Sampson was the Arnold Schwarzenegger of his day, a muscle bound action hero, swinging a donkey jawbone or setting foxes on fire to run rampant through the Philistines fields, but in the case of Sampson, driven more by lust than by any sense of purpose. A typical politician, Sampson led Israel for twenty years, but those years were fraught with his escapades with prostitutes, and finally with Delilah, his eventual undoing.
It was only because the Lord God had chosen him, and his parents had been faithful when they raised him as a Nazarite, that he had any strength at all. His strength was not in his hair, it was merely a symbol of his consecration to God. God was the only source of his strength, and when that tie was cut he was a mere human. With his connection to God gone, the Philistines were able to subdue Sampson, put him in shackles and gouge out his eyes.
While Sampson pushed the grinding stone around and around in prison, his hair and his strength returned. Although his motive was not completely pure...he wanted revenge for what the Philistines had done to him...he finally acknowledged the source of his strength and called out to God for strength one more time. With that strength he toppled the temple of the Philistines on three thousand of their leading citizens and with his death killed more of them than he had in his lifetime. Sampson had to be shackled in order to rid Israel of the Philistines as God intended. Sampson had to be blinded in order to see.
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