Day 95 - April 05, 2025

Judges 15-17 Reflection:

Samson's wife is given over to his "best man" by her father to be spiteful against him. He then tries to bargain with Samson and offer her younger sister to him. All this over a riddle the Philistines couldn't solve. Both parties were wrong in this situation. Samson because he gave them an impossible riddle to be boastful (only he had witnessed the things God had done for him) and the Philistines for turning their frustration into cruel vengeance. Samson caught 300 foxes and tied torches to their tails then released them to burn both the stacked/gathered and standing grain, and their olive orchards. He burned their resources and in return they burned his wife and her father. Seems only fair right? Samson retreated to a cleft in a rock and took refuge there but then 3,000 men from the tribe of Judah came to bind him and deliver him to the Philistines lest they also suffer some fate at their hands. He allowed himself to be bound and delivered to the Philistines. When he arrived there the Lord set him free from his bindings and he struck down a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey. Samson judged Israel for 20 years after the Lord redeemed him for his actions. But Samson once again fell short and slept with a prostitute which made him known in Gaza.  After this he fell in love with a woman named Delilah who later learned the source of his strength from the Lord and was shorn of his hair through her seduction and deception. Many times she had tried and failed but she insisted he didn't love her if he continued to lie about his weakness. Delilah didn't love him and preyed on his vulnerability to find the way to disarm him for money. This betrayal led to him being defeated. The Lord had left him in his foolishness to suffer. They gouged out his eyes and enslaved him to work in a prison mill and to be like a jester to entertain them. He sought to bring vengeance upon them and pleaded to the Lord who returned his strength momentarily to bring down the house upon him and the Philistines.