Reading: Judges 16-18, Psalm 75
Let’s recap. The Philistines have effectively conquered Israel and are treating them badly. Our “hero” is Samson, whose birth was foretold by God and who was to be exceptionally set apart for the service of the God of Israel as a Nazirite. When he grows up, Samson sees a Philistine woman and absolutely must have her. She gets him to tell her something it is totally against his best interests to tell her. She and her family are burned to death, lots of people die, the crops are burned to a crisp, and both the Philistines and Israelites end up hopping mad at Samson. A nice start to his time as judge.
Now, Samson sees a prostitute in Gaza, a Philistine city. Yes, God’s appointed Nazirite from birth who was foretold by divine decree is visiting prostitutes in one of the major cities of Israel’s enemies. When he is discovered, he gets up in the middle of the night, tears the gates off the city, and runs them to Hebron, something like 30 miles away. Because that will show the Philistines?
The next, and most famous, story of Samson is his little affair with Delilah. She lives in the valley of Sorek, which was basically a border zone between Israel and the Philistine territory. This story is not terribly complex. Samson displays his usual weakness for women, the Philistines exploit it, and though he manages to get out of his predicament three times due to being outrageously strong, he eventually tells Delilah that his hair has never been cut, and that if it was he would become like other men. One of the big questions here is whether Samson actually thought he would lose his strength when his hair was cut. We are told that when the Philistines come after him he thinks he will smite them just as before, not realizing his strength had left him. It seems to me that Samson had little to no respect or knowledge as to the source of his strength.
In any event, he is captured and paraded into the the temple of Dagon, the Philistine god, and his eyes are put out. Blind and subject to forced labor like an animal, he is trotted out whenever the Philistines want entertainment. While this is happening, Samson asks God for one last moment of strength, and pushed over the support pillar of the temple, crushing himself and the Philistines to death in it’s ruin.
What do we think of the last judge in the book of Judges? I think he’s a complete disaster. Chosen by God and given every advantage of strength and ability, he wastes his life in fruitless violence and immoral behavior. He flaunts the covenant in numerous ways. He ends his life in an act of vengeance that does nothing to deliver his people. Samson is an object lesson in how human power, and even the status of being chosen by God, are not solutions to the human problem. Samson is given advantages no one else gets, but he squanders them. The author of Judges has completed his review of the judges of Israel. The office of Joshua has totally failed. Now, he is going to turn to why things were able to get this bad and propose a solution.
The last four chapters of the book of Judges may contain the least told stories in the Bible. Standing alone, they are confusing, depressing, and just plain weird. But they are an integral part of the argument the author of Judges is making. In both cases they start with a Levite, and end with mass disobedience and tragedy. As we shall also see, it is no coincidence they follow the story of Samson, the failed judge.
The first story is about the wandering Levite from Bethlehem, who comes to the house of Micah. Micah has stolen from his mother, but decides to return the money. She blessed her son by the God of Israel and tells him to use some of the money to make an idol. Yeah, think about that for a minute. She blesses the God of Israel in one breath and asks for an idol in the next. This little scene shows us that the worship of the God of Israel has gone way off the rails. Then a Levite comes by, and Micah invites him in and makes him a priest to the God of Israel, and both Micah and the Levite are quite pleased. The Levite gets a living, and Micah is just sure God will be pleased with him because he has a Levite serving as priest in his home ministering before his idol. These guys are both so far from the books of Moses as to be almost unrecognizable as people of Israel.
Enter the wandering tribe of Dan. They have failed to drive out the people of the land they were assigned in Joshua, so they send out scouts to find a place to live. They stop by Micah’s place on the way and recognize his priest, and ask the Levite to ask God if their venture will succeed. Again, they have gotten so far from worship outlined in the books of Moses they are almost not recognizable as Israelites. The Levite gives them a good report, despite not consulting God at all- all he has is a silver idol to talk to anyway. Happy with this, the scouts find an unsuspecting Sidonite town and decide it is easy pickings. They head home and tell their tribe.
The tribe soldiers up, and head towards the Sidonite town. On the way they stop by Micah’s house and talk the Levite into taking his little idolatrous shrine with them and being their priest. Micah isn’t going to take this sitting down, and he pursues them with his armed men. The Danites heavily imply they will smite him if he doesn’t go home, so he does. Then they slaughter the Sidonites and occupy the town, setting up their shrine with their Levite as priest.
The closing lines of this first story tell us who this Levite was- the grandson of Moses! The Levites, who were to be teachers of the law from the books of Moses, have so quickly abandoned proper worship that the grandson of Moses is setting up an idolatrous shrine away from the tabernacle.
The author of Judges presents not just a story about the failure of the line of Moses and the Levites to carry out their job, he implies a solution in his repeated refrain: at that time there was no king in Israel, everyone did what was right in his own eyes. If we have been paying attention we know that one of the major themes of the books of Moses is that humans don’t do very well doing what is right in their own eyes. It is literally the cause of the fall of humanity we read about in Genesis 3-11. The author of Judges is telling us a story about what happens when a chosen people, given every advantage, choose to do what is right in their own eyes. Israel is Samson. Undisciplined, rashly unobservant of the covenant, foolish in all sorts of ways.