Yes, you will. Good morning, everyone. Glad to see all of you as we gather together for a little Bible study. Those of you online sorry we're a few minutes delayed. You're getting used to it, aren't you? Here we call it Taos time. It's on Taos time, which means we are right on time. Do they do that in Colombia too? Are they on taost time? Okay, Enrique, glad to have you back. Let's have a word of prayer and get back into the life of Samson. Dear Heavenly Father, we are again most grateful to be able to come together, study the Word not only with these here with us, but those who join us online and the blessing that that is. And we just pray that you would guide our discussion today, give us some insight into the world of the past and the world today. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen. And so last week we had the birth announcement 2.0. We had the angel of the Lord came to Manoah's wife first time and she went and told her husband, and he prayed that the angel of the Lord would come again. And the angel of the Lord came the second time. And we looked at that and gave instructions that the child was to be a Nazarite. And we got right up to the birth. If you have last week's session, these two verses right here were on that outline also. But we didn't cover them. And so we're going to cover them today and get the birth of Samson. And then we're going to jump all the way from the birth to the marriage. How's that? Judges 13, verse 24. The woman bear a son and called his name Samson. And the child grew, and the Lord blessed him. It kind of reminds me I don't know if the connection should be there, but it kind of reminds me of Luke, is it 232? Somewhere like that. It speaks of Jesus after it gives the long detailed birth of Jesus, then it says, and the child grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man. And that is the summary verse of all of his know. There's a few things I don't know if I should make this connection because there's a few things that are not but there's a few things in Samson's life that do sort of have overtones of the birth of the Messiah. You've got the birth announcement by an angel. You've got the announcement that the angel gives to Manoah's wife. You will conceive and you will bring forth a son. Almost the same wording. Obviously this is not a virgin conception. That that would be that we find out later in that announcement with Gabriel. And here you've got this. The woman bear a son called his name Samson. The child grew and the Lord blessed him. That's his childhood. It's all we know of his childhood. And we're going to jump ahead. There so there he is. And the child grew and the Lord blessed him. And that's all we know. We do know this is the first time we have a name for the boy. The name is Samson. Unlike the ministry of Jesus where it was told Joseph, you will call his name Jesus, here, there's no indication that they were told what to name him and they name him Samson. That's how we say it in English. In Hebrew. It's Shimshon. And that just means like the sun. Like the sun. Now, I don't know if there's some deep significant meaning to that or if they just liked the way that sounded, or they looked at the boy and said, boy, he's like the son, let's name him that. Whatever it was, that's the name that he gives. It's the only time we have this particular name in the Bible. I should have looked and I did not to see if that root word Shimshone is used anywhere else and actually translated instead of transliterated as you got here. But anyway, he comes maybe as a ray of sunlight in a dark day, the dark day of the Philistines. And then in verse 25, it tells us, okay, we got the child grown. Now, the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtale. Those places again are some of the same places we have seen all the way from the beginning of the chapter. So we're down in the southeast corner of Israel near the Gaza Strip today, and yet we see a little bit about how the Holy Spirit worked in that dispensation or in those days as the spirit of the Lord. The term Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is not something that ever comes up in the Old Testament. Holy Ghost in the King James is the phraseology they use for the third person of the Trinity. You don't really have the express level of the third person of the Trinity in the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament, but you do have things like this. The spirit of yahweh begin to move. Now, as you can see, they capitalize spirit. I think I would agree with that. Maybe you could argue this is just a Lord like spirit, but it doesn't appear to that. It appears to be an empowering spirit, which I think we would call today in our Christian theology, the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Ghost. So here the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of Yahweh began to move him at times. At times is of course the way that even by Judges chapter 13, which is fairly early in the Old Testament, we've already begin to build a pattern that this is the way the Spirit of God worked in that day. And I've given you some examples, we won't go through all of those, but there are 123456 examples prior to this example. If you're just going in the order of our books of the scripture, which up to this point would be the same as the order of the Hebrew scriptures in a Jewish edition. But six times already you've had the spirit of the Lord coming upon and carrying out this. So we're not going to take the time to build the pattern. But certainly by this time, this is the 7th time, and surely seven would seal the deal, right? To say in the Old Testament, at times, keywords right there, at times, the Spirit of the Lord would move. He would move upon individuals, typically. And I think all those examples are individuals, although you got the group of the elders and Joshua, the 70 elders, and so there's a group of people upon which the Spirit of the Lord moved. And you got that now all sorts of stuff that I suppose when we get to heaven, I usually call this the advanced class, but I guess heaven is the real advanced class. It is the graduate level class. When we get to the graduate level class, I would like to spend I don't know, let's spend 100 years on verses 24 and 25 finding out all the little details we missed here. Let's learn about his childhood. I would love to get a little more of the character of Samson, as you're going to see in just a moment. There's some intriguing things about the character of Samson that maybe we should put in the unlearn it I don't know, we kind of envision Samson in a certain way, but should we? Is that wrong? What was he like as a boy? That's what I want to know. And did he tear things up and things like know, light fires all the time and all those kind of things? Was he always kicking down doors? I want to know all these things. And the Spirit of the Lord began to move in him at times. To move him? Excuse me? Began to move him at times. Surely there's some story there. There's something behind that. What is it? I would like to know. But the Bible doesn't give us everything. It gives us what we need to know for now. And so we'll have to save that for another day. Incidentally, let me say, you might have noticed on your outline, I have given you a brand new feature. I don't know if I'll keep doing the feature or not. I'll see what kind of response it's the list of questions at the end. I called it. Requirements for Advanced Certification on Judges 14 one through four. If you would like the advanced certification, you should be able to answer these questions when you're done. I have come to study more recently, the Socratic method of learning, which basically is to have a Q and a dialogue with an individual, to kind of find out where they're at and get the answer. And then you determine from there. Well, what should I ask them next. And in the series of asking questions, you end up guiding them to a certain conclusion. And so I just figure that if you go from here and want to be the expert of judges, chapter 14, one through four really is the heart of it, which we haven't got to yet, then you should be able to answer these ten questions. If you could do that, I would say they know what there is to know about judges 14. So that's all I'm going to say about it. You can take it home and use it as your extra credit. Now we move into chapter 14 and we are going to get Samson in his adulthood. See here, I'm still having a computer challenge that it doesn't want to slide. So I have to nathan, my backspace isn't working. What do I do there? Nathan, my keyboard is not working. What do I do there? Grab my bible. Are you going to fix it? Put judges 14. I'm not sure what happened there. He's working it from the back. Okay, so judges 14. Samson went down to Timnath and saw a woman of Timnath, of the daughters of the Philistines. Here we jump forward again to Samson's adulthood. How old is he? I don't know. I'm going to guess somewhere between 15 and 25. How's that for a ten year guess? I'm only guessing that because he is now ready to get married. He's looking at the girls and he's ready to go down through the ages. At what point did people get married? It's really a lot of guesswork on that. So I don't know. Is he an older teenager? Is he a younger adult? Did they even consider teenager versus adult? Is that a thing for them? What was it? Did they go more by the bar mitzvah of modern Judaism? Well, now he's 13 years old, so that's a man. That's good enough. What was it? I don't know. But anyway, let's make him 20 years old. I don't know. So he goes down to Tim Nash. Tim Nash is a little village again, that today would be in Israel. It's getting close to the Gaza Strip down on the southeast. I have actually been to Timnath once. It is one of those places that it's fun to go to because you can say, oh, I've been to Timnath. But outside of that there's not much to see there. It's a mound of dirt and some fallen down adobe bricks. So really the glory of it is just saying I've been to Timnath. That's it. So Enrique, our trip will not go to Timnath. We will do more exciting things on our journey. But they've discovered it. They've done archaeological digs and found some things from that Philistine era that are in the Israeli museum. Whatnot? So it's kind of an interesting thing and goes down there to Tim. Nath Timnath is mentioned twice in the Bible and the other time also has to do with a man and a woman. Does anybody remember? If you're going to be the expert on judges 14 one through four, you are going to need to know that Timnath is also included in the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis, chapter 38. That is an interesting story in and of itself, where Tamar or Tamar dresses like a prostitute and ends up with her father in law. And the rest you can go read about yourself. But nonetheless, that happened at Timnath also. And so this is the only two times it is kind of mildly interesting, trivially interesting that Tim Nath has the plays. It has something to do with men and women. And so there is Timnath, he goes down to Timnath and he sees one of the daughters of the Philistines. Now, immediately, of course, if you have read any Bible at all, you immediately say this is setting the stage for something that we should know about. And indeed, this does set the stage. Of course, the Philistines were those who were oppressors at that time. Now, so basically the enemy camp there, okay, he came up verse two, he came up and told his father and his mother, and he said, I have seen a woman of Timnath, of the daughter of the Philistines. Now therefore get her for me to wife. That sounds rude. Wouldn't you agree with me? That sounds rude. Mother, father, get her for me to wife. Maybe it is rude, but let me just say, I don't know if it's rude. I think there are two things here. One is the complete cultural difference. That, of course, was a time in which the parents arranged the marriage. And I am sure that in those arranged marriages, I obviously have never lived under that culture, but in those arranged marriages, I'm sure that the child said she would be a good one. Dad right over there. Here's her address. Let me give this to you. Hint, hint. That's not our culture. So maybe this is a very usual, very normal kind of thing where the son says, here's somebody I would like you to go investigate, carry this out. It might not be rude. The second thing that I would say here, get her for me to wife. I looked up the Hebrew, and that's a pretty good Hebrew translation into English. But Hebrew is a much more blunt language than is English. And I have been around enough Jewish people to speak Hebrew today to know that what you think is rude is not rude. That's just the way they talk. They yell at each other and spit on each other because they have a lot of in their words and all this kind of stuff and they use their hands and it is a very kind of vocal verbal, I suppose in the United States. The stereotypical New Yorker probably would be the best we could come to it, sir. So English has changed a lot. Has Hebrew changed a lot? The interesting thing is no, not so much. And I'll tell you why. Because Hebrew for all practical purposes died out and then they resurrected it again, using biblical Hebrew as the basis. And therefore biblical Hebrew is modern Hebrew. It's one of the few places that these were carried over. Now, the one thing that we don't really know is how biblical Hebrew was pronounced. And all of, I say all, they still used the Hebrew for prayers and those kind of things. So there was some recollection over the years of pronunciation. Pronunciation could have changed, could have become more blunt because, as you know, there were a lot of Jewish people that lived in Germany. The German language is rather ominous sounding as well, isn't it? Sometimes when I go to Israel, I fly on Lufthansa, and when I fly on Lufthansa, I always try to be well behaved because the flight attendants there, I don't know if they're mean, but drinks are would you like a drink? I think it's just the language, the culture, the demeanor, this is the way it comes across to us is, whoa, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to what can I do? So anyway, all that to say, maybe he is being rude here, but I'm not sure. I just want to throw him under the bus just yet. I'm trying to be nice to the poor fella and maybe this is a very normal thing. So nonetheless, he now sees this daughter of the Philistines. He is saying she would be a good one to have for a wife. Let's arrange it to see if that comes about. Now, obviously we've had twice now that she's a daughter of the Philistines. That seems to be somewhat problematic. That she's a daughter of the Philistines and I would say is somewhat problematic. I want to go ahead and set the stage for what you need to know a little bit later in that I do not think that this was a prohibition of the Torah for him to marry a daughter of the Philistines. I think that and we'll see this even in the next verse, it's not the wisest thing. It is socially difficult, it is relationally difficult. And to bridge this gap between Nazarite man who's supposed to be faithful to God and to Torah and Philistine woman is a big gap to bridge. But technically it is not against the Torah. He's not breaking the law here. Now, there was a law against Jews marrying canaanites, but every time it specifically mentions the Canaanites philistines are not canaanites. They come from two different stocks. The Philistines actually come from the line of Jephthah and the Canaanites come from the line of Ham. And of course, the Jews come from the line of Shem the. So if she was a Canaanite, this would have been, no, you can't do that. That's against the Torah. We're not going to do it. I would suspect just from what we know about manoah and his wife, they probably wouldn't even have followed through. But they are going to follow through here in a not. It doesn't break the letter of the law. Maybe you could say it breaks the spirit of the law. And I think that's what dad's going to say here in just a moment. But what was it Wednesday night? We had the gospel of Mark and the Pharisees and know the way they considered breaking of the law and the way Jesus considered breaking the law were two different things here. Technically, did he break the law? No, he didn't technically break the law in desiring to have this woman to be his wife. Let's go on. Nathan. Bring me to verse three and we will oh, your scrolls. How about that? You should give me your mouse. We come down to verse three. Then. His father and his mother said to him, is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren among my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines? Now, I know I am trying to avoid reading too much emotion into text, but here you just almost can't miss it. That manoah does not want his son to do this. And it almost looks like maybe Samson is the strong willed child. Maybe Samson has displayed some characteristics of being a rebel all the way. Does the dad again