Once I was sitting in a café with a friend and telling her something that happened to me, when the story was interrupted by the arrival of two other friends. After the initial greetings and orders placed for coffee and cake, my friend wanted to know the end of the story and re-capped what I said to the newcomers before turning to me to hear the rest. What surprised me was how her version of what happened subtly changed what I intended. To some extent, this is understandable. We all filter information through our own experience and outlook on life and arrange it into a pattern that makes sense to us, though some people are better at entering into someone else’s perspective than others. This matters even more when we want to hear from God. Do we listen well, so we hear what God is really saying to us?

A discouraged people

In this new series that I am starting on Samson, the scene opens with just such an exchange that I described above but between an angel of God and a woman, who later relays the angel’s message to her husband. The Samson story sits within the Book of Judges that describes Israel’s downward cycle after they settle in the land (see my post Introduction to Judges and my notes on Gideon, Abimelech, and Jephthah. In this period God is only superficially known, if at all, and the book demonstrates the disastrous consequences of this in the life of God’s people. As so often before, Israel does evil and the Philistine oppression that follows is God’s wake-up call (Judg 13:1). We expect the people to cry out to God next (cf. Judg 3:7-9; see this pattern explained in Introduction to Judges), but there is only silence. Perhaps they are too dejected even to seek God about their troubles. Oddly, this attitude is reflected on the individual level too. The nameless barren woman seems to have given up hope that she could ever conceive (compare other women like Sarah, Rachel, or Hannah, who actively seek a remedy).[1]

A son with a task

Yet, God responds to His wayward people even when they are too discouraged to cry out to Him. The angelic messenger brings good news and, as so often in biblical stories of barren women, this woman’s condition will be the precursor to a child who will have a special task. As a sign of his dedication, he will be a lifelong Nazirite, a vow, which in his case will be focused on not shaving his hair (Judg 13:5). The fact that his mother must not drink wine or fermented drinks in preparation for his coming (Judg 13:4) probably indicates that neither should her son, though this is not explicitly said (see the ‘For Interest’ section below on Nazirite vows). The Nazirite lifestyle will set him apart for God’s purpose, that is, to begin saving Israel from the Philistines, a people group that are only defeated in King David’s time (2 Sam 8:1).

When God speaks, what do we hear?

So far, so good, but how does the woman communicate the angel’s message to her husband? There are some minor variations that do not seem very significant (see comparison below), but the most glaring omission is any reference to the task of the child to begin delivering Israel (Judg 13:5, 7). Instead, the woman concludes her summary by referring to his son’s death, which, coupled with our expectation that she will mention the deliverance, connects the two in our minds. Her statement foreshadows Samson’s tragedy: he will make a start but die trying to deliver Israel. We might well wonder though why she fails to mention the purpose for the Nazirite lifestyle. Possibly it is no accident that she herself does not expect deliverance from barrenness and, probably with other Israelites, has given up on God’s intervention from under oppression. It is perhaps hard to hear what we do not expect, to a see a door opening that we thought was shut. May we keep an open mind and be receptive to what God is saying to us.

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[1] Sarah gives her maid, Hagar, to Abraham as a concubine with the expectation that the child from that union will be legally Sarah’s (Gen 16:1-2). In effect, Hagar acts as a kind of surrogate mother. Jacob’s wife, Rachel, does likewise (Gen 30:3-4) and Hannah earnestly prays for a child whom she promises to dedicate to the Lord (1 Sam 1:10-11).

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For interest

Nazirite vows in Numbers and a comparison with Samson

Nazirite vows are described in Numbers 6. They were temporary commitments that involved taking on a particular lifestyle that resembled the holiness of priests. As a reminder that they were set apart to God, Nazirites were not to drink alcohol or eat even grapes or raisins, were not to shave their head or go near any dead person (corpses caused ritual defilement; Num 6:1-8). If they accidentally compromised their Nazirite status (e.g. someone died suddenly in their proximity), they had to go through a period of purification, shave their head, offer a sacrifice and re-start the vow from the beginning (Num 6:9-12).

In Samson’s case, the focus of the Nazirite vow is on not shaving the head, though as mentioned in my post above, the instructions to the mother not to drink alcohol during her pregnancy may also imply the same prohibition for Samson. The biggest difference is the total silence of the angel on avoiding defilement through proximity to the dead. Since Samson is the only one explicitly named a Nazirite for life, we can only speculate that perhaps this aspect of the vow was not required for lifelong Nazirites. It would also make sense not to demand this of him when his very task implied fighting and killing Philistines.

By comparison, Samuel is dedicated to the Lord for his whole life. Although not called a Nazirite, the commitment not to shave his head as the only expression of this (1 Sam 1:11) bears a marked similarity to Samson’s case, so the likelihood is that he, too, was a lifelong Nazirite without the requirement to keep clear of corpse defilement. The fact that he kills Agag (1 Sam 15:33), yet the passage is silent on the implications of this for his Nazirite status seems to reinforce the conclusion that lifelong Nazirites were not required to avoid corpse contamination. To return to Samson, knowing these details will matter when we evaluate his shortcomings.

The angel’s instructions and the woman’s summary to her husband – a comparison

Apart from replacing the task of deliverance with the mention of death, the only other significant omission seems to be about not shaving the head, but this is so central to the vow that it is probably self-evident from being a Nazirite. In any case, it is clear from the later story that Samson is fully aware that his Nazirite vow involves not shaving his head (Judg 16:17), whereas he shows little to no awareness of his calling to be a deliverer.

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