Samson's Hair

Finally he told her his secret.  He said to her, “My hair has never been cut, for I have been dedicated to God from the time I was conceived.  If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me; I would become weak, and be just like all other men.” – Judges 16:17  (NET)

The story of the maddeningly enigmatic character, Samson, begins in a familiar way.  We have “a man named Manoah from Zorah, from the Danite tribe.   His wife was infertile and childless” (Judges 13:2).  The God of Israel steps into this situation, and we learn that “The Lord’s angelic messenger appeared to the woman and said to her, ‘You are infertile and childless, but you will conceive and have a son” (13:3).  Immediately upon hearing this, we are reminded of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Rachel.  Because the patriarchs of Israel had all experienced, to an extent, what was now being experienced by Manoah and his wife, those hearing this story already know that there is going to be something special about this child. 

Manoah’s wife receives instructions in relation to her son that is going to be born.  The messenger tells her, “Now be careful!  DO not drink wine or beer, and do not eat any food that will make you ritually unclean.  Look, you will conceive and have a son.  You must never cut his hair, for the child will be dedicated to God from birth.  He will begin to deliver Israel from the power of the Philistines” (13:4-5).  With this, our thoughts are moved beyond the patriarchs to Israel itself.  This mention of ritually unclean foods hearkens to the Mosaic law, and the use of “son” is a reminder that in the Exodus narrative, which was intensely programmatic for Israel, God refers to Israel as His firstborn son (4:22).  Naturally then, like Samson, Israel was a child dedicated to God from its birth.  If we think big picture, then Israel, ultimately, was going to be the means by which God acted in history to deliver the whole of His creation from the power of death.  So Samson becomes a microcosm of Israel. 

When Manoah is given the privilege of encountering the angelic messenger and the instructions are recounted to him, he is told “Your wife should pay attention to everything I told her.  She should not drink anything that the grapevine produces.  She must not drink wine or beer, and she must not eat any food that will make her ritually unclean.  She should obey everything I commanded her to do” (13:13b-14).  Fascinatingly, the very thing upon which we focus when it comes to Samson and the sign of his covenant, which was his hair, is not reiterated to Manoah.  Instead, the messenger tells him, twice, that his wife should pay attention to everything that she has been told to do in regards to her and her son.  In this case, she has received further instruction and it is incumbent upon her to share it with her husband.  It is also incumbent upon her husband to trust her in regards to this matter of their son’s hair, which provides an interesting twist to the dynamic of the story, especially within a society ordered around patriarchal dominance.  Samson’s hair becomes a mark of God’s covenant with him and with his parents.  Not cutting his hair was a signal of their collective faithfulness to the covenant that God had taken the initiative to enter into with them. 

If Samson is a microcosm of Israel, then we should see other points of contact between his story, especially related to his covenant marker, and that of Israel.  What happens when Samson’s hair is cut?  The Lord left Him, he had his eyes gouged out, he was bound in chains, and he was deported to the land of the Philistines.  How does this relate to Israel?  God’s firstborn son, that had been so improbably brought to birth through the events of the Egyptian exodus (as improbably as Abraham and Sarah having a child in their old age and as improbably as an infertile woman giving birth), was given instructions.  These instructions to Israel are recorded in Leviticus.  We read “You must not make for yourselves idols, so you must not set up for yourselves a carved image or a pillar, and you must not place a sculpted stone in your land to bow down before it, for I am the Lord your God.  You must keep My Sabbaths and reverence My sanctuary.  I am the Lord” (26:1-2).  As Samson’s hair was the response of his parents and himself to God’s covenant, so too was following these basic provisions laid out in Leviticus Israel’s response to God’s covenant with them.  It demands to be noted that it is neither a refrain from hair cutting nor the adherence to what is detailed in Leviticus that brings one in to covenant with the Creator God of Israel, but rather, it is the keeping of these things that is the glad response to the covenant activity of God. 

What would happen to Israel if they failed to keep that which was their required response---if they worshiped idols, violated the Sabbaths and did not reverence the sanctuary?  Would God cut them off and have nothing to do with them?  No, He would not.  Rather, He would execute disciplinary judgment according to His promises and in accordance with the fact that they were His covenant people.  We see this detailed in the same chapter in Leviticus, wherein God promises horror, consumption, and fever.  He promises that seed will be sown in vain and enemies will eat whatever happens to be produced.  He promises to set His face against His people and to strike them down before their enemies, as they are ruled over by those who hate them (26:16-17).  The afflictions go on and on and culminate with “You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will consume you” (26:38). 

There is also the promise that the horrors that God will inflict will serve to “diminish eyesight and drain away the vitality of life” (26:16b).  Is this not, along with the fact that he was ruled over by his enemies, almost precisely what we see happen to Samson when he forsakes (though he did not actually cut off his own hair) the mark of God’s covenant with him?  However, God also promises that “I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out from the land of Egypt” (26:45a), doing so “when they confess their iniquity and their ancestors’ iniquity which they committed by trespassing against Me” (26:40a).  In the end, God promises to bring them back to their promised land.  In much the same way, even though Samson has been bound, and even though the Levitical curses have devolved upon him, “His hair began to grow back after it had been shaved off” (16:22). 

As God would not forget His people, so God had not forgotten Samson.  With words that hearken back to God’s remembering of His covenant with Israel, Samson, having been placed before the Philistines, having apparently and to some extent realized his failures, and having devised a rather interesting exit strategy, cries out “O Master, Lord, remember Me!  Strengthen me just one more time, O God, so I can get swift revenge against the Philistines for my two eyes!” (16:28)  With that, Samson brought the house down upon himself and the Philistines.  Thus, he perished among the nations, and was consumed within the land of his enemies; and thus, though a deliverance from the Philistines is brought about through his actions, the note of personal revenge has been struck, and Samson, though the symbol of God’s covenant with him had begun to reappear (his hair growing back), dies along with the Philistines.  He does not experience a return to the land, but dies in his bondage.  Maddeningly and enigmatically, so ends the story of Samson.