comes, is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren? Just the way that said, I kind of wonder, you know, has he fallen in love with Philistine women before? There seems to be a pattern here. Was there was there not? Again, very hard to take out. And I would say on this one, the English does sound a little stronger than the Hebrew does. So I'm still going to waffle on this one a little bit and say, okay, maybe this is a lighter chastisement than it seems. But when you get down here, not only you didn't take from the daughters of thy brethren among thy people, you go to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines. That is a little bit of redundancy. The Philistine men obviously were uncircumcised, not Jewish, but you could have just said Philistines and would have sufficed. So it looks to me a little bit like let's put them in as bad of light as we can. I think I've mentioned that I've been studying Winston Churchill. Right? Winston Churchill gets what's the excruciated is that the word? I think it means thrown under the bus. But it sounds nicer or sounds more sophisticated. He gets thrown under the bus a lot of times by modern sophisticates because when he talked about the Germans and the Japanese and other races, it sounded extremely racist because a lot of ways that's sort of the way they talked back then. Speaking of things that change and I think he was probably using one modern parlance. And two, he was in war with him, and you make them sound as bad as they can. I don't think Winston Churchill was all that bad of a guy and probably not even a racist. But here you see a little bit of that. Come know, you go take the wife of an uncircumcised philistine. He's definitely chastising his son as he goes, and he begins to look through this. So Samson said unto his father, get her for me. She pleaseth me well. So Samson obviously does not listen. And he's obviously, I don't know if you want to call him committed or obstinate. Which word would you like to use? So it goes in one ear and out the other. That's the woman. Go get her for me. Again, how rude is he being? I don't know. But there's something that I think you should see. Nathan, can we back up again to verse one? And let's look. Samson went down and saw a woman. It definitely is the I word. He saw a woman down in verse two. I have seen a woman, just a different form, but again, definitely the same thing. Now let's go to verse three. And in verse three, get her for me, for she pleaseth me. Well, now that is translated a little, not quite as literally in English because it's an idiom that wouldn't necessarily always communicate. And so the idiom, if you took it literally, says, she is right in my eyes. She is right in my eyes. So the narrator says he saw a woman. Samson says, I've seen a woman. And then Samson says, she looks right to me. She is right in my eyes. I think, obviously, here he is looking at the physical beauty of this woman, of Timnas, and he likes what he sees. Which I want to say maybe an odd thing. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with saying she's a ten in my book. I'll go for this, dad, let's take this. I do think that we should balance aesthetics, physical beauty with the other characteristics. And this is one of the jobs of a dad and a mom, I suppose, is to say, hey, let's go with what's beautiful. Let's go with also beauty is only skin deep. Let's take this and balance this out. I know this is totally an aside on all this, but I have a theory. My theory is that absolutely anyone can be beautiful. Anyone can be handsome, anyone can be stunning, whatever it is. And it really depends on your values. What do I care about? Do I want to dress in a way that would help me look better? Do I want to eat in a way, live in a way, exercise in a way, whatever to do this, I tell you. And some people will be offended by my statement here. But one thing I have noticed is that rich people's kids look better. Why do rich people's kids have better looking kids, honestly. I think it's because this is what we value. And so we trim their hair, we give them a nice set of clothes that would look good on them. I went to Dillard's the other day because they had a 65% off sale. And my wife says, you have to go to Dillard's. And so I looked at the men's shirts there that were 65% off. I don't know if they still are. And they had full cut and they had, I don't know, I think regular cut, and they had athletic cut or slim cut, I think it was. And the one I wanted was slim. But I said to the man, I don't think this is going to look good on me, is it? And he says no. So I did not get the slim cut. But anyway, you don't say, I like the color and I like the price, so I'm going with it. I probably shouldn't keep talking here, but while I'm talking, I later was at where was I? I think I was at Sam's. And at Sam's I saw a person and I thought, you really should not wear that in private, let alone in public. There are some things that would make you look better, and this is not it. Anyway, all that to say, physical beauty is a reality. I personally think we ought to try to enhance it, we ought to work with it. But don't just make your decision on that. And it almost looks like because it's in there three times in three verses, he saw her, I've seen her, she's right in my eyes that this is completely a sight kind of thing. Prioritize values, value. I think we ought to value aesthetics. We try to do it a little bit around here, try to put a flower in it or something, make it look just a little bit better. And that's a good thing. And yet, at the same time, that can't be our priority. Now, let's move down to verse four, which is it throws a wrench in the whole story. Verse