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Amen. Please turn within your Bibles to Judges chapter 16, beginning at verse 23. Now the Lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon, their God, and to rejoice. And they said, ‘Our God has given Samson, our enemy, into our hand.’ And when the people saw him, they praised their God, for they said, ‘Our God has given our enemy into our hand, the ravager of our country who has killed many of us.’
And when their hearts were merry, they said, ‘Call Samson that he may entertain us.’ So they called Samson out of the prison, and he entertained them. They made him stand between the pillars. And Samson said to the young man who held him by the hand, ‘Let me feel the pillars at which the house rests, that I may lean against them.’
Now the house was full of men and women; all the Lords of the Philistines were there, and on the roof there were about three thousand men and women who looked on while Samson entertained. Then Samson called to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes.’
As Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, he leaned his weight against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other. And Samson said, ‘Let me die with the Philistines.’ Then he bowed with all his strength, and the house fell upon the Lords and upon all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life.
Then his brothers and all his family came down and took him and buried him up, and brought him up and buried him between Zora and Eshtal, in the tomb of Manoah, his father. He had judged Israel twenty years. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Father, you have given us your word as a comfort, as a guide, as examples of what to do and what not to do. Help us to see your love and your grace in your word because we know and believe that every word of scripture points to and breathes Jesus. Help us to see him in this, your love and your mercy. It’s in Jesus’ name that we pray. Amen.
Now, I do not think that anybody can really say that Samson’s life was a life well-lived and mean it. Scripture shows us very little that is positive or redeeming about him, his life, or himself as a man. However, more space is given to tell the story of his life in the Book of Judges than any other judge, and Samson was also recalled favorably by the New Testament writer of the Hebrews, being numbered among the faithful saints of God. So where is the good for us to be found?
The true good and value of Samson to the people of God is found here, not in his life but in his death. His death was the one single great moment that the whole trajectory of his entire life had led up to. This here is his great contribution to redemptive history and the salvation of God’s chosen people, not only because of his final action and its immediate consequences, but also because of what his final example teaches us about faith in the Lord.
Samson fulfilled the ultimate purpose of his life in his final moments. They were what he was born for, and it seems clear that in the end he knew that he had done all that the Lord required of him so that now he could die well.
Some indeterminate time after his betrayal by Delilah, after he was blinded, imprisoned, and forced to work as a slave, and after his hair had begun to grow long, the Philistine leaders gathered together to celebrate and rejoice. I mean, certainly the capture of Samson and his humiliation at their hands was part of the reason for their revelry, but it was unlikely to be the only reason. Dagon, the god of the Philistines, was a harvest deity, and it was a very common practice for pagan religions to create a lot of opportunities for their devotees to celebrate their God.
It was an excuse to feast and revel. So since fertility or farming-related gods often had their celebrations following every harvest season, our occasion is almost certainly a good deal of time after Samson’s capture—at least a year or more—because scripture had emphasized that the hair of his head began to grow again.
Now, the celebration may have been an end-of-harvest festival because that would have drawn the great crowd that’s described. It could also have simply been an anniversary event, a celebration and remembrance of their victory over Samson, like how we celebrate Independence Day on every July 4th. Or, even most likely, it was a combination of the two—the harvest and his capture, considering his previous destruction of their crops.
However, the point is that regardless of the specific why, this was such an important event and occasion that an incredibly large crowd came to Gaza and were present there in its temple. They took this opportunity to celebrate their defeat of the great Israelite renegade and terrorist, Samson, and offer praises to their false god, for they said, ‘Our God has given our enemy into our hand, the ravager of our country who’s killed many of us.’
So once the party was in high gear and the people were merry, they summoned the captive Samson to be tormented, humiliated, and paraded before them for their pleasure as a cruel form of entertainment. So they called Samson out of the prison, and he entertained them. They made him stand between the pillars. They placed him up on the dais near the support pillars in the middle of the room. Samson was their center of attention and position so that everyone could see the fallen hero.
But just as pride led to Samson’s downfall, the pride and hubris of the Philistines would also lead to their own collapse. And Samson said to the young man who held him by the hand, ‘Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, that I may lean against them.’ Now to help us better understand what happens next, we are able to turn to archaeology in the historical record.
