Judges 13:9

Judges 13:9

The name Zorah means "the hornet's nest." It was a village of the tribe of Dan on a crag of the spur of a long mountain chain, high up amidst the cliffs. The place had a fame for the powers of mischief it possessed in sheltering or in sending forth the foes of those who were the enemies of Israel.

I. Look first, at the country of Samson. Dan was the extreme northern point in the territory of Israel. It was the last retreat and fastness of the Philistines. The sea-coast bordered on the Mediterranean. The country was fruitful, and remarkable for its rivers, especially the river Eshcol. Its people were wild, crafty, and cruel; they were in the immediate neighbourhood of that Phoenicia whose cruel idolatries and gross naturalism proved so often fatal to Israel. Samson was the most celebrated man of the tribe of Dan.

II. Notice the family of Samson's parents. In Zorah, the village on the cliff, there lived a Danite farmer and his wife. To this household went the Divine message a pious, holy, prayerful household; we may be sure we should find they were afflicted in the afflictions of Israel. The entire story of the parents shows a pious and devoted pair, characterised also by simplicity and fear on the part of the man, and a fine spiritual shrewdness on the part of the woman, and in both by the desire to receive and obey Divine instructions.

III. Look at the circumstances of Samson's education, and consider how strong men are made. A rigid abstinence was to be the material conservatism of strength, training alike body and mind to be the vehicle of spiritual power, and compelling the inference that strong men are made by the education they receive, by their lessons in abstinence and self-denial. A strong man is characterised by two things by the purpose of his life, and the strength he brings to bear upon it.

IV. Glance at the age of Israel in which Samson was born. There was Providence in the rise of Samson. The Book of Judges gives us the story of a very disordered state of Israel's history; the record of Israel during a period like that of our Heptarchy or like the annals of the kings of Rome; yet a distinct mark and thread of Divine purpose and plan of government runs through it, as through any other period or epoch of the story of the peculiar people. God watches over the lives of states and the lives of men.

E. Paxton Hood, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 241.

Reference: Judges 13:12. Parker, vol. vi., p. 168.