This chapter is based on Judges 13 to 16.
(EP 403)
Amid widespread apostasy, the faithful worshipers of God continued to plead with Him for the deliverance of Israel. Though there was apparently no response, in the early years of the Philistine oppression a child was born through whom God designed to humble the power of these mighty foes.
(EP 403.1)
To the childless wife of Manoah, “the Angel of Jehovah” appeared with the message that she should have a son through whom God would begin to deliver Israel. The Angel gave instruction concerning her own habits, and also for the treatment of her child: “Drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing.” The same prohibition was to be imposed upon the child, with the addition that his hair should not be cut, for he was to be consecrated to God as a Nazarite from his birth.
(EP 403.2)
Fearful that they should make some mistake, the husband prayed, “Let the Man of God which Thou didst send come again unto us, and teach us what we shall do unto the child that shall be born.”
(EP 403.3)
When the Angel again appeared, Manoah’s inquiry was, “How shall we order the child, and how shall we do unto him?” The previous instruction was repeated—“Of all that I said unto the woman let her beware... . All that I commanded her let her observe.”
(EP 403.4)
To secure for the promised child the qualifications necessary for his important work, the habits of both mother and child were to be carefully regulated. The child will be affected for good or evil by the habits of the mother. She must be controlled by principle and practice temperance and self-denial, if she would seek the welfare of her child. Unwise advisers will urge upon the mother the necessity of gratifying every wish and impulse; but the mother is by command of God placed under solemn obligation to exercise self-control.
(EP 403.5)
And fathers as well as mothers are involved in this responsibility. As the result of parental intemperance, children often lack physical strength and mental and moral power. Liquor drinkers and tobacco users may transmit their insatiable craving, inflamed blood, and irritable nerves to their children. The licentious often bequeath unholy desires, and even loathsome diseases, to their offspring. The tendency is for each generation to fall lower and lower. To a great degree, parents are responsible for the infirmities of the thousands born deaf, blind, diseased, or idiotic.
(EP 404.1)
The effect of prenatal influence has been by many lightly regarded, but the instruction sent from heaven to those Hebrew parents shows how this matter is looked upon by our Creator.
(EP 404.2)
A good legacy from the parents must be followed by careful training and the formation of right habits. God directed that the future judge and deliverer of Israel should be under a perpetual prohibition against the use of wine or strong drink. Lessons of temperance, self-denial, and self-control are to be taught even from babyhood.
(EP 404.3)
The distinction between articles of food as clean and unclean was based upon sanitary principles. To the observance of this distinction may be traced, in a great degree, the marvelous vitality which for thousands of years has distinguished the Jewish people. The use of stimulating and indigestible food is often injurious to health and in many cases sows the seeds of drunkenness. True temperance teaches us to dispense entirely with everything hurtful and to use judiciously that which is healthful. Few realize how much their habits of diet have to do with their health, their character, their usefulness in this world, and their eternal destiny. The body should be servant to the mind, not the mind to the body.
(EP 404.4)
The divine promise to Manoah was in due time fulfilled in the birth of Samson. As the boy grew, it became evident that he possessed extraordinary physical strength. This was not, as Samson and his parents well knew, dependent upon his well-knit sinews, but upon his condition as a Nazarite, of which his unshorn hair was a symbol. Had Samson obeyed the divine commands, his would have been a nobler and happier destiny. But association with idolaters corrupted him.
(EP 405.1)
The town of Zorah being near the country of the Philistines, Samson came to mingle with them on friendly terms. A young woman dwelling in the Philistine town of Timnath engaged Samson’s affections, and he determined to make her his wife. To his God-fearing parents, who endeavored to dissuade him from his purpose, his only answer was, “She pleaseth me well.” At last the marriage took place.
(EP 405.2)
Just as he was entering on manhood, the time above all others when he should have been true to God, Samson connected himself with the enemies of Israel. He did not ask whether he could better glorify God when united with the object of his choice. To all who seek first to honor Him, God has promised wisdom. But there is no promise to those bent on self-pleasing.