Now Christians and Jews have been able to understand this story and what happened in a simple manner for thousands of years without it, taking accepting the text description at mere face value without really understanding the why and how of it—how it happened; and this has led to accusations against scripture’s numerical accuracy, suggesting that the numbers were wrong, having been inflated as pro-Israelite propaganda or even arguing against the plausible reality of the story because the limited description of Philistine architecture did not translate well into modern architectural understanding.
But during the mid-20th century, a series of excavations at a site named Tel Casil, which is about 25 miles away from Gaza, where the story takes place, located within the modern-day city of Tel Aviv, uncovered a Philistine temple which matches the description given by scripture here in Samson’s story. The walls of the structure were built of mud bricks that rested atop a bottom layer of sandstone without a foundation. The main portion of the structure was built with a permanently large open area, and along the walls surrounding the chamber were fixed mud brick benches intended for seating.
Near the center was a raised platform, the location for their holy of holies, along with two sets of fixed stone bases for the cedar pillars that would have supported the roof’s weight, further reinforcing the structure’s overall stability. Other structures like residences and administrative buildings were discovered, constructed against the temple’s walls.
The sciences of physics and engineering demonstrate that a freely standing wall will ordinarily be stable, but without a firm foundation, the higher up a wall goes, the greater the likelihood that it will shift and twist just because of its own weight. Joining walls together, creating corners, improves their stability, but it still remains at risk of collapsing under its own weight.
And a walled structure without a roof doesn’t do much good because it offers no shelter. So the addition of a roof increases the wall’s stability against their shifting, but the weight of the roof will cause the upper portions of the walls to bow outwards. External walls alone cannot support a roof because they all just fall down; this is why we have load-bearing walls inside of our homes today.
To lessen the roof’s load and reduce the outward stress upon the walls, in order to preserve their large open interior space, the ancient Philistines did two things. First, they added two load-bearing wooden pillars which supported a central cross beam near the center to hold the roof’s weight, and second, they attached other buildings to the exterior walls to generate a counter stress against the temple walls as those buildings leaned into it.
The engineering success of these architectural practices is what would lead to the great Gothic Cathedrals like Notre Dame, where the flying buttresses hold the exterior walls inward against the weight of the vaulted ceiling and roof. If you’ve ever tried to build a house of cards, these structural forces are why your walls tend to collapse when you try to add a roof.
So much as modern culture used to consider the Christian church as the moral and social foundation for our society, in the case of these Philistines, their religion and temple served as the actual foundation for their city because it literally supported the weight of nearly every building in town.
Now we see how the hubris and pride of the Philistines becomes their downfall. They play Samson in the center of the room, allowing him to rest against the two support pillars. Their terrible enemy, known for his exceptional and extraordinary strength—a man who had once ripped the heavy city gate from the ground and carried it over 30 miles upon his back—was positioned within easy reach of the two posts that supported the entire weight of the structure.
To any reasonable person, that sounds like absolute foolishness. Again, the Philistines believed that Samson’s strength had left him and he was as weak as any other ordinary man. Now the house was full of men and women; all the Lords of the Philistines were there, and on the roof there were about 3,000 men and women who looked on while Samson entertained.
So, you know, that is why I just spent so much time describing the structure and why sometimes a healthy dose of the recovered realia of archaeology can help us to better understand scripture. Because the Philistine temple was crowded and filled with people; it was standing room only for the great Samson show. Everybody who was anybody was there.
But most importantly, scripture tells us that all the Lords of the Philistines were there—each of whom was the leader of a Philistine city-state. The narrator tells us that there are around 3,000 men and women up on the roof enjoying the entertainment, but you need to understand that the roof was not overflow seating; it was priority seating.
Sitting high up on the rooftop, the Philistine elites could enjoy the cool Mediterranean breeze while the common people sweltered indoors. Up on the roof, there was fresh air, cool breezes, open spaces, and light, whereas inside it was dark and hot with stale, smelly, stagnant air. So the people who were up on top were really on top in those days.
