Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Judges 16:20
And she said, The Philistines [be] upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he knew not that the LORD was departed from him.
20. the Lord was departed from him ] Cf. 1Sa 18:12; 1Sa 28:15-16. The unshorn locks were the secret of his strength, and these were a sign of consecration to Jehovah; so long as he preserved them the Lord was with him. For any exceptional feat, however, he needed a special access of Jehovah’s spirit; Jdg 13:25, Jdg 14:6; Jdg 14:19, Jdg 15:14, Jdg 16:28. Such seems to be the extent of the religious idea in the story.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The possession of his extraordinary strength is ascribed (e. g. Jdg 13:25) to the presence of the Spirit of the Lord. Now the Lord, or the Spirit of the Lord, had departed from him, and so his strength had gone too. The practical lesson against the presumption of self-dependence, and the all-importance of a hearty dependence upon Gods Holy Spirit, must not be overlooked.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
He awoke out of his sleep, and said within himself, i.e. he purposed and attempted it.
Shake myself, i.e. put forth my strength to crush them, and to deliver myself.
He wist not; being not yet well awake, and not distinctly feeling the loss of his hair, or not duly considering what would follow upon it.
The Lord was departed from him; in respect of the strength and help he had formerly given him.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
20. he wist not that the Lord wasdeparted from himWhat a humiliating and painful spectacle!Deprived of the divine influences, degraded in his character, andyet, through the infatuation of a guilty passion, scarcely awake tothe wretchedness of his fallen condition!
Jdg 16:21;Jdg 16:22. THEPHILISTINES TOOKHIM AND PUTOUT HISEYES.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And she said, the Philistines be upon thee, Samson,…. In like manner as she had before, that she might have full proof that the case was really such, that his strength was gone from him:
and he awoke out of his sleep; upon the cry she made: and said; within himself, purposing and determining in his own mind:
I will go out as at other times before; as he had done at the three former times, and did not meet with any Philistines to fall upon him, and so concluded it would be the case now, and he, if he did, should be able to defend himself against them:
and shake myself; that he might be thoroughly awake, and be on his guard and defence:
and he wist not that the Lord was departed from him; might have forgot what he had told Delilah of, and knew not what had been done to him, that his hair was shaved off; or if he did, was not sensible that the Lord had removed from him; but might hope that he would renew his strength, when he should stand in need of it; but he soon found his mistake; he was quickly taken by the Philistines, and ill used, and in a little time lost his life. And from hence it is thought sprung the story of Nisus, king of the Megarenses, who is supposed to reign about this time; of whom it is reported h, that the hair of his head was of a purple colour, and was told by the oracle, that so long as that was kept on he should be safe, but if it was shaved off he should die; and so it was, that when the Cretians besieged him, his daughter falling in love with Minos, the king of the Cretians cut off her father’s hair, and so both he and his country were delivered into the hands of the enemy.
h Pausaniae Attica, sive, l. 1. p. 33. Ovid Metamorph. l. 8. Fab. 1.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(20) And he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.A deeply tragic clause. Men do not know how much they are changed when the Lord departs from them until they feel the effects of that departure in utter shame and weakness. (Comp. Num. 14:43; 1Sa. 16:14.) Samson was under a vow, but was, alas! too weak to resist the current which ran counter to his vow, particularly when he had come to rely on the mere external sign of it. For his strength was in no sense in his hair, but only in the dedication to God of which it was the symbol.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
20. Shake myself Alluding to his former shaking himself loose from fetters. She perhaps bound him in some way to ascertain if his strength had left him, and, not readily breaking himself loose, he proposes not to embarrass himself with apparently vain efforts in her presence, but to go out and do it. In the confusion and drowsiness of the time he was not conscious of the awful fact that the Lord was departed from him, and before he fully realized it he was a hopeless captive.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘ And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson,” and he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times, and shake myself ”. But he did not realise that Yahweh had departed from him.’
Again she alerted him to the Philistine presence, and again he was unconcerned. What did it matter if they were there or not? He realised that his hair had been cut off, but what had changed? A quick shake and all would be well. What he failed to recognise was that he had lost not only his hair but his consecration. In a sense it had already been happening, slowly, but his readiness to allow her to shave his locks was the final fall. He was no longer Yahweh’s man. He no longer had the extra strength provided by Yahweh.
“But he did not realise that Yahweh had departed from him.” This was it. The final departure of Yahweh from his life. This was what his sin, and his continuing arrogance and his final contempt for his vow had brought him to. He had exchanged God for a deceitful woman. But it was really the deceitfulness of sin ( Heb 3:13 ; 2Co 6:18-18; 2Ti 2:21-22). And why did he not realise it? Because he was now so self-sufficient that he did not look to Him for empowering. It was not that he sought but did not find. It was that he no longer sought. It was not only his hair that he had lost, but his whole attitude of consecration. That is why he had not been bothered about his hair.
Samson’s life was a mirror of what had happened to Israel. They too had been dedicated to Yahweh under the covenant. They too had been separated to a holy life. They too had known the Spirit of Yahweh working through them. They too had slowly declined and allowed themselves to drift from the covenant. They had whored after false goddesses. And that was why they were as they were this day, tributaries and servants instead of being the masters.
Sadly someone who reads these words might be in the same situation. Once wholly dedicated to God, and separated to a holy life, experiencing the work of the Spirit, but now having declined, and even having reached rock bottom, being totally enslaved by sin or indolence.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him.
This is a very awful account: the Lord was departed from him, and he knew it not, It is said of Ephraim, that strangers had devoured his strength, and he knew it not: yea, grey hairs were here and there upon him, and he unconscious. Hos 7:9 . When the strong man armed keepeth the house the goods are in peace. Luk 11:21 . Reader! think how deadened to divine things must that man’s mind be, who is unconscious of the Spirit’s withdrawing his influences, feels nothing of the want of quickenings, and regards not the withering state of his soul! Lord! take not thine Holy Spirit from me, ought to be the daily earnest prayer of every one. – Psa 51:11 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
“Handfuls of Purpose”
For All Gleaners
“And he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.” Jdg 16:20 .
