an irreplaceable step in understanding Samson’s story—Samson failed completely, despite sacrificing his life so that he could kill thousands of Philistines in the end.
Because the Philistines do not go away. As we shall see over the next three weeks, the Philistines are as much a terror during the tenures of the remaining judges as well as during the reign of the first king Saul, so much so that Saul is defeated decisively by the Philistines at the end of 1 Samuel. If the ends of Samson’s divine strength was to deliver Israel from the Philistines, Samson failed in that.
If the means which defines Samson is his strength, then the ends that must define him is not deliverance, but tragedy. Samson may be a hero, but he is at best a tragic hero. He may serve God’s purposes, but it is not so much because of his piety as it is a result of his selfishness. At every turn, Samson is determined to do what he wishes, whatever anybody else close to him may think. He thinks of himself frequently and firstly, even in death. His desire at the end is not for Israel, but for himself—he wants revenge for his eyes. And in fairness to Samson, if that were done to me I would want to see some sort of justice meted out too. But even in death, Samson’s thoughts are with himself, not the nation he was sworn to deliver.
And that—that above all else—is why Samson cuts a tragic figure. His strength may define him, but so do his choices, and his choices to the very end were about himself, in spite of his nazirite vows. By the end, those vows seem almost transactional: God, you give me this strength, and I’ll use it. But our relationship with God cannot be reduced down to a transaction, as C.S. Lewis argues in one of my favorite passages from Mere Christianity:
People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, “If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.” I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all you innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning into this central thing into either a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature, a creature that is at harmony with God and with other creatures and with itself or…(not).
This is the fundamental tragedy of Samson: he dies with the Philistines, and when he does, is he in a state of harmony with anyone or anything? His hair grows back, and in that is the good news that God never fully, irreversibly left him. But does that mean Samson is dying in full harmony with God? Is he dying in harmony with the people around him? No, they torture and taunt him, and he kills them in return. Is he dying in harmony with himself? No, that which has been his great divine gift is now the tool with which he takes his own life. What a profound, gut-wrenching tragedy.
And there are so many layers to that tragedy: that Samson lived under foreign military occupation, that despite his strength he could not end that occupation, that he was betrayed and tortured and that he did not simply die the way he lived, but that his choices added up to this moment. He fought the Philistines mostly for himself, and he dies with the Philistines mostly for himself—for his eyes.
Even more so than his strength, Samson’s choices defined his life and certainly his death. Even more so than our God-given talents and gifts, whatever they may be and however we may have cultivated them, our choices, including our choices of how to use our gifts, define us. That choice of the nurses, paramedic, and physician to use their gifts to save a life at the Boston Marathon does, I think, define their goodness much more than whatever their personal best time may be.
Who are we acting for in our lives? Ourselves, or God? Ourselves, or one another? Ourselves, or the world entire? When we cannot see beyond ourselves, then no matter how strong we are, we are consigning ourselves to dying with the Philistines, out of hope and out of options. Lewis names those three levels of harmony—with God, with others, and with ourselves—and we tend to be best at, and care most about, that third. Truthfully, I think it is a big reason why so many of us are experiencing pandemic fatigue now—we decided long ago for ourselves, for our wants and desires, rather than for the common good and here we still are.
And I cannot begin to imagine how much that must pain God. God, in divine omniscience, can see all the possibilities, anything that can happen, from the very worst to the very best, while knowing that because our ability to dictate ourselves decision by decision, choice by choice, only one outcome of the many will ever take place. And as with Samson, it is often not the best outcome.
The good news here is that it does not have to be this way. We do not have to consign ourselves to dying with the Philistines. If last week’s sermon represented a rock bottom for Israel in its occupation by the Sea Peoples, then the way onward and upward from that hole is through the choices we make for God to be in harmony with God, for others and to be in harmony with others.
And when such harmony is rediscovered, with our creator, with our neighbors, with ourselves, may it be as fiercely strong as the nazirite son of Manoah.
By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson
Birmingham, Alabama
February 6, 2022