And so since this great party was taking place in their temple—someplace where a person would expect all the smells and bells of sacrifice—there was almost certainly a hole in the roof over the center for ventilation. So that is where Samson would have been placed, between these two pillars, standing underneath a large skylight.
Now it should be easier to imagine in your mind’s eye all of those people jam-packed down on the floor level, pushing and shoving one another to get a better view of Samson above them, up on the dais. You can also better imagine all the wealthy and powerful elite gathered around the skylight looking down upon Samson, their enemy.
You can almost hear them hurling insults and obscenities at him, perhaps even throwing food or rocks as each person added to Samson’s humiliation. It was during all of this commotion, this riotous noise of revelry, that Samson prayed to the Lord and called to the Lord, saying, ‘O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes.’
He asked God to remember him. Samson asked God for grace and mercy, not for his own sake, but for the Lord’s sake; that the Lord would remember His divine promises made by covenant and for the Lord to remember His prophecy concerning Samson’s birth, where the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, ‘Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines.’
Yes, Samson asking the Lord to return his strength so that he could get revenge sounds like a rather selfish thing; but Samson’s small act of revenge would be only a small part of the Lord’s vengeance upon those who oppressed his chosen elect people, a part of God’s righteous punishment upon the wicked people that were tormenting Samson and the other Israelites.
See, this is the thing that amazes me most about this story: God answers Samson’s prayer, and the Lord answers him with a ‘yes,’ giving grace and showing mercy to such an undeserving sinner. Yet scripture teaches us elsewhere to not take revenge, that vengeance belongs to God. Jesus teaches us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, and I do not think that Samson’s prayer was very loving towards his enemies, but that is okay. Let me tell you why.
Samson’s prayer is what we call an imprecatory prayer, and the Bible actually contains a great many of them. Around 20 of the 150 Psalms are considered imprecatory. And remember, the Psalms were given to us as templates for prayer and are even meant for us to pray when we otherwise do not have the words.
Listen to part of Psalm 69, a Psalm of David, which reads: ‘Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good; according to your abundant mercy, turn to me. Hide not your face from your servant, for I am in distress. Make haste to answer me. Draw near to my soul; redeem me; ransom me because of my enemies. You know my reproach and my shame and my dishonor; my foes are all known to you. Reproaches have broken my heart so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.
Let their own table before them become a snare, and when they are at peace, let it become a trap. Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and make their loins tremble continually. Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your burning anger overtake them. Make their camp a desolation; let no one dwell in their tents, for they persecute him whom you have struck down, and they recount the pain of those you have wounded.
Add to them punishment upon punishment; may they have no acquittal from you. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among the righteous.’ That certainly does not sound very loving towards our enemies, but there it is, right in our Bible.
How do we explain that? We’re given these examples to remind us that it is okay to get angry, and that it is not sinful when we get angry for God or His people on their account because of the mistreatment of God’s elect, since He is our defender, our fortress, our salvation, and our vindication.
Yes, while Samson prayed for his revenge, he was also praying that the Lord’s vengeance would be met out upon God’s enemies and that his—Samson’s—desire would be satisfied as a part of that. And while Samson did not pray very lovingly for the Philistines, using his blindness as justification, his focus was actually upon the Lord and His glory. Because in the offense against any of God’s people is also an offense against the Lord.
All of their offenses against Samson and against Israel were seen by God, remembered by God, and received as offenses against the Lord Himself. Samson prayed for vengeance; he prayed for vindication. But most especially, he prayed asking for the Lord to act.
So really, Samson was praying for the Lord’s will to be done—not Samson’s will—but also asking that he might take part in that judgment. Notice that Samson did not pray that he might take revenge upon them himself; he prayed that he would be avenged. He acknowledged God as the sovereign Lord. He acknowledged and accepted God as his King and his only Savior, and he finally acknowledged that God was the true source of his strength.
God is the one who would avenge him, and so through Samson, the Lord would enact His vengeance against the Philistines. Samson prayed his prayer in faith, and he asked the Lord for the mercy of His grace. He prayed a true sinner’s prayer—the simplest prayer of all: help.
And he trusted the Lord to answer him, which God surely did. Remember, the scripture tells us the Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth, and that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But they must call on him in faith and truth.
And Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested and he leaned his weight against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other. And Samson said, ‘Let me die with the Philistines.’ Then he bowed with all his strength, and the house fell upon the Lords and upon all the people who were in it.
Note that Samson did not try to bargain with God; he did not offer up his life as a trade for the death of the Philistines. The conclusion of his prayer, ‘Let me die with the Philistines,’ was more of a declaration of his submission to the Lord. It was an expression of his willingness to die with them and sacrifice himself for his people if that was the Lord’s will.
Samson was not some suicide bomber trying to sacrifice his life in order to cause as much chaos, death, and mayhem as inhumanly possible. Instead, he was sacrificing himself and his life to begin the deliverance of Israel from these oppressors. This was not fatalism; it was total acceptance and submission to God’s plan and purpose and an act of love for his people.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone laid down his life for his friends. Then Samson placed his hands upon the wooden pillars and pushed against them with all of his might, first to the right and then to the left. He gave a mighty heave with all the power and force of the Almighty that lay upon his shoulders until the pillars fell, and the weight of the roof and all the people on it caused it to crumble and collapse, dropping everyone all into this pit of their own self-destruction.
They crushed the hapless crowd which was trapped within the temple. Then the walls that had been supported by the roof collapsed inward, burying anyone who might have survived the fall. But the scene of destruction did not stop there, because as the temple was imploding, all the other nearby buildings that were supported by it also collapsed under their own weight, trapping and killing their inhabitants. It was a domino effect.
So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life. Biblical history records for us that Samson killed more Philistines by a sacrificial death than he did during the whole rest of his life. But it was not the quantity of Philistines that made his sacrifice so significant and impactful towards the saving of Israel. It was the quality of those who died. Because this tragic event killed a massive chunk of the political elite in Philistia—the Lords of the Philistines along with their guests, advisors, and retainers.
Samson removed the entire top strata of society in one fell swoop—something which would take a long time to recover from. Samson’s final act had an effect upon the Philistines similar to the effect we would expect if the U.S. Capitol building was destroyed during a State of the Union Address—all of the political elites, the movers, shakers, influencers, and deal-makers were completely removed from the picture.
Then his brothers and all his family came down and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zora and Esther, all in the Tomb of Manoah, his father. He had judged Israel twenty years. Samson was given an honorable burial in the family tomb. He was laid to rest with his ancestors, and ever since his memory has been remembered favorably by God’s people.
While the many sins of his life might have been redeemed by his death, because of the commendation we find in the letter of the Hebrews, we expect and believe that his soul was also redeemed and justified before the Divine judgment seat by Jesus Christ, because of Samson’s faith and his trust in the Lord—all according to the grace of God alone.
Now, apart from the loose, easy, simple, and clear Christ-like understanding of Samson sacrificing his life in order to deliver God’s people Israel, what does the conclusion of his story teach us about ourselves, our God, and our relationship with Him?
First, we’re reminded that it is okay to pray for the Lord to judge and punish the wicked, to take vengeance upon His enemies—the enemies of His chosen people. But what is not okay is for us to take and claim that authority and right for ourselves to judge them in His name.
Samson prayed that justice would be done—the Lord’s justice against the wickedness of the Philistines. Justice for his blindness, and for all their offenses against Israel. And in praying for justice, he also showed his willingness to accept justice for his own sins.
Second, we’re reminded that we need to be engaged in prayer with our Lord. We need to ask Him for whatever we need in each and every circumstance. However, when we pray for God to give us something, then we also need to act in faith.
I do not suggest anything like the false name-it-and-claim-it prosperity gospel, but we cannot just sit here and expect Jesus to give us whatever we need if all we do is sit and wait for it. God does not help those who help themselves, but we still need to do something because God works through us or other people to achieve His purposes. So we must act in faith; we must act out of our faith and demonstrate our trust in the Lord’s good providence, confident that He is going to answer us.
Samson prayed, but he could not know whether, if or how God had answered his prayer until he pushed against the pillars. So whenever we pray for God’s help, we also need to demonstrate our willingness to act, even at our own personal cost, sacrificing our wealth, our health, and even our lives, trusting God like Abraham trusted him when he was called upon to sacrifice Isaac—trusting that the Lord would repay and restore us far more than we might ever lose in this life or the life of the world to come.