This is the saddest of all mental experience. It has its counterpart even in business and in professional life. There are men of business who suppose they are as competent and energetic as ever, whilst those who are looking on observe how great is the decay, and how lamentable the weakness. Men suppose themselves as capable as ever of giving advice in perplexity, yet when they come to counsel the bewildered mind they lose the centre of thought, and miss altogether the purpose which the counsel was intended to serve. We go away from such men filled with a sense of pity. Let us apply the same truth to the religious nature. Note the ghastliness of having a form of godliness without the power thereof. No irony so distressing. A man may use the very words of prayer, and yet may not enter into the spirit of fellowship with God. The picture is that of a man on whose outward appearance no change has been wrought which he himself accounts of any consequence, but within the house of the soul has been stripped of all that was valuable, and is left in emptiness and desolation. A terrible thing it is to bow down in prayer after God himself has forsaken the altar. Cut is it possible for a man to have lost fellowship with God, and yet to be unaware of the loss? All history says that it is possible. Familiarity with certain places and modes and actions may delude the mind into believing that whilst the usage is repeated the spirit is retained. We grow into a species of self-idolatry sometimes without intention, and often without knowledge. How are we to know that the Lord is still with us? Always by the simple test of obedience. But is not obedience itself sometimes a delusive action? Possibly, and therefore we should esteem most highly that obedience which imposes upon us the pain and loss of sacrifice. How does the Lord depart from a man? The intellect is apparently as acute as ever, external offices are fulfilled as punctiliously as before, no blemish is found upon the public reputation, how, then, can God have departed from the man? The mystery lies in the fact of our composite nature: we are body and soul, flesh and spirit, in us there is both time and eternity, dust of the earth and fire from heaven; and, our life being so complex, we do not instantly know when the very centre of life and thought has been changed that is, we go on for a little while by a momentum originally received, but which has no power of self-replenishment, and therefore must die when the original inspiration is withdrawn. Let us not make any religious experiments as Samson did. He got into a mood of speculation and adventure, saying, If you do this or that, I shall be as other men. He did not mean at first to tell his secret, but little by little we are led to the giving up of that which is the very mystery and glory of life. It is infinitely dangerous to tamper with temptation. There may be a kind of pleasure in taunting the Philistines, misleading them, mocking them, and laughing at them in their disasters, but he should be stronger than ever Samson was who ventures to play with the enemy, and to practise tricks and puzzles for the sake of bewildering and annoying them. It is impossible to say when the last temptation may come, or how we ourselves may be tempted to try if in reality our strength lay where we supposed it to lie. The lesson comes back again and again from all quarters, and with a thousand voices “Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.”
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Jdg 16:20 And she said, The Philistines [be] upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him.
Ver. 20. That the Lord was departed from him. ] After which, all miseries came rushing in upon him, as by a sluice: according to that of the prophet, “Woe be unto you when I depart from you”: . When the Godhead withdrew but a while from our Saviour in the garden, and upon the cross, then began his sorrows and sufferings.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Judges
BLESSED AND TRAGIC UNCONSCIOUSNESS
Exo 34:29
The recurrence of the same phrase in two such opposite connections is very striking. Moses, fresh from the mountain of vision, where he had gazed on as much of the glory of God as was accessible to man, caught some gleam of the light which he adoringly beheld; and a strange radiance sat on his face, unseen by himself, but visible to all others. So, supreme beauty of character comes from beholding God and talking with Him; and the bearer of it is unconscious of it.
Samson, fresh from his coarse debauch, and shorn of the locks which he had vowed to keep, strides out into the air, and tries his former feats; but his strength has left him because the Lord has left him; and the Lord has left him because, in his fleshly animalism, he has left the Lord. Like, but most unlike, Moses, he knows not his weakness. So strength, like beauty, is dependent upon contact with God, and may ebb away when that is broken, and the man may be all unaware of his weakness till he tries his power, and ignominiously fails.
These two contrasted pictures, the one so mysteriously grand and the other so tragic, may well help to illustrate for us truths that should be burned into our minds and our memories.
I. Note, then, the first thought which they both teach us, that beauty and strength come from communion with God.
Moses’ experience teaches us that the loftiest beauty of character comes from communion with God. That is the use that the Apostle makes of this remarkable incident in 2 Cor. iii, where he takes the light that shone from Moses’ face as being the symbol of the better lustre that gleams from all those who ‘behold or reflect the glory of the Lord’ with unveiled faces, and, by beholding, are ‘changed into the likeness’ of that on which they gaze with adoration and longing. The great law to which, almost exclusively, Christianity commits the perfecting of individual character is this: Look at Him till you become like Him, and in beholding, be changed. ‘Tell me the company a man keeps, and I will tell you his character,’ says the old proverb. And what is true on the lower levels of daily life, that most men become assimilated to the complexion of those around them, especially if they admire or love them, is the great principle whereby worship, which is desire and longing and admiration in the superlative degree, stamps the image of the worshipped upon the character of the worshipper. ‘They followed after vanity, and have become vain,’ says one of the prophets, gathering up into a sentence the whole philosophy of the degradation of humanity by reason of idolatry and the worship of false gods. ‘They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.’ The law works upwards as well as downwards, for whom we worship we declare to be infinitely good; whom we worship we long to be like; whom we worship we shall certainly imitate.
Thus, brethren, the practical, plain lesson that comes from this thought is simply this: If you want to be pure and good, noble and gentle, sweet and tender; if you desire to be delivered from your own weaknesses and selfish, sinful idiosyncrasies, the way to secure your desire is, ‘Look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.’ Contemplation, which is love and longing, is the parent of all effort that succeeds. Contemplation of God in Christ is the master-key that opens this door, and makes it possible for the lowliest and the foulest amongst us to cherish unpresumptuous hopes of being like Him’ if we see Him as He is revealed here, and perfectly like Him when yonder we see Him ‘as He is .’
There have been in the past, and there are today, thousands of simple souls, shut out by lowliness of position and other circumstances from all the refining and ennobling influences of which the world makes so much, who yet in character and bearing, ay, and sometimes in the very look of their meek faces, are living witnesses how mighty to transform a nature is the power of loving gazing upon Jesus Christ. All of us who have had much to do with Christians of the humbler classes know that. There is no influence to refine and beautify men like that of living near Jesus Christ, and walking in the light of that Beauty which is ‘the effulgence of the divine glory and the express image of His Person.’
And in like manner as beauty so strength comes from communion with God and laying hold on Him. We can only think of Samson as a ‘saint’ in a very modified fashion, and present him as an example in a very limited degree. His dependence upon divine power was rude, and divorced from elevation of character and morality, but howsoever imperfect, fragmentary, and I might almost say to our more trained eyes, grotesque, it looks, yet there was a reality in it; and when the man was faithless to his vow, and allowed the crafty harlot’s scissors to shear from his head the token of his consecration, it was because the reality of the consecration, rude and external as that consecration was, both in itself and in its consequences, had passed away from him.
And so we may learn the lesson, taught at once by the flashing face of the lawgiver and the enfeebled force of the hero, that the two poles of perfectness in humanity, so often divorced from one another-beauty and strength-have one common source, and depend for their loftiest position upon the same thing. God possesses both in supremest degree, being the Almighty and the All-fair; and we possess them in limited, but yet possibly progressive, measure, through dependence upon Him. The true force of character, and the true power for work, and every real strength which is not disguised weakness, ‘a lath painted to look like iron,’ come on condition of our keeping close by God. The Fountain is open for you all; see to it that you resort thither.
II. And now the second thought of my text is that the bearer of the radiance is unconscious of it.
Let us, then, try to lose ourselves in Jesus Christ. That way of self-oblivion is emancipation and blessedness and power. It is safe for us to leave all thoughts of our miserable selves behind us, if instead of them we have the thought of that great, sweet, dear Lord, filling mind and heart. A man walking on a tight-rope will be far more likely to fall, if he is looking at his toes, than if he is looking at the point to which he is going. If we fix our eyes on Jesus, then we can safely look, neither to our feet nor to the gulfs; but straight at Him gazing, we shall straight to Him advance. ‘Looking off’ from ourselves ‘unto Jesus’ is safe; looking off anywhere else is peril. Seek that self-oblivion which comes from self being swallowed up in the thought of the Lord.
