Samson’s story begins before his birth, when an angel announces that he will be a Nazirite and that he will begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines. His adult life, however, is marked by extraordinary strength alongside impulsiveness, conflict, and repeated entanglement with Philistine women.

By Judges 16 Samson has become involved with Delilah. Philistine rulers offer her money to discover the source of his strength. She repeatedly presses Samson for the secret, and he repeatedly gives false answers.

Eventually Samson tells her about his uncut hair and his Nazirite consecration. While he sleeps, his hair is cut. The Philistines seize him, blind him, and imprison him. The man who had repeatedly escaped their power is reduced to grinding grain.

At a Philistine celebration, Samson is brought out for entertainment. He asks to be positioned between the building’s supporting pillars and prays for strength one final time. Pushing against the pillars, he brings the structure down on himself and the assembled Philistine leaders.

Samson’s story is tragic as much as triumphant. His strength is real, but so are his failures. Judges uses his life to portray both God’s ability to work through a deeply flawed deliverer and the moral disorder of the period in which ‘everyone did what was right in his own eyes.’