Sermon Bible Commentary
Judges 13:25
(with Judges 14:6; Judges 16:20; Hebrews 11:32).
If we inquire where the great strength of Samson lay, three answers exist; one in the Old Testament; one in the New Testament; another in the newest testament of all the current life of our own day.
I. The first response brings us face to face with God. The historian of the Judges traces Samson's power, by one single and swift step, to Jehovah, and credits his marvellous triumphs to the mighty and immediate movements of the Divine Spirit.
II. What is attributed to God directly and at once in the Old Testament, is set down to the credit of Samson's "faith" in the New, and accordingly this Divine hero takes his place in the long roll-call of conquering believers, along with Abel and Abraham, Jacob and Joseph, Deborah and David.
III. Looking at Samson in the full blaze of all the lights that shine on human character in the making, what is the answer yielded to the demand, "Tell me where thy great strength lieth?" (1) He was born in an elect home, and belonged to a devout and consecrated family stock, and had been dedicated to God from his birth. (2) Samson's Nazarism must have exercised an incalculable power upon his mind, and fixed in the "porcelain" of his nature the faith that he had a supreme work to do for God and was responsible to Him. (3) Samson's natural cheerfulness was one of the sources of his strength. (4) The urgent need of his people provoked and stimulated Samson's faith, as his vow had inspired it. (5) The teaching of Samson's fall is, that nothing external, though it be the purest and best, can enable us "to keep the heights the soul is competent to gain." God, and God alone, is sufficient for continuous progress and final victory.
J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living,p. 97
The lesson taught by Samson's life is that spiritual men are not free from the temptations common to man, and the very eagerness and impulsiveness of some men render them specially liable to fall.
I. The life of Samson is a witness to God's Spirit from beginning to end.
II. We see from Samson what a priceless possession is the gift of an independent spirit in thinking and acting, such as the Judge in Israel displayed among his fellow-men.
III. Samson's fall is a picture of everyday experience, when a spiritual man yields to the lusts which war within him and enslave him if they prevail against him.
C. E. Searle, The Cambridge Review,Oct. 21, 1885.
(with Judges 8:21).
I. The tradition and idea of Samson always associates him with strength, but it was rude, animal energy. Samson belongs to the same age as Gideon, probably also to the same age which Homer has sung.
II. This rude type of strength was sacramental and Divine. Even in the wildest deeds of Samson's career, there is the teaching of another and higher strength. Rude as he was, and primeval as was his age, his strength was in the name of the Lord, which made heaven an earth.
III. We speak of typical men, representative men. Is such language permissible as applied to Samson. Here the words of Hengstenberg may be quoted: "Samson was the personification of Israel in the period of the Judges; strong in the Lord, and victorious over all his enemies; weak through sin, of which Delilah is the image, and a slave to the weakest of his enemies. His life is an actual prophecy of a more satisfactory condition of the people; one more closely corresponding to the ideal which was first to be imperfectly fulfilled under Samuel and David, and afterwards perfectly in Christ."
E. Paxton Hood, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 264.
References: Judges 13:25. S. Wilberforce, Sermons before the University of Oxford,1871, p 72.Judges 14:4. E. Paxton Hood, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 277. Judges 14:8; Judges 14:9. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxix., No. 1703 Judges 14:14. Todd, Lectures to Children,p. 210; Sermons for Boys and Girls,p. 304. 14 Parker, vol. vi., pp. 107, 116. Judges 15:15. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year,vol. ii., Appendix, p. 38. Judges 15:18. Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 21.Judges 15:19. Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 120.