four says, his father and his mother knew not that it was the Lord, that he sought an occasion against the Philistines, for at that time, the Philistines had dominion over Israel. Okay, we already knew Philistines had dominion over Israel, but in this whole story, we never guessed that the Lord was behind all this. The Lord wanted Samson to marry this uncircumcised Philistine, and maybe the Lord used Samson's weakness and the timnith beauty queen bringing that together as an opportunity to, as it says there, as an occasion against the Philistines. The Lord was looking, seeking for an occasion against the Philistines, and so he's the one behind all of this. I think it's interesting, and I don't know what to make of it completely, but it says, his father and his mother knew not that it was the Lord. I half wonder. Well, the Spirit moved upon samson from time to time and his father and his mother didn't know. But did Samson know? Maybe the reason that Samson is so insistent get her she's the right one. Is because Samson knows what God is up to. Wouldn't that be interesting if every Bible story I suppose Christians and Jews jews tend to be a little more kind to their heroes than Christians are. But I bet every Bible story a Christian ever gave about Samson is this was the beginning of the end. This is when he was on his way down. This shows all of his weakness. And we always miss, oh, the Lord did this. The lord wanted this to happen again. Wouldn't it be irony of ironies if we get up and sit with Samson someday and hear the rest of the story and find out? You guys threw me under the bus for thousands of years when all I was doing was being obedient to the Lord. He told me, go marry that woman. This wasn't my idea. He told me. And I was being insistent when my parents, my good Godly, wonderful parents didn't even want to go with it. And I said, get me that woman. She's the one. You have to admit the lord is behind it. And this is what the lord wants. It was of the lord in his design. Did Samson know it? Did Samson not know it? I don't know. I think the preponderance of evidence from the text has to be samson probably knew it because the spirit of the lord moved upon Samson at times. And now he's insistent and he goes to this and his father and his mother knew not not they did not know, or the father and the mother and Samson didn't know. But we have to look at that. And then to put this in perspective again, samson was designed to be, or instructed to be a Nazarite from the womb for all of his life. Well, would the lord who gave the instruction to be a Nazarite, then give the instruction to break the Nazarite vow? That would seem a little incongruent messed up for the lord to say, live as a Nazarite, go break your Nazarite vow. What is it? The new testament says that God is not the author of confusion. So this is why I pointed out earlier, I don't think he's breaking any kind of Torah law that a Nazarite is supposed to fulfill. Really? To the letter of the law, he's carrying that out. It doesn't seem like the wisest move. But the I guess you would say wisdom is sometimes circumstantial. What's the end goal? What are you trying to get? And so wisdom to get there? And so here, the Lord wanted this. He sought an occasion to bring it about. And if the lord devised this plan, you do sort of wonder, did Samson even have a choice in the matter? What was his knowledge? What was his choice. It would be interesting to know, and I don't know again, before we are too rough on Samson for going after this woman of Timneth, who did Boaz marry? Ruth the Moabites. Exactly. She was not the daughter of one of the brethren. She was of a pagan origin as well. Moabites are not canaanites either. Moabites are from the tribe of Lot. They're fellowshimites. But Ruth the Moabiteus is really among Judaism. She's considered this is like the greatest Jewish woman there ever was. And they consider that because she actually converted to Judaism. Others, they're kind of like, wow, you were born that way. But she she chose us. And so could it be the same that even before the marriage, this woman is going to convert to Judaism? There's really nothing against it. Or how about Rahab? Remember her Jewish teaching, whether this is true or not, jewish teaching is that Joshua the Conqueror actually married and Rahab again, in Jewish tradition, Rahab is held in very high. You know, she was from Jericho. So how far can we go with all this? I think we ought to be careful in reading too much into it. That just sort of fits the narrative we've always had. So let's go ahead and give him the benefit of the doubt right now. God gave Samson an instruction and his parents to live as a Nazarite. We assume that he's living as a Nazarite up to this point. We assume that he is a good and godly young man. We assume that good and Godly young men want to obey the Lord. We assume that the Spirit of the Lord came and said, go get a woman from Timnath. A what? A woman from Timnath. I got a plan. Okay, Lord, if you say it, we'll do it. Ah, look at that woman from oh, my. Oh, my. I think I'll go with that one. I like your plan, Lord. And he's following the will of the Lord, and this is what is happening now. Could it be totally different? Maybe. I suppose it could. I just think that see if I can get my picture there and be done. I just think that the text itself is not near as negative about this as we are. And so we'll try to put it in a positive light, and then we'll question the assumptions as we go. Our theory may prove to be wrong, but we'll find out as we continue. And now I'm out of time. Let me lead us in a word of prayer. Father, thanks for giving us the opportunity to dig into these few verses of