And again, I would say, think constantly and longingly of the unattained. ‘Brethren! I count not myself to have apprehended.’ Endless aspiration and a stinging consciousness of present imperfection are the loftiest states of man here below. The beholders down in the valley, when they look up, may see our figures against the skyline, and fancy us at the summit, but our loftier elevation reveals untrodden heights beyond; and we have only risen so high in order to discern more clearly how much higher we have to rise. Dissatisfaction with the present is the condition of excellence in all pursuits of life, and in the Christian life even more eminently than in all others, because the goal to be attained is in its very nature infinite; and therefore ensures the blessed certainty of continual progress, accompanied here, indeed, with the sting and bite of a sense of imperfection, but one day to be only sweetness, as we think of how much there is yet to be won in addition to the perfection of the present.
So, dear friends, the best way to keep ourselves unconscious of present attainments is to set our faces forward, and to make ‘all experience’ as ‘an arch wherethro’ gleams that untraveiled world to which we move.’ ‘Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone.’
The third practical suggestion that I would make is, cultivate a clear sense of your own imperfections. We do not need to try to learn our goodness. That will suggest itself to us only too clearly; but what we do need is to have a very clear sense of our shortcomings and failures, our faults of temper, our faults of desire, our faults in our relations to our fellows, and all the other evils that still buzz and sting and poison our blood. Has not the best of us enough of these to knock all the conceit out of us? A true man will never be so much ashamed of himself as when he is praised, for it will always send him to look into the deep places of his heart, and there will be a swarm of ugly, creeping things under the stones there, if he will only turn them up and look beneath. So let us lose ourselves in Christ, let us set our faces to the unattained future, let us clearly understand our own faults and sins.
III. Thirdly, the strong man made weak is unconscious of his weakness.
But what I desire to point out is an even sadder thing than that-namely, that Christian people may lose their strength because they let go their hold upon God, and know nothing about it. Spiritual declension, all unconscious of its own existence, is the very history of hundreds of nominal Christians amongst us, and, I dare say, of some of us. The very fact that you do not suppose the statement to have the least application to yourself is perhaps the very sign that it does apply. When the lifeblood is pouring out of a man, he faints before he dies. The swoon of unconsciousness is the condition of some professing Christians. Frost-bitten limbs are quite comfortable, and only tingle when circulation is coming back. I remember a great elm-tree, the pride of an avenue in the south, that had spread its branches for more years than the oldest man could count, and stood, leafy and green. Not until a winter storm came one night and laid it low with a crash did anybody suspect what everybody saw in the morning-that the heart was eaten out of it, and nothing left but a shell of bark. Some Christian people are like that; they manage to grow leaves, and even some fruit, but when the storm comes they will go down, because the heart has been out of their religion for years. ‘Samson wist not that the Lord was departed from him.’
And so, brother, because there are so many things that mask the ebbing away of a Christian life, and because our own self-love and habits come in to hide declension, let me earnestly exhort you and myself to watch ourselves very narrowly. Unconsciousness does not mean ignorant presumption or presumptuous ignorance. It is difficult to make an estimate of ourselves by poking into our own sentiments and supposed feelings and convictions, and the estimate is likely to be wrong. There is a better way than that. Two things tell what a man is-one, what he wants, and the other, what he does. As the will is, the man is. Where do the currents of your desires set? If you watch their flow, you may be pretty sure whether your religious life is an ebbing or a rising tide. The other way to ascertain what we are is rigidly to examine and judge what we do. ‘Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord.’ Actions are the true test of a man. Conduct is the best revelation of character, especially in regard to ourselves. So let us ‘watch and be sober’-sober in our estimate of ourselves, and determined to find every lurking evil, and to drag it forth into the light.
Again, let me say, let us ask God to help us. ‘Search me, O God! and try me.’ We shall never rightly understand what we are, unless we spread ourselves out before Him and crave that Divine Spirit, who is ‘the candle of the Lord,’ to be carried ever in our hands into the secret recesses of our sinful hearts. ‘Anoint thine eyes with eye salve that thou mayest see,’ and get the eye salve by communion with God, who will supply thee a standard by which to try thy poor, stained, ragged righteousness. The collyrium , the eye salve, may be, will be, painful when it is rubbed into the lids, but it will clear the sight; and the first work of Him, whose dearest name is Comforter , is to convince of sin.
And, last of all, let us keep near to Jesus Christ, near enough to Him to feel His touch, to hear His voice, to see His face, and to carry down with us into the valley some radiance on our countenances which may tell even the world, that we have been up where the Light lives and reigns.
‘Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye salve, that thou mayest see.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
wist not = knew not. See note on Exo 34:29.
the LORD.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
wist not
Contra, Exo 34:29.
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
Unconscious Loss
And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times, and shake myself. But he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.Jdg 16:20.
Let us look at the text in two ways, first as it applies to Samson, and second as it applies to the Christian.
I
Samsons Loss
The Lord was departed from him.
So God had once been there. His Spirit had dwelt in Samsons heart, and in no small measure. But now God had left Samson. Well, what difference did it make to him? We must look at Samson before and after.
i. Before
1. His consecration.Samson enjoyed a singular privilege, accorded only to one other person in the Old Testament. His birth was foretold to his parents by an angel. Isaac was promised to Abraham and Sarah by angels whom they entertained unawares; but, save Isaac, Samson was the only one whose birth was foretold by an angelic messenger before the opening of the Gospel dispensation. Before his birth he was dedicated to God, and set apart as a Nazirite. Now, a Nazirite was a person who was entirely consecrated to God, and in token of his consecration he drank no wine, and allowed his hair to grow, untouched by a razor. Samson was entirely consecrated to God, and when any saw him, they would say, That man is Gods man, a Nazirite, set apart. Thus Samson grew up in the belief that he was consecrated to God, that there was a definite, divinely appointed work for him to do, and that God would endow him for that work with all the necessary strength. As he grew up, we are told, The Lord blessed him, and the spirit of the Lord began to move him in the camp of Dan.
To consecrate ones life is not necessarily to alter the daily round of duty, but it must fill everythingrecreation as well as workwith a new spirit. And the spirit in which a thing is done makes all the difference between a great and a small action. A room may be swept or scrubbed because it is a necessary part of the days work; or the commonplace task may be turned into a high and glorious privilege, if the heart is thrilled with the wonderful remembrance that Christ is the Royal Guest for whom the room is being prepared.1 [Note: Dora Farncombe, The Vision of His Face, 81.]
2. The heroic in him.What was it that made Samson strong? It was this: He refused to accept the low, degraded religious standard with which his contemporaries were content. The Israelites still believed that they were the chosen people of God, but there was a glaring inconsistency between what they professed to believe and the real condition in which they were. Called to freedom, Gods people they were; emancipated by the power of Joshua, working the will of Almighty God, they were yet in a despicable servitude to the Philistines; they were contentfor the human mind is strangely constructedthey were quite content with that state of things. It did not appear to them any great inconsistency that the people of the Lord, who were in the land which flowed with milk and honey, with all the bright and glorious promises of utter quiet and entire freedom, should yet be the craven slaves of a people with lower morals and grosser religion. Samson refused to ratify the inconsistency that he saw. To him nothing short of harmony between the promise of God and the fact of his peoples freedom would be satisfying. His conviction was a real and an adequate one; it was thisand he held it firmlythat the dominion of God was absolute and irresistible, that the promises of God were true and everlastingly faithful. Without doubt the temptation came to him to accept things as they were, and not to rise to the higher level of truth and integrity; but he cast it from him, and, doing so, became the man of his age, the hero of his race, and the vindicator of Gods truth at that era of the world.