(EP 405.3)
How often inclination governs in the selection of husband or wife! The parties do not ask counsel of God nor have His glory in view. Satan is constantly seeking to strengthen his power over the people of God by inducing them to enter into alliance with his subjects. In order to accomplish this he endeavors to arouse unsanctified passions.
(EP 405.4)
But the Lord has instructed His people not to unite with those who have not His love abiding in them: “What concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?” 2 Corinthians 6:15, 16.
(EP 406.1)
At his marriage feast, Samson was brought into familiar association with those who hated the God of Israel. The wife proved treacherous to her husband before the close of the marriage feast. Incensed at her perfidy, Samson forsook her for the time, and went alone to his home at Zorah. When, afterward relenting, he returned for his bride, he found her the wife of another. His revenge, in wasting all the fields and vineyards of the Philistines, provoked them to murder her, although their threats had driven her to the deceit with which the trouble began.
(EP 406.2)
Samson had already given evidence of his marvelous strength by slaying, singlehanded, a young lion, and by killing thirty of the men of Askelon. Now, moved to anger by the barbarous murder of his wife, he attacked the Philistines and smote them “with a great slaughter.” Wishing a safe retreat he withdrew to “the rock Etam,” in Judah.
(EP 406.3)
To this place he was pursued, and the inhabitants of Judah, in great alarm, basely agreed to deliver him to his enemies. Accordingly three thousand men of Judah went up to him. Samson permitted them to bind him with two new ropes, and he was led into the camp of his enemies amid demonstrations of great joy. But “the Spirit of Jehovah came mightily upon him.” He burst asunder the strong new cords as if they had been flax burned in the fire. Then seizing the first weapon at hand, the jawbone of an ass, he smote the Philistines, leaving a thousand men dead upon the field.
(EP 406.4)
Had the Israelites been ready to unite with Samson and follow up the victory, they might have freed themselves from their oppressors. But they had become dispirited and had neglected the work God commanded them to perform in dispossessing the heathen. They had united with them in their degrading practices. They tamely submitted to degradation which they might have escaped had they only obeyed God. Even when the Lord raised up a deliverer for them, they would, not infrenquently, desert him and unite with their enemies.
(EP 406.5)
After his victory the Israelites made Samson judge, and he ruled Israel for twenty years. But Samson had transgressed the command of God by taking a wife from the Philistines, and again he ventured among them—now his deadly enemies—in the indulgence of unlawful passion. Trusting to his great strength, he went to Gaza to visit a harlot. The inhabitants of the city learned of his presence and were eager for revenge. Their enemy was shut safely within the walls of the most strongly fortified of their cities. They felt sure of their prey, and only waited till morning to complete their triumph.
(EP 407.1)
At midnight the accusing voice of conscience filled Samson with remorse as he remembered that he had broken his vow as a Nazarite. But God’s mercy had not forsaken him. His prodigious strength again served to deliver him. Going to the city gate, he wrenched it from its place and carried it to the top of a hill on the way to Hebron.
(EP 407.2)
He did not again venture among the Philistines but continued to seek those sensuous pleasures that were luring him to ruin. “He loved a woman in the valley of Sorek,” not far from his birthplace. Her name was Delilah, “the consumer.” Sorek’s vineyards also had a temptation for the wavering Nazarite, who had already indulged in the use of wine, thus breaking another tie that bound him to purity and to God. The Philistines determined, through Delilah, to accomplish his ruin.
(EP 407.3)
They dared not attempt to seize him while in possession of his great strength, but it was their purpose to learn the secret of his power. They therefore bribed Delilah to discover and reveal it.
(EP 408.1)
As the betrayer plied Samson with her questions, he deceived her by declaring that the weakness of other men would come upon him if certain processes were tried. When she put the matter to the test, the cheat was discovered. Then she accused him of falsehood: “How canst thou say, I love thee, when thine heart is not with me? Thou hast mocked me these three times, and hast not told me wherein thy great strength lieth.” Three times Samson had the clearest evidence that the Philistines had leagued with his charmer to destroy him; but she treated the matter as a jest, and he blindly banished fear.
