Conflict and Compromises
Opening Prayer
God of grace and glory, I thank You for the presence of Your Spirit, who enables me to live with confidence and joy.
Read Judges 15:1–20
Later on, at the time of wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat and went to visit his wife. He said, “I’m going to my wife’s room.” But her father would not let him go in.
2 “I was so sure you hated her,” he said, “that I gave her to your companion. Isn’t her younger sister more attractive? Take her instead.”
3 Samson said to them, “This time I have a right to get even with the Philistines; I will really harm them.” 4 So he went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs. He then fastened a torch to every pair of tails, 5 lit the torches and let the foxes loose in the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned up the shocks and standing grain, together with the vineyards and olive groves.
6 When the Philistines asked, “Who did this?” they were told, “Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law, because his wife was given to his companion.”
So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father to death. 7 Samson said to them, “Since you’ve acted like this, I swear that I won’t stop until I get my revenge on you.” 8 He attacked them viciously and slaughtered many of them. Then he went down and stayed in a cave in the rock of Etam.
9 The Philistines went up and camped in Judah, spreading out near Lehi. 10 The people of Judah asked, “Why have you come to fight us?”
“We have come to take Samson prisoner,” they answered, “to do to him as he did to us.”
11 Then three thousand men from Judah went down to the cave in the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Don’t you realize that the Philistines are rulers over us? What have you done to us?”
He answered, “I merely did to them what they did to me.”
12 They said to him, “We’ve come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.”
Samson said, “Swear to me that you won’t kill me yourselves.”
13 “Agreed,” they answered. “We will only tie you up and hand you over to them. We will not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes and led him up from the rock. 14 As he approached Lehi, the Philistines came toward him shouting. The Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him. The ropes on his arms became like charred flax, and the bindings dropped from his hands. 15 Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey, he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men.
16 Then Samson said,
“With a donkey’s jawbone
I have made donkeys of them.
With a donkey’s jawbone
I have killed a thousand men.”
17 When he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone; and the place was called Ramath Lehi.
18 Because he was very thirsty, he cried out to the Lord, “You have given your servant this great victory. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19 Then God opened up the hollow place in Lehi, and water came out of it. When Samson drank, his strength returned and he revived. So the spring was called En Hakkore, and it is still there in Lehi.
20 Samson led Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Meditate
“Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God” (Jas. 4:4).
Think Further
What a sad catalogue of Samson’s egocentric, anarchic bullying, with little to relieve it! In denial about the true state of his marriage, he seeks to visit his wife and, when rebuffed, takes his vengeance by ingeniously setting light to the Philistines’ corn and grape harvest. The Philistines respond in kind by burning to death his wife and her family rather than just destroying their crops. This provokes Samson to unleash further reprisals before the Philistines pursue him, to stop him once and for all. Revenge usually spirals out of control, whereas forgiveness, as Jesus taught, closes an offence down.
In the midst of all this we’re given a sad insight into the mindset of Israel (11–13). To them, Samson was a troublemaker who was only making matters worse. They may not have liked Philistine domination, but they were practical people who’d learned to live with the enemy, perhaps like some in the contemporary church. If they ever had wanted freedom, those days were long past. They’d learned to compromise with their rulers and were failing to hold onto God’s Word. So Samson had to be sacrificed, and they did a deal with him that had only one possible outcome: his execution. They didn’t see him as God’s answer to their problem—if, indeed, they thought of God at all. So Samson is bound and handed over, only to escape and conduct mass slaughter with a donkey’s jawbone.
After all that killing, he’s exhausted. A bit like Elijah after Carmel (1 Kings 19:1–9), only worse, he bitterly complains that God isn’t looking after him, showing the same intemperate attitude to God as to everyone else. True to his gracious character, God miraculously refreshes his undeserving leader. Somehow, God always “gives us more grace” (Jas. 4:6).
Apply
Examine your life and see where you may have compromised with the enemy.
Closing prayer
Lord, in contrast to Samson, I want to walk with You consistently and obediently, bringing honor to Your name.
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