Some of these samples of human life are offered to us for our imitation, and some by way of warning. The wide variety exhibited shows how God can use and bless the better elements in many a life where the wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest. The divine purpose shows an amazing measure of hospitality. "The love of God is broader than the measure of man's mind."
We come for example to the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. It is the roll call of men of faith. "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death because he walked with God. By faith Noah built an ark for the saving of his house. By faith Abraham went out to found a nation in which all the nations of the earth should be blessed, not knowing whither he went. "By faith Moses chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season."
"And what shall I say more," the author remarks in passing. "Time would fail me to tell of all the men who by faith subdued kingdoms and wrought righteousness, obtained promises and put to flight the armies of evil, Gideon and Barak, Samson and Jephthah."
Samson! The very presence of his name in this catalogue of moral heroes all but takes away one's breath. What does this big husky fellow, this wild, fun-loving chap have to do with the working out of the divine purpose for the race? We are as much surprised as we would be if we had found Jack Johnson undertaking to preach the Gospel, or John L. Sullivan trying to be elected as a professor in Princeton Theological Seminary. Samson as a hero of the faith! Surely this is "Saul among the prophets." We will be interested in studying the life of this young man who had the build and the mood of an athlete.
He had in his youth the strength and promise of a mighty man. He caught a young lion and seizing it by its jaws ripped it apart as an ordinary man would have rent a kid. He caught up the jaw-bone of an ass and slew heaps and heaps of his enemies in personal combat. He carried off the gates of a city and hid them on the top of a hill as if he had been celebrating Hallowe'en. He would have been the making of any football team. If he had furnished the forward thrust of a flying wedge it would have gone through any line that might have stood in its way.
It would not be easy to draw a hard and fast line here between the prose and the poetry of these narratives. Something of history and a great deal of folk-lore undoubtedly are blended in these stirring tales. There are many passages in the earlier portions of the Bible which have more value for the history of ideas than for the history of actual occurrence. They are full of truth though they may not always conform to sober fact. They are parables rather than records.
But we may be sure that this interesting young giant had something more than mere physical prowess. He had in him some of the elements of genuine leadership else he would not have been regarded as a judge and a leader in Israel, raised up for a great work. The people would never have woven these stories about his name nor enrolled him among the moral heroes of their race had he not possessed some of the elements of real strength. He had in him the sense of power—it is a quality which all men covet and all women adore.
He had a keen sense of the joy of living. We are glad that the element of humour was not left out of the Bible. It would not have been so human, so complete, so unmistakably "the Book of Books" had this been lacking. I am sure that the Almighty has a sense of humour. He must have or He never would have created pelicans and monkeys. "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh," we read—and He must have laughed when He made these curious creatures. He was willing to give this fun-loving Samson a place on the roster of the Army of the Lord.
Samson stands out on the pages of Scripture as a big, overgrown, rollicking boy looking upon life as one huge joke. His major study was to turn the laugh on the dull-witted, slow-going Philistines. He tore the young lion and when a swarm of bees had made honey in the carcass Samson made this riddle,—"Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness." He propounded his riddle to the Philistines and made them a bet that they could not guess it. And when they wheedled the answer to the riddle out of Samson's wife he retorted upon them in coarse fashion, "If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye would not have guessed my riddle."
He carried off the gates of the city of Gaza and hid them. He caught foxes and tied firebrands to their tails and then turned them loose in the ripe wheat fields of the Philistines, roaring aloud over the havoc they made. He slew his enemies with the jaw-bone of an ass and then made a clever pun (which the Hebrew reveals) upon the name of his homely weapon.