The other Judges were backed by the people: the movement for freedom began with them individually, but the mass of the people rose at their call. But Samson, throughout, fought the Philistines single-handed. He despised their whole collected armies, went down alone into their strongest cities, and when they would shut him in, carried away gates and bars in the grim satiric mood that was his fighting humour; and that was the nearest approach to seriousness the presence of armed enemies could induce. Samson was qualified by his natural gifts thus to stand alone and to hearten the people and give them more courageous and hopeful thoughts. It was not more his great physical strength than the blithe and daring manner in which he used it that impressed the people and solaced the weaker men who could not imitate him. His name, Samson, refers not to his strength, but to his temper. It means Sunny. This was what the people saw in himan inexhaustible joyousness of disposition that buoyed him up in danger and difficulty, and made him seem to the down-trodden people, whose future was clouded and gloomy, as the sun rising upon and cheering them. This joyousness came out in the lightheartedness with which he fought against countless odds; in his taste for witty sayings and riddles; and in the gigantic practical jokes he perpetrated in carrying off the gates of Gaza, and in tying the foxes tail to tail, and sending them through the standing corn with burning brands.
Where consecration is, there will be the realization of Gods presence. We may rely upon it that where one resolutely sets God before the soul as the object of desire, adoration, and obedience, there God will become a living reality. He will reveal Himself without doubt to such, and His presence will come to surround the soul. And there will be joy. That is to say, the sure fruit of consecration, like the fruit of the Spirit, is joy. We do not always regard the matter in this light. We are disposed to speak of the duty of consecrationthe duty of setting apart substance or self to the use and service of God; and it is a duty, the rightful claim of God upon us. What we are apt to forget is that Duty where it is discharged always comes to wear the robes of gladness and is apparelled in celestial light. That is especially true of our duty to God. In keeping His commandments there is great reward.1 [Note: Charles Brown, in Youth and Life, 202.]
And it was not only without the help of the people but in spite of them that Samson had to deliver the land. The Israelites, instead of flocking to Samsons standard and seconding his effort to throw off the Philistine yoke, bound him and gave him into the hands of the Philistines, complaining bitterly that he had brought them into trouble with their masters, and willing to buy peace at the price of Samsons lifejust as the Pharisees said of our Lord: If we let him thus alone, the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation; and subsequently gave Him up bound to the Romans. They would not strike a blow in defence of their own liberty, still less in defence of their champion. These 3000 men of Judah, armed and equipped, stood by as idle spectators whilst Samson burst the bonds they had bound upon him, and, snatching up the only weapon he could see, the jawbone of an ass, fell upon the common enemy, and slaughtered as many as did not flee.
Count me oer earths chosen heroes,they were souls that stood alone,
While the men they agonised for hurled the contumelious stone,
Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline
To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,
By one mans plain truth to manhood and to Gods supreme design.1 [Note: Lowell.]
ii. After
1. The Lord was departed from him. Why? There were two causesan inward and an outward; and, as always, the outward was subordinate to the inward and depended upon it.
(1) The inward cause.It is true that the evolution of moral life in history bids us apply a different standard of judgment to the lives of the heroes of the old-time faith from that which we apply to those of the new. Yet it does not require the neglect or reversal of this principle to see that the life of Samson fell very far short of the moral possibilities of his day and race.
For I have been a Nazirite unto God from my mothers womb. A Nazirite!and what manner of man was he? He was a separated and consecrated man; for this was the law of the NaziriteHe shall separate himself from wine and strong drink; he shall be holy. All the days of his separation he is holy unto the Lord. The vow of the Nazirite was essentially a vow to abstain from fleshly lusts. He was to hold himself pure as Gods instrument; he was not to yield his members unto evil; he was to nurture his life in Spartan severity and simplicity; he was to attain self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, and from that discipline his whole body and soul were to derive strength.
Without any disparagement to the character of Samson, one may fairly say that his keeping of the Nazirite vow had all along been marked by adherence that was letter-perfect rather than spiritually faithful. He had been temperate in the direction of his vow.
Desire of wine and all delicious drinks,
Which many a famous warrior overturns,
He could repress; nor did the dancing ruby
Sparkling, outpoured, the flavour or the smell,
Or taste that cheers the hearts of gods and men,
Allure him from the cool crystalline stream.
But in that direction only. In others he had been weak.
The Nazirite vow, rightly understood, was a divinely-given basis for moral development, a prophecy through outer separateness of spiritual consecration. Nor could any man be said to have drunk of its spirit who rested in the details of ritual, and did not seek to penetrate to its essenceconsecration to God. The consecration of the Scriptures is never a mere separating from something; it is also a separating to something, a shutting-up of a man to God. What poverty of meaning must have been assigned to the words separate unto the Lord, holy unto the Lord, when they could be supposed to be fulfilled by a life admitting of the sensual irregularity of this Hebrew chief!
It was here surely that the seeds of defection were sownin the poor external conception of holiness belonging to the time, above which Samson, although one of the heroes of faith enumerated in the Epistle to the Hebrews, never rose. But at length that defection reached the outward life. And here let us remember that charity bids us think that only a strong and vital spirit of obedience could sustain the burdensome restrictions which the national code laid on the pious Hebrew, and especially upon the Nazirite; so that, however little intelligent grasp of the further purport of the vow there was in Samsons life, there was in the faithful literal observance of it some evidence, conscious as he was of the Divine commission given him, that he was more than a mere ritualist.
(2) The outward cause.When the inner life of honest service was weakened, even the outer conformity to the Divine condition laid upon Samson was not maintained. The thing that seemed within his power, that seemed most easyto maintain the secret of his God-given strengthproved beyond him, and the strong man was ensnared by wiles that would not have caught a child.
It seemed to be a trifle whether a mans hair was to be permitted to grow, or was cut off. In itself it was a trifleinfinitely unimportant. But it was not a trifle in the light of its associations. Samson knew that it was no trifle: he had no mind to betray to Delilah what he knew to be the secret of his strength. Behind the commonest acts in life, it often happens, there cluster infinite issues; a whole moral world may be at stake: heaven or hell may await us behind a deed done, a word spoken, a consent or a refusal,and these petty acts at once become momentous; their importance is measured by their results. What could matter less in itself than whether a man was or was not circumcised? Neither circumcision availeth anything, said the Apostle, nor uncircumcision. But let circumstances change: let it be maintained by a powerful school in Galatia that no Christian can do without circumcision, and the meaning of the act changes too: Behold, I Paul say unto you, that, if ye receive circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing (Gal 5:2).1 [Note: H. P. Liddon.]
