‘ And he was extremely thirsty, and called on Yahweh and said, “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant, and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?”
These pettish words summarise Samson's life. A dedicated man, a servant of Yahweh, and yet easily swaying from one extreme to the other. We can compare this aspect of him with Elijah when after his great victory at Carmel he despaired on the mountain (1 Kings 19:4; 1 Kings 19:10), (although Elijah was of sterner stuff than Samson). There is something of it within us all.
“Extremely thirsty.” A hot country and a fierce battle were enough to dehydrate any man, and Samson was no exception. He needed water. But there was a petulance here that suggested that he felt that God owed him something for what he had done, which goes along with his careless attitude to the jawbone. We sense here the beginning of his slide downwards.
“You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant.” We must not lose sight of the fact that Samson was a dedicated man, consecrated to Yahweh. He was conscious of serving Him and of the fact that he owed his great gifts to him. And up to this point he had mainly been worthy of those gifts. While he had sought out a Philistine wife it had been with the purpose of fulfilling his destiny (Judges 14:4), and he had taken every opportunity to weaken the Philistines, while the escalating violence had been a response to the dishonesty, double dealing and violence of the Philistines. And we must remember that they were his natural enemy. He had thus largely been faithful.
“And now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?” He was still a hunted man and was aware that weakness might result in his capture. So, while exaggerated, his words contained some truth. He needed water to restore him to fighting fitness. But the tenor of his words was petulant. He seemed to be suggesting that he could have been better looked after. He was getting above himself, and that usually leads to disaster in the life of a godly man.
The thirst should have reminded him that without God he was nothing. All his strength depended on God's continual supply. Instead it made him feel ill-treated. How do we respond when God puts us to the test? That is the test of what we are.