In rescuing the Israelites from the iron grip of the Philistines, God had Samson miraculously born to an infertile woman. He then gave Samson miraculous strength during his lifetime too, so that with “a donkey’s jawbone he killed a thousand men,” Judges 15:15-16.
But to fully free the Israelites from their Philistine enemies, Samson would need to die, which he did willingly when bringing the temple crashing down on himself and all the Philistine rulers (16:25-30). So here we have a man in Scripture who was miraculously conceived to deliver his people from their enemies (13:2-5), was miraculously strengthened during his tenure as a judge for twenty years to overcome his enemies, who then willingly gave up his life in his prime to fully save them.
And God engineered all this from Samson’s conception to his death, purely in answer to the Israelites’ need for salvation from their enemies. The parallels with Jesus are too obvious. So is this why Samson had to die, as a precursor to Jesus having to die as God’s means of saving all humanity from the overwhelming power of evil (1 John 3:8)?
It would seem so, but with one huge difference: Jesus was perfect in his lifetime, but Samson was arrogant, headstrong, provocative and vengeful. And God’s salvation through Samson was by violence too, but not so through Jesus. Jesus, therefore, was the only perfect man in history whose life and death made the salvation of all humanity from our worst enemy possible.
But in Samson God revealed some interesting things about himself, in not only creating such a flamboyant and flawed man in the first place, but also backing him up with superhuman power to kill people. And we find out the reason why God did it too. In Judges 14:4 God was “seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines.” So God had a personal score to settle with the Philistines, because of what they were doing to the Israelites. And if that meant creating such a man as Samson, and having him die to deal with these obnoxious Philistines, so be it.
But God had Jesus go through the same thing, and for the same reason. Which has to tell us something about how God feels personally about his beloved humans being hounded and destroyed by the powers of evil. Which raises a question: Since God created a great man in Samson from the tribe of Dan to destroy evil, “Why isn’t Dan in the 144,000?”….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 