2. And what was the result? His yielding meant an immediate loss of power. Could it matter, one might think, whether the head of the Hebrew judge were adorned with locks that hung to his broad shoulders, or were closely shorn? His strength surely lay in his mighty sinew and muscle. But this is just the naturalistic reasoning that misses the Divine element of the Hebrew history. The great thing about the Divine ordination of Samsons life was just that obedience to God had been made to hinge upon a detail. The detail is nothing, the principle is everything. It is the incidental expression of eternal reality; the small link that preserves, or, severed, breaks the chain of obedience that keeps man in communion with God. Keep it intact, and there is for every emergency the unceasing inflow of the Divine power; break it, disregard the small, apparently insignificant point which God in your inner life has made the condition of His being with you, and the power flies. It flies insensibly as the perishing of the perfume from a dead flower, to be succeeded in time by the odour of corruption. So it flew quietly, swiftly from Samson. And he woke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times, and shake myself. But he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.
He knew his loss only when the strain came. His enemies were without. They flew upon him, and he, confident with the confidence of fifty past victories, bent his mighty limbs for the fray. But the power was gone. Ramath-Lehi was not to be repeated then. The strength that had made one man a terror to a band had gone. Flaccid and powerless, he sank a pitiable prey to the ground. And the Philistines laid hold on him, and put out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison-house.
The constant message of every poet, prophet, and seer, of every leader and guide of Hebrew history, is that only as God dwells in the nation can the nation be great. The chosen race go into the wilderness a mere band of fugitive slaves; they become a great nation because God is with them. They go out to battle against mighty enemies, and a little one puts to flight a thousand, because God marches with the host; they go to battle without God and the process is reversedthey go out one way and flee seven ways. Prophets like Elijah defy kings like Ahab; men untrained to arms like Gideon put trained armies to flight; Elisha, lonely and forgotten, counts those who be with him more than those who be with his foes, because he sees the chariots and horsemen of God moving in the clouds; David, the shepherd boy, is stronger than Goliath; Daniel, in his purity and piety, is more than a match for the tyrannous king who holds him in his power; and the simple explanation of every such triumph is that God is with these heroes of faith and action. We may say, if we will, that the heroism of those men was but the reflex action of their faith; it does not alter the facts. Something made them great, some power moving in and through them, which begot faith, and courage and high ideals, and noblest heroism. The Lord was with them, is the explanation afforded us in Scripture. He was with them of their own consent, working through their own obedience and consecration. They were His vehicles, His instruments, the media of Divine manifestations. And if they had withdrawn from God, or if God had withdrawn from them, then had they been as other men; they would have awakened as Samson did, to know their strength departed and the fountains of their virtue dry.1 [Note: W. J. Dawson.]
How infinite and sweet, Thou everywhere
And all-abounding Love, Thy service is!
Thou liest an ocean round my world of care,
My petty every-day; and fresh and fair
Pour Thy strong tides through all my crevices,
Until the silence ripples into prayer.
That Thy full glory may abound, increase,
And so Thy likeness shall be formed in me,
I pray; the answer is not rest or peace,
But charges, duties, wants, anxieties,
Till there seems room for everything but Thee,
And never time for anything but these.
And I should fear, but lo! amid the press,
The whirl and hum and pressure of the day,
I hear Thy garments sweep, Thy seamless dress,
And close beside my work and weariness
Discern Thy gracious form, not far away,
But very near, O Lord, to help and bless.
The busy fingers fly, the eyes may see
Only the glancing needle which they hold,
But all my life is blossoming inwardly,
And every breath is like a litany,
While through each labour, like a thread of gold,
Is woven the sweet consciousness of Thee!2 [Note: Sarah Chauncey Woolsey.]
II
The Christians Loss
Samson as consecrated is a type of every Christian. But we may take the text in two ways, first, as it refers to the Christian who has lost touch with Godthe backsliderThe Lord was departed from him; second, as it refers to the Christian who has been anointed by the Holy Ghost and has received power for special service, and has afterwards lost this power. Of him Samson is more clearly the type.
i. The Backslider
1. What is backsliding? It is a falling from grace. But let us look at it psychologically. The man has been born again, and the new-born soul is feeling its way along a course absolutely new to itself. It faces a trackless area, and everything is strange. Under these conditions of inexperience, evil meets the new life in countless guises. It often comes suddenly with no time for deliberation. It comes, many times, at an inopportune moment, when the new life is not at its strongest. That life is surprised and taken off its guard. It does not take in the gravity of the situation. The seriousness of the consequences is not comprehended, and the yielding is often almost imperceptible. Yet, notwithstanding all palliating conditions, the yielding is sin. Darkness again suffuses the soul; condemnation spreads its gloom over consciousness, and sin, once getting a foothold, however slight and brief at first, in the regenerated heart, brings back the old tendencies which, prior to regeneration, have dominated the psychical being.
The consequence is that there takes place in consciousness an oscillation between victory and defeat. Now the new life is victorious; and now the old tendencies conquer. But such psychical fluctuations, from the very nature of the psychical structure, cannot be perpetual. Resilience gradually and imperceptibly grows less. The movement now swings positively in one of two ways. Weary of vacillation, disheartened by repeated failure, vanquished by continuous defeats, the heart may swing completely back into the old grooves of action. The rebound from sin then ceases; the recoil from condemnation ends. The life then remains under the domination of sin; in common terminology, it is backslidden.1 [Note: H. E. Warner, The Psychology of the Christian Life, 127.]
In the life of Coillard of the Zambesi we read that all the sons of Moshesh were converted but that subsequently all lapsed. The following is a conversation between M. Coillard and Molapo.
When reminded of his conversion:Yes, he said, I was awakened, exercised beyond the power of words to express. I have experienced in my own heart, with unspeakable delight, the sweetness of Jesus. But to-day you see I have sunk into sin, and I am always sinking deeper and deeper.
Poor man; and can you do nothing to escape?
Moruti, a man like you ought to know what the Apostle says: It is impossible to renew them again unto repentance. So to-day, you see, if I listen to the Word of God, it is only with the ears of the head; my heart, no, that hears them no more. I like the preaching (thuto); I like you. I shall do my best to build a school-house and a church. I do not like a place where the name of God is never heard. But that is all. It is all over with me. Ah, Monare, if you knew the power of that anguish which once laid hold of me, if only that could be renewed, do you see, it would cost me nothing either to send my wives away or to come and talk to you about my soul.
I tried to exhort him in Gods name, but no mark of emotion or even of real seriousness betrayed itself in his own face. It is terrible to taste of the living, the true, and to return like the sow to her wallowing in the mire.2 [Note: Coillard of the Zambesi, 70.]
But, ah! not yet is peace complete,
The foemen, fiercer for defeat,
Strive to regain their ancient seat.
The world, forsaken, brings again
Its joys and cares: the Will would fain
Its realm recover and retain.
And though that Light still shineth clear
Through those new shades, and though the ear
Hears still that Voice it loves to hear
Speak, as of old, on Galilee,
Peace: yet, withal, the heart must see,
And hate its own infirmity:
And cries, as one who cries for breath,
Worn and oppressed, I faint beneath
The alien body of this death!
Tis well, for, otherwise than so,
The soul, disdaining to lie low,
A deeper depth of ill might know.
A darker gloom, a gulf more wide,
Because a self-exalting pride
Would thrust her further from His side.1 [Note: S. J. Stone, Poems and Hymns, 103.]
