(with Judges 16:31)
I. Consider the character of Samson. His character is unlike that of the other heroes of Hebrew story. (1) Alone in the Old Testament he overflows with joyousness. His very name means "Sunlike." He has a sportive wit which sparkles in rhythmic couplets, flashes in epigrams, plays upon words. (2) This great child of daring and genius is brought up a Nezyir-Elohim with his vow of strictness. But his strictness in one direction was compensated for by laxity in another. His unrivalled bodily strength co-existed with abject moral weakness. (3) Being such as he was, Samson naturally fell lower and lower. When the Philistines shouted, the cords seemed to melt away before the bracing of those mighty sinews; but the chains of his own sin, with which he was tied and bound, he could not unloose.
II. The story of Samson has been called "the seriocomic history of a Hebrew Hercules." Instead of being comic, it is pathetic and tragic in the highest degree. It is one of those histories of a soul's fall, in the Bible, which are most like summaries of an almost universal experience; like parables in which we may trace features like our own and those of hundreds more.
III. The question has often been asked, Was the fall of Solomon final? Among the Fathers of the Church different replies have been given; but the heart of the Church has turned to the more favourable answer. May we not hold, with somewhat more assurance, the same hope for the giant judge?
IV. We may gather these lessons from the life of Samson: (1) Flee from every sin that has light in its eye and honey on its tongue. (2) We learn from Samson the weakness of our own will. Our wills must be strengthened: (a) by the sympathy of Christ; (b) by the inward gift of the Spirit.
Bishop Alexander, Contemporary Pulpit,vol. i., p. 78 (see also The Great Question,p. 145).
I. Notice first, that in Samson we have a man of surpassing physical strength. He was from first to last a huge, lone pugilist, capable of dealing tremendous blows: he could smite, rend, crush with his two hands marvellously, and that was all. He recognised his own ability, and did earnestly what he knew he could do.
II. Observe what Samson's countrymen thought of his amazing strength. (1) They ascribed it to the Spirit of the Lord. Samson's chief value lay, perhaps, in the one inspiring thought which his prowess awakened the thought that God was there. (2) The people believed that Samson's strength, having its source in the Spirit of Jehovah, was intimately connected with the Nazariteship of the man, and depended for its continuance upon the maintenance of that Nazariteship. Thus he served to remind them that their might and their hope as a nation lay in their fidelity to the consecration to which they had been chosen. He taught them that to be strong was to be faithful, and that with faithlessness came weakness and decay.
S. A. Tipple, Sunday Mornings at Norwood,p. 72.