Third, and finally, we are reminded and encouraged to consider the foundation for our life and all the things that we erect to support it. The Philistines were a wicked and sinful pagan people, but they made their religion the firm foundation of their life and society, both figuratively and literally. Like most other pagan cultures, their whole society revolved around their many religious festivals because everything in life was believed to be somehow connected to the gods: Bring in the harvest, have a feast; invoke a god before going out to battle, have a feast and invoke a god; win the battle, have a feast and invoke a god; lose the battle, have a feast and invoke a god; whenever someone is born or someone dies, have a feast and invoke a god.
But then Samson came onto the scene and disrupted all of their regular religious routines. And since their religion really only served themselves because their idols were false gods, Samson needed to be silenced or destroyed. The Philistines became obsessed with him and placed him at the center of their religion. But then, after they had captured him, tortured, and humiliated him, he tore down their foundations, shook up their entire world, and everything false came crashing down around them.
That is precisely what Jesus and the Holy Spirit do to each and every one of His elect. The old language of evangelism explosion would talk about how we need to get off of our own throne—that false kingly deity whom we worship in our idolatry of self—giving over to Jesus and accepting Him as the only Lord over our life. We need to place Him at our center. But when we finally do, we try to only add Jesus to our life rather than make Him our life.
Allowing Jesus Christ into the temple of our heart is a start for us, but really, we need to give Him the keys. Jesus will shake the foundations of our false worship and idolatry. He will tear down the temples that we build to our own glory and replace them with His temple for His glory. At the moment when we first answer Christ’s call and we welcomed Him in, our temples were corrupted, dilapidated, disgusting, and falling apart because of all our past sins, wickedness, and unrighteousness.
But since we are now a temple of the Holy Spirit, Jesus will knock down every pillar that supported our previous worldview, our identities, desires, religiosity, relationships, and more until the temple that previously housed all of our countless idols becomes a collapsed ruin. Then Jesus and the Holy Spirit rebuild our heart; they clean up the whole mess and haul the trash away, even as we keep trying to rescue things from the demolition dumpster.
Jesus changed the locks to keep the evicted idols out, and then we begin to trust Him as He holds onto the keys of our heart. And so they will continue rebuilding our temple until it is finally and perfectly reflects the image of Christ and until it is pleasing to His eye, because God dwells there together with us.
This is the process we call sanctification, and every Christian will experience it. Some of us need more; while some of us might need less. Sometimes it happens quickly, but sometimes it is a long and laborious process. Sometimes it does not feel like any progress is being made, and sometimes we believe that we cannot get any better.
The point is that everyone who claims Christ and is claimed by Him is being sanctified, and the process will not be completed until the last curtain is pulled back and we cross the final veil. Then, and there, Jesus will bring us to live with Him in glory because He has lived with us in our humility and humiliation of life.
So what are the foundational pillars that your life is built upon? Is it Jesus Christ? I hope so, because He is the only foundation which cannot ever be shaken. I ask you to consider how has He shaken or toppled those other pillars in your life? Have you spent more of your time helping Him with the new construction, or are you busy dumpster diving?
Giving sovereign control of your heart and your life to Jesus is the ultimate act of submission and surrender that we can do. To do so, we must be willing to die to ourselves in order to live for Christ and His glory. Samson surrendered himself to God and was willing to die to himself for God’s glory and the Lord’s work of deliverance for Israel. Are you willing to do the same?
Samson was not seeking his own glory by his death because earthly glory is of no value to the dead. Yet he was honored afterward because he sought God’s glory and the good of God’s people. So if we live in a like manner, living for God’s glory by everything that we do—even when it requires the sacrifice of our own particular wants and desires and will likely include our own humiliation—then we must also believe and hope to be exalted and glorified with Christ in the life to come.
So pray the prayer of faith and then act out of your faith. Do all things for God and His glory. Live by faith and die by faith. Believe that our Father in heaven will commend you alongside of all the saints, because then you will have achieved your part in His purposes. Amen.