2. Backsliding may be unconscious. Samson wist not that the Lord was departed from him. There are always people like Samson in the world. They imagine that grace once given stays, and that they must still be in the safe channel. They are not conscious of any deliberate break with the Church and faith of their fathers, and so they take these for granted as still there. People can very easily bring themselves to believe that what they once were they still are, especially if there has been no swerve or outburst of misconduct to mark the change that has been going on. And yet a change has been, in many cases, passing over their life. Associations and practices which once they would have scrupulously avoided are now admitted upon the score of business, or of legitimate pleasure, or of a larger knowledge of the world. The depreciation goes on unsuspected.
The Scripture speaks of individuals who have left their first love, while many of the characteristics of a religious profession continue to be maintainedbacksliders in heart, who hang on as useless encumbrances to a church from which their affections are estranged. In Ephesus, although they had left their first lovein Sardis, where the graces languished and were ready to diein Laodicea, where a lethargic lukewarmness had dulled away the energy of devotionthere was the maintenance of outward decorousness and the continuance in the fellowship of saints. And in our churches now, it is to be feared, there are numbers who realize the terrible description of the prophet, that grey hairs are upon thempremonitions of mortality, signs of weakness and of ageand they know it not.2 [Note: W. M. Punshon.]
3. The Philistines be upon thee. The degradation of character may go on quite unconsciously, and it is only when some crisis arises in a mans life that he becomes aware that his moral strength has departed from him.
I remember a great elm tree, the pride of an avenue in the south, that had spread its branches for more years than the oldest man could count, and stood leafy and green. Not until a winter storm came one night and laid it low with a crash did anybody suspect what everybody saw in the morningthat the heart was eaten out of it, and nothing left but a shell of bark.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
4. It is difficult to make an estimate of ourselves by poking into our own sentiments and supposed feelings and convictions, and the estimate is likely to be wrong. There is a better way than that. Two things tell what a man isone, what he wants, and the other, what he does. As the will is, the man is. Where do the currents of your desires set? If you watch their flow, you may be pretty sure whether your religious life is an ebbing or a rising tide. The other way to ascertain what we are is rigidly to examine and judge what we do. Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord. Actions are the true test of a man. Conduct is the best illumination of character, especially in regard to ourselves.
M. Coillard had all his life the greatest horror of religious fictions; and of emotion, which ought to be a spiritual force, evaporating in mere sentiment. With him, as with Mabille, to see a truth was to put it in practice. Hence he says: Our project of extending the Mission to Banyailand was the one theme of our conversation as we rode back. One day Major Malan, Mabille, and I were crossing the river Key, and climbing the slopes, when, in obedience to an irresistible impulse, we all three sprang from our horses, knelt in the shadow of a bush and, taking each other as witness, we offered ourselves individually to the Lord for the new Missionan act of deep solemnity which made us all brothers in arms. Immediately we remounted, Major Malan waved his hat, spurred his horse, and galloped up the hill, calling out Three soldiers ready to conquer Africa. Mabille and I said, by Gods grace we will be true till death. And we meant it. That marked a new era in our life, and was, in so far as we were concerned, the true origin of the Barotsi Mission.2 [Note: Coillard of the Zambesi, 217.]
ii. The Anointed
God chooses and anoints men for special work, and He bestows upon them the Spirit in large measure as an equipment for their work. What do we mean when we say that the Lord is departed from them? We do not necessarily mean that they have lost complete touch with God, but that they have lost their large spiritual endowment. They have failed to realize the highestthat of which they were capableand they have lost power.
Power, that is the great practical matter for us men, once our faces are set towards the light; and in the life in Christ the way of power is marked out. Everywhere, all over the world, in its darkest places, as a man follows the light he sees, the power comes, and more light comes, and power grows anew, Divine power flowing in upon him and through him, whether he knows it or not. But in the Christian faith we are given an open vision of the way of power, as well as of the light and truth of men; open-eyed we may yield to Christ being made Man in usthe Christ who ever comes to enlarge the realm of His incarnation; and we may possess and wield His power as our own, reason giving consent, heart warmed by the vision and the presence of Him who reigns. In this, too, Christianity stands at the centre of things, and fulfils and completes them all.1 [Note: W. Scott Palmer.]
1. The anointed and their varying gifts.God does not give the same gifts to all men, nor does He give them in the same measure. To Samson He gave physical strength, to Saul kingly power, to Balaam the power of prophecy. And each was answerable only for his own gift, and in the measure in which he had received the gift. And the greater the gift and opportunity, the greater the failure.
When there is something rotten in the state of a Church; when a nations politics are based on false principles; when the social relations between high and low, rich and poor, landlord and tenant, master and servant, are at fault; then, from the midst of a down-trodden, silently suffering community God raises up a man. He raised up equally for Israel a Samuel and a Saul. But of Saul we read that the Spirit of the Lord departed from him.
But the gift may be different from these. We put these from us. They do not concern us. But the gifts are very varied. Let us take one as an example which we do not generally regard in that lightthe gift of prayer.
If we steadily make use of this capacity, small as it may be; if we make a rule of keeping sacred a portion of our time, and endeavour with all our might to press upward to God, He will bless the efforts we are making; the door will open as we knock, and we shall experience day by day a greater aptitude for thinking of heavenly things; we shall become more and more conscious of the Spirit of God helping our infirmities. On the other hand, if we despise the one talent which God has given us; if, because we find it difficult to pray, because we are conscious how poor and worthless our prayers are, therefore we give up the habit of prayer, or content ourselves with simply repeating the words of prayer, without any effort to rise to its meaning; if we despair of ever being able to pray in spirit and in truth, then the end will be that we shall lose that capacity which we had refused to make use of.
Darwin has been criticized for allowing his taste for music and letters to be starved away in his devotion to science; but it is a question whether he would have made the discovery of evolution without it. Sir James Paget has been blamed for his indifference to social reform, indeed to all politics; but he was probably right when he said that a man did more good if he kept to his own business, doing that with all his soul, and not dissipating his energies in directions outside his own particular range; that every cobbler should stick to his last; and that, by obedience to that rule, the affairs of the world at large would come straight. And doubtless Sir E. Burne-Jones was chided for keeping so much to himself; but he rightly looked upon an artist as a dedicated man, with as real a responsibility to discharge as any other. What do we want to be wrenched from our work for? he would say in reply to those who would tempt him away; I should like to stop in this room for 439 years, and never be taken out of it. Everyone, indeed, if he is to develop as God intended him, must stick to the narrow path, whether it lead to a Nazareth or a London. Even the Son of Man confessed to being narrowed till His baptism was accomplished.1 [Note: G. H. S. Walpole, Personality and Power, 75.]
O World-God, give me wealth! the Egyptian cried.
His prayer was granted. High as heaven, behold
Palace and Pyramid; the brimming tide
Of lavish Nile washed all his land with gold.
Armies of slaves toiled ant-wise at his feet,
World-circling traffic roared through mart and street,
His priests were gods, his spice-balmed kings enshrined
Set death at naught in rock-ribbed charnels deep.
Seek Pharaohs race to-day, and ye shall find
Rust and the moth, silence and dusty sleep.
O World-God, give me beauty! cried the Greek.