(EP 408.2)
Day by day a subtle power kept him by her side. Overcome at last, Samson made known the secret: “There hath not come a razor upon mine head; for I have been a Nazarite unto God from my mother’s womb: If I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man.”
(EP 408.3)
A messenger was immediately dispatched to the lords of the Philistines, urging them to come without delay. While the warrior slept, the heavy masses of his hair were severed from his head. Then she called, “The Philistines be upon thee, Samson!” Suddenly awaking, he thought to exert his strength as before, but his powerless arms refused to do his bidding. He knew that “Jehovah was departed from him.” Delilah began to annoy him and cause him pain, thus making a trial of his strength; for the Philistines dared not approach him till fully convinced that his power was gone. Then they seized him and, having put out both his eyes, took him to Gaza. Here he was bound with fetters in their prison house and confined to hard labor.
(EP 408.4)
What a change! Weak, blind, imprisoned, degraded to the most menial service! God had borne long with him. But when he had so yielded to sin as to betray his secret, the Lord departed from him. There was no virtue in his long hair, but it was a token of his loyalty to God. When the symbol was sacrificed in the indulgence of passion, the blessings of which it was a token were forfeited.
(EP 409.1)
In suffering and humiliation, a sport for the Philistines, Samson learned more of his own weakness than he had ever known before. His afflictions led him to repentance. As his hair grew, his power gradually returned. His enemies, regarding him as a fettered and helpless prisoner, felt no apprehensions.
(EP 409.2)
The Philistines, exulting, defied the God of Israel. A feast was appointed in honor of Dagon, the fish god. Throngs of Philistine worshipers filled the vast temple and crowded the galleries about the roof. It was a scene of festivity and rejoicing.
(EP 409.3)
Then, as the crowning trophy of Dagon’s power, Samson was brought in. People and rulers mocked his misery and adored the god who had overthrown “the destroyer of their country.” After a time, as if weary, Samson asked permission to rest against the two central pillars which supported the temple roof.
(EP 409.4)
Then he silently uttered the prayer, “O Lord God, remember me, I pray Thee, and strengthen me, I pray Thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines.” With these words he encircled the pillars with his mighty arms, and crying, “Let me die with the Philistines!” he bowed himself and the roof fell, destroying at one crash all that vast multitude. “So the dead which he slew at his death were more than all they which he slew in his life.”
(EP 409.5)
The idol and its worshipers, priest and peasant, warrior and noble, were buried together beneath the ruins of Dagon’s temple. And among them was the giant
(EP 409.6)
form of him whom God had chosen to be the deliverer of His people.
(EP 410.6)
Tidings were carried to the land of Israel, and Samson’s kinsmen, unopposed, rescued the body of the fallen hero. They “buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol, in the burying place of Manoah his father.”
(EP 410.1)
How dark and terrible the record of that life which might have been a praise to God and a glory to the nation! Had Samson been true to his divine calling, the purpose of God could have been accomplished. But he yielded to temptation, and his mission was fulfilled in bondage and death.
(EP 410.2)
Physically, Samson was the strongest man upon the earth, but in self-control, integrity, and firmness, he was one of the weakest. He who is mastered by his passions is a weak man. Real greatness is measured by the power of the feelings that a man controls, not by those that control him.
(EP 410.3)
Those who in the way of duty are brought into trial may be sure that God will preserve them; but if men willfully place themselves under the power of temptation, they will fall, sooner or later. Satan attacks us at our weak points, working through defects in the character to gain control of the whole man. He knows that if these defects are cherished, he will succeed.
(EP 410.4)
But none need be overcome. Help will be given to every soul who really desires it. Angels of God that ascend and descend the ladder which Jacob saw in vision will help every soul who will, to climb even to the highest heaven.
(EP 410.5)