Samson

An Old Testament judge who had unusual, God-given strength, but was not very wise. An angel announced Samson’s upcoming birth to his parents and told Samson’s mission: to help free Israel from its Philistine rulers. But Samson never fully lived up to this potential. He continually made poor choices. He even married a Philistine woman! At the weeklong wedding feast, Samson gave a riddle to thirty men who were guests. When the men could not guess the riddle after several days, they told Samson’s wife she would have to get the answer or they would burn down her father’s house. She tricked Samson to get the answer. When his wife was given to another man to be his wife, Samson later took revenge by tying the tails of three hundred foxes to flaming torches and let the foxes loose in the Philistine grain fields. The grain harvest was destroyed. The Philistines took revenge against Samson, but Samson killed one thousand of them with the jawbone of a donkey. Samson met his match with Delilah, another Philistine woman. He was later captured by the Philistines and blinded. Standing between the two pillars, Samson prayed to God for the strength to push them down. As the walls and ceiling fell, thousands of Philistines were killed—and so was Samson.