His prayer was granted. All the earth became
Plastic and vocal to his sense; each peak,
Each grove, each stream, quick with Promethean flame,
Peopled the world with imaged grace and light.
The lyre was his, and his the breathing might
Of the immortal marble, his the play
Of diamond-pointed thought and golden tongue.
Go seek the sunshine-race, ye find to-day
A broken column and a lute unstrung.
O World-God, give me power! the Roman cried.
His prayer was granted. The vast world was chained
A captive to the chariot of his pride.
The blood of myriad provinces was drained
To feed that fierce, insatiable red heart;
Invulnerably bulwarked every part
With serried legions, and with close-meshed Code;
Within, the burrowing worm had gnawed its home.
A roofless ruin stands where once abode
The imperial race of everlasting Rome.
O Godhead, give me Truth! the Hebrew cried.
His prayer was granted; he became the slave
Of the Idea, a pilgrim far and wide,
Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged with none to save.
The Pharaohs knew him, and when Greece beheld,
His wisdom wore the hoary crown of Eld.
Beauty he hath forsworn, and wealth and power.
Seek him to-day, and find in every land
No fire consumes him, neither floods devour;
Immortal through the lamp within his hand.1 [Note: Emma Lazarus.]
2. This brings us to our second pointthe loss of the gift.Samson lost his God-given power. But is it for that that we generally pity him? No. We give our sympathy to Samson because in the midst of his days he fell overcome by treachery, because the cruelty of enemies afflicted him.
(1) The loss may be unconscious. Samson wist not. It is so in the physical world. The man who has been accustomed to active and even strenuous exertion settles down to a life in which there is slight opportunity for the practice of his favourite pursuits, but in which there is constant tension exercised on muscle, nerve, and brain. He is unconscious of the extent to which the process is affecting him. But some day a necessity arises for putting forth unwonted exertion, and he finds to his astonishment that he is unequal to the task. Silently, like the wearing away of the rock by rain and storm, like the rounding of the sea pebble by the ripple of the water, his strength has been worn away; and, until the moment arises for putting it forth, he wist not that it had departed from him.
It is so in mental things. The freshness of intellectual vigour seems preserved to some men long beyond the wonted span of working years; but a time comes to the strongest when the climax of power has been reached and passed, when the old freshness of delight in new aspects of familiar things no longer exists, when the mind settles on the few certainties and deserts the speculative view of the world, when there is lacking the power to approach new subjects of investigation, or to undertake new tasks of practical life; when the mind turns back upon experience, and lives by the retrospect. And though at such a time some may still continue to delude themselves that their mental vigour is unabated, nature lifts up its testimony against the delusion, and declares, in the lost flexibility, in the absence of initiative and administrative power, in the failing memory, that the strength of the man has departed, though he wist it not.
So is it in the spiritual world. There is a loss that is more deadly than the loss of physical vigour, sadder than the decay of mental power. It is the weakening of the soul by almost imperceptible decline; the experience that issues in spiritual paralysis.
And because we know we have breath in our mouth and think we have thought in our head,
We shall assume that we are alive, whereas we are really dead.
The Lamp of our Youth will be utterly out: but we shall subsist on the smell of it!
And whatever we do, we shall fold our hands and suck our gums and think well of it,
Yes, we shall be perfectly pleased with our work, and that is the perfectest Hell of it!1 [Note: Rudyard Kipling.]
(2) The Christian realizes his loss only when the moment of need comes, when he hears the words the Philistines be upon thee.
A Christian may be in a society where the tone is agreeably worldly. And he finds it a little hard to maintain the distinctness of the Christian life. It is pleasant to him to stand well with his unconverted friends. And the temptation springs up in his heart to conform. It comes in the subtle form of presenting to his friends a Christianity void of all that even the world may call narrowness or fanaticism. He hopes that by mingling as far as possible with those who are undecided, in their recreations and the pursuits that may be common, he may gain an influence over them that may be used for God; but it leads himself to compromises, until the process of levelling down has gone so far that the distinctive attitude of the Christian life has gone. Now, just so far as this has taken place, a mans influence with others is killed. All the while that he was fondly imagining he was presenting to his friends the type of a Christianity shorn of all acerbities and angularities, his power over them has been quietly slipping away. And the awakening to this consciousness is an unpleasant experience. Some one of his careless, light-hearted acquaintances has become more seriousthe breath of Gods Spirit where it listeth has awakened a new longing in his soul; and his life, so self-centred, so agreeably undisturbed before, has become to him poor and miserable without Christ. He wants direction; he wants communion; he wants to hear the man speak who can tell the reality of these things to his own heart. And to whom does he resort?to the Christian who has lost his Christian savour and become worldly? No; but to the man about whom his Christianity is the most distinctive thing, who has not been engaged in minimizing this difference between himself and the world, and paring down the dimensions of that, but who has longedand has got some part of that for which he longedto be transformed by the renewing of his mind. Why, thinks the Christian who has lost his influence, did my friend not come to me?
3. A note of hope.He that has vowed his strength to God, he that has received some grace from God, some godliness of feeling and aim, and yet yieldsit may be to some wretched lustand loses his power, and is left helpless, ashamed, miserable, has his power perished absolutely? Think of Samsonfor there is no better instance of the use which God can make of an ill-spent life. He could never be the man he was; but there in his prison-house he saw the ruinous folly he had been guilty of, saw his betrayal of the trust God had reposed in him, saw that out of the best material for a life of glory that any man of that period had received he had wrought for himself a life of shame and a degrading end. His heart was broken; the strong man was crushed, and had, like the weakest sinner, to cry to God, to seek that last comfort which abides when all others are gone, and which more than makes up for the loss of all othersto seek that light, the light of Gods own presence, which restores brightness to the most darkened life, which does not refuse to shine on the most benighted soul. And what he sought, he found. Slowly his hair grew, and with it slowly returned his strength; as health comes slowly back to the man who has been shattered by disease or accident; as spiritual vigour slowly returns to him who by one rash act has let his soul be trodden in the dust. And so Samson made restitution, and he said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.
The Lion, he prowleth far and near,
Nor swerves for pain or rue;
He heedeth nought of sloth nor fear,
He prowlethprowleth through
The silent glade and the weary street,
In the empty dark and the full noon heat;
And a little Lamb with aching Feet
He prowleth too.
The Lion croucheth alert, apart
With patience doth he woo;
He waiteth long by the shuttered heart,
And the LambHe waiteth too.
Up the lurid passes of dreams that kill,
Through the twisting maze of the great Untrue,
The Lion followeth the fainting will
And the LambHe followeth too.
From the thickets dim of the hidden way
Where the debts of Hell accrue,
The Lion leapeth upon his prey:
But the LambHe leapeth too.
Ah! loose the leash of the sins that damn,
Mark Devil and God as goals,
In the panting love of a famished Lamb,
Gone mad with the need of souls.
The Lion, he strayeth near and far;
What heights hath he left untrod?
He crawleth nigh to the purest star,
On the trail of the saints of God.
And throughout the darkness of things unclean,
In the depths where the sin-ghouls brood,
There prowleth ever with yearning mien
A lamb as white as Blood.1 [Note: Ruth Temple Lindsay, The Hunters.]
Literature
Back (W. J.), in A Book of Lay Sermons, 247.
Campbell (R. J.), Sermons addressed to Individuals, 73.
Forbes (J. T.), Gods Measure, 107.
Jenkinson (A.), A Modern Disciple, 137.
Maclaren (A.), The God of the Amen, 259.
Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, iv. (1858), No. 224.
Taylor (W. M.), The Limitations of Life, 219.
Vaughan (C. J.), Temple Sermons, 437.
Wilson (S. L.), Helpful Words for Daily Life, 302.
Worthington-Atkin (J.), The Paraklete, 33.
Christian World Pulpit, i. 299 (Carpenter); lvii. 203 (Durran); lxv. 266 (Dawson); lxx. 35 (Morrow); lxxvi. 196 (Davis); lxxvii. 180 (Moffatt).
Church of England Pulpit, lix. 38 (Hitchcock).
Church Pulpit Year Book, vii. (1910) 194.
Keswick Week, 1899, 37 (Thomas).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
I will go: Jdg 16:3, Jdg 16:9, Jdg 16:14, Deu 32:30, Isa 42:24, Hos 7:9
the Lord: Num 14:9, Num 14:42, Num 14:43, Jos 7:12, 1Sa 16:14, 1Sa 18:12, 1Sa 28:14-16, 2Ch 15:2, Isa 59:1, Isa 59:2, Jer 9:23, Jer 9:24, Mat 17:16, Mat 17:20, 2Co 3:5
Reciprocal: Exo 34:29 – wist 1Sa 20:25 – as at other times 1Sa 28:15 – God 2Ch 32:31 – left him Psa 51:11 – take Pro 22:14 – mouth Jer 51:38 – yell
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
A FATAL DEPARTURE
And he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.
Jdg 16:20
Of all the heroes whose exploits we read in the Book of Judges, none so keenly awakens our sympathy, or so fully arrests our attention, as that solitary hero, Samson. His life is no romance of the past, but it is a type and picture of your life and mine, with its difficulties, temptations, and dangers.
From the story of Samson we learn:
I. The absolute necessity there is of our achieving a nobler morality, a higher level of religion, than is to be found in the mere conventional standards which are rife around us.What was it made Samson strong? He refused to accept the low, degraded religious standard which his contemporaries were content with. To him nothing short of a real harmony between the promise of God and the fact of his peoples freedom would be satisfactory.
II. On no account sacrifice your convictions.The conviction of Samson was that the dominion of God was absolute and irresistible, that the promises of God were true and everlastingly faithful. The force of conviction in your mind that Christ is true, that His Holy Spirit is a real power and influence in your heart, will make you strong, nay omnipotent, against all evil in the world.
III. Temptation comes gradually.It seems like a sudden catastrophe when Samson, who had been the glory of his people, the very hero of Dan, is led a nerveless and enslaved captive into the dungeons of the Philistines. Yet the progress of sin was very gradual over his heart. Inch by inch Delilah wearied out the strength of resistance, and then came the terrible catastrophe.
IV. With every sin there comes a blunting of that moral capacity by which you detect its presence.He wist not that the Lord was departed from him. No man is the same after sin; no man ever can be. Sow an act and reap a habit; sow a habit and reap a destiny.
V. Notice two thoughts arising from the story: (1) True convictions can be had from Christ alone. (2) Preserve the consecration of your whole life to Him.
Bishop W. Boyd Carpenter.
Illustrations
(1) The weak man thought himself strong. But his strength had resided in his cleanness and wholesomeness of life, and he had left them in Delilahs lap with the locks of his hair, and knew not what he had lost until the hour of testing came, and he lost his sight with his strength, and ground as a slave in the prison-house at Gaza. The great power of life is moral power. Health, wealth, stature, beauty, talents of whatsoever sort, are of less worth than plain, stern strength of the moral life. The strong man, full of resources and the power that resources command, but destitute of moral faith and immovable principle, is a weak object in comparison with the child who possesses nothing but an uncompromising abhorrence of lies, and an inability to pursue a single course of dishonour.
(2) The same man may be morally weak and physically strong, or morally strong and physically weak. Samson illustrated the former combination. His own people and his enemies stood in awe of his arm, and one woman played with his will. Paul was an illustration of the second combination. In presence he said men might regard him as weak and contemptible, but the indomitable resolution, the rugged spiritual power, the irrefragable moral purpose of the little Jew of Tarsus are still the admiration and delight of men.
(3) By not curbing his passion Samson put a distance between himself and the Lord, just as one vessel drifts from another for want of constant signalling. Each one of us can by sin cut the connection between ourselves and God. Paul was conscious of this power when he said, But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. He realised, too, the only way by which a man may avoid shipwreck, by bringing the body into subjection. What a leader was lost to the nation by the weak surrender of strong Samson! And through the centuries the same sad result has ended the career of many a strong, gifted man.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
Samsons final entanglement, capture, blinding, and degradation are very significant.
I. How many are there among those who have been the devoted servants of God, who have similarly fallen under the power of passion!They bade fair to do heroic service for their generation, but a face or figure fascinated them, and cast over them a fatal spell. Their friends saw and bewailed the awful fate, which, like an octopus, was casting its long arms around them to suck them under. From time to time they seem to have been themselves conscious of the peril and, like a dumb animal in a snare, to have made convulsive efforts to escape; but all in vain. It has appeared as though no influence could save them, and at last they have gone down with the Niagara torrent into the boiling cauldron at its foot, to emerge therefrom shorn of all spiritual power and wrecks of their former selves.
II. But even for these there is hope.Though in the prison, treading to and fro on the beaten track, ill-fed, ill-kempt, and exposed to the mockery of his captors, Samson was able to review his past career, to see where he had failed, to understand the greatness of the opportunities which he had misused. It all stood out before his mental vision, and conscience accosted him with its searching exhortation of, Son, remember! He became the subject of deep repentance. Turning to God, he confessed his sin with bitter shame and sorrow, and finally seems to have been restored to a measure of his former peace and power, as a sign whereof the hair of his head began to grow again.
Have you, too, misused your great opportunities, yielding to the Delilah spell, misusing your God-given faculty, and abusing your wonderful opportunities? Are you, too, grinding in some menial sphere, a prisoner in circumstances, a serf in drudgery, a poor jester, called in to make sport for the enemies of your God? It may not be possible to recover all the lost ground and stand where you stood once, but in answer to many tears and prayers the lost strength is coming back, the Spirit of God is inflating again the diseased lungs, the light is returning to the blinded eyes, the hair of consecration is beginning to cover again the brow with virile locks. Be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven: like St. Peter you are restored; there awaits you one brief hour of glorious exploit, which shall be equivalent to all the past. He will render double unto you.
Illustration
There are many ways in which God is excluded from a life. Pleasure may become idolatrous. I call to mind a gathering where missionary curios were exhibited. A Chinese god was an object of considerable amusement; but I thought that if the Chinese, on their part, were to make an exhibition of English gods, one of them surely would be a football. I do not decry athletics, far from it; but many a youth of our land thinks football all day, and dreams football through the night, from one weeks end to the other, and God is forgotten. In the midst of such forgetfulness the Lord departs from a man, and the tragedy of it lies in his ignorance of the fact. It is not a sudden event, but a gradual process.