Strength and Struggles

Summary

The lesson begins with the Nazirite vow in Numbers 6: abstaining from wine and grapes, leaving the hair uncut, and avoiding contact with the dead. In Judges 14 Samson sees a Philistine woman at Timnah and says, “Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes,” echoing the refrain of the book. He kills a lion with the Spirit’s help, and later takes honey from the carcass and gives some to his parents without telling them where it came from.

At the wedding feast he poses a riddle, and when the Philistines threaten his wife she wins the answer from him and tells them. Samson kills thirty men of Ashkelon and goes home in anger. In Judges 15 he burns the Philistines’ fields with torches tied to the tails of 300 foxes, and the Philistines burn his wife and her father. He strikes them down and goes to the cleft of Etam.

The men of Judah bind him and give him over, but the Spirit of the Lord rushes on him and he kills a thousand men with a donkey’s jawbone. Thirsty, he cries out to the Lord and God opens a spring. The takeaways: calling doesn’t cancel character, strength is for service rather than self, God works through imperfect vessels, desperation can lead to dependence, and God honors the cry of the consecrated.

The two chapters

Marriage, riddle, revenge and rescue.

Practical takeaways

The slides draw out these lessons: