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From Eternity Past
To this place he was pursued, and the inhabitants of Judah, in great
alarm, basely agreed to deliver him to his enemies. Accordingly three
thousand men of Judah went up to him. Samson permitted them to
bind him with two new ropes, and he was led into the camp of his
enemies amid demonstrations of great joy. But “the Spirit of Jehovah
came mightily upon him.” He burst asunder the strong new cords as
if they had been flax burned in the fire. Then seizing the first weapon
at hand, the jawbone of an ass, he smote the Philistines, leaving a
thousand men dead upon the field.
Had the Israelites been ready to unite with Samson and follow
up the victory, they might have freed themselves from their oppres-
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sors. But they had become dispirited and had neglected the work God
commanded them to perform in dispossessing the heathen. They had
united with them in their degrading practices. They tamely submitted
to degradation which they might have escaped had they only obeyed
God. Even when the Lord raised up a deliverer for them, they would,
not infrenquently, desert him and unite with their enemies.
Samson’s Wrong Marriage
After his victory the Israelites made Samson judge, and he ruled
Israel for twenty years. But Samson had transgressed the command
of God by taking a wife from the Philistines, and again he ventured
among them—now his deadly enemies—in the indulgence of unlawful
passion. Trusting to his great strength, he went to Gaza to visit a harlot.
The inhabitants of the city learned of his presence and were eager for
revenge. Their enemy was shut safely within the walls of the most
strongly fortified of their cities. They felt sure of their prey, and only
waited till morning to complete their triumph.
At midnight the accusing voice of conscience filled Samson with
remorse as he remembered that he had broken his vow as a Nazarite.
But God’s mercy had not forsaken him. His prodigious strength again
served to deliver him. Going to the city gate, he wrenched it from its
place and carried it to the top of a hill on the way to Hebron.
He did not again venture among the Philistines but continued to
seek those sensuous pleasures that were luring him to ruin. “He loved
a woman in the valley of Sorek,” not far from his birthplace. Her name
was Delilah, “the consumer.” Sorek’s vineyards also had a temptation