I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 14-16.

    Samson was a powerful man and a mighty warrior, who was apparently fairly wise, since he served as judge over the people of Israel for 20 years. Yet, despite all of this, all of the stories we have concerning him are related to his poor judgment when it came to women. Time and again he allowed his sexual desires to override his better sense. Early in his life, he chose to pursue a Philistine woman for a wife. The cultural differences caused that to end badly for everyone. I am not going to go through the story and point out these differences, but if you read through it you will see how each side took actions which led the other side to escalate the situation beyond what they expected (although in Samson’s case, that might be a result of being young and headstrong). Then there is the incident with the prostitute. Finally, there is Samson’s interactions with Delilah. Delilah pressures him to tell her the secret of his great strength and he tells her several lies about it. Each time, she tests those lies, then confronts him with the fact that they were lies. Despite her clear attempts to subdue and enslave him, Samson continues to see her and finally tells her the truth about how to eliminate his strength. I want to be clear here, Samson’s behavior with Delilah is far from unique among men (or even to men, women do similar things with the men they choose to be with as well). Smason’s mistakes with women, especially in the case of Delilah, were that he sought sexual relations with women whose loyalty was always to others more than to him. That is the whole point of marriage, and why it is so important to keep our sexual activity inside of marriage. When we get married our loyalty and trust should transfer to our spouse. Samson’s wife betrayed him because she did not trust him enough to tell him of the threats made to herself and her family. At least part of the reason Samson’s wife had that lack of trust was because her loyalties still lay with her people rather than with her husband.