A Lesson from Samson the Great (How love conquered)

We have over the years, heard about the story of Samson. The most popular story I can even remember is the one which Samson tore the lions mouth. We have also perceived Samson to be the man who was gifted by GOD with strength and yet did not bring people to the reverence of God. Rather he indulged himself in womanizing and taking of strong wine. This we see as acts that aren’t God glorifying and we may even be courageous enough to say Samson’s gift proved a waste in his hands and we would have been able to list people who would have proved more worthy of a gift like this.

However, what we are failing to see is that there is nothing done without the knowledge and approval of God. He allows for things to happen and not necessarily carrying out the actions by Himself. In the case of Samson, the bible records (Judges 14:1-4) how God had always been with him even from the time he was conceived.

We know the story of Samson and Delilah, and how she had connived with the philistine leaders to reveal the secret of Samson’s strength for an exchange of silver (Judges 16:5). We also know that Samson was later caught (Judges 16:20) and perhaps we feel that he could had avoided that.

There is something I would like to draw our attention to and that is how Love played a major role throughout the relationship pan of Samson and Delilah. From the bible, we see that Israel had been delivered unto the Philistines for 40 years (Judges 13:1) and thus, the Israelites were being oppressed by the Philistines and this lead to the birth of Samson, who was to deliver them from their long time oppressors. We also saw that Samson grew into a great treat to the philistines because he was able to overcome their every plan but from another perspective it was also hard for the Israelite’s to hit where matters with the Philistine – the leadership.

Although Samson was defeating the soldiers, he was yet to reach the leaders. Then comes Love, when Samson fell in love with Delilah, it became easy to reach the leaders because they became interested in the relationship. The leaders knew that by Samson falling in love with one of them (Philistines) Samson would become trusting and reveal all his secret. From the other side (God’s) there has been a way to get into the inner chambers of the Philistines. At the time of Samson’s death, we see that Samson killed more philistines (including the ruling class) than ever before (Judges 16:30).

How do we see love in this story?

the concluding part of this post – A lesson from Samson the Great 2 (How Loved played out)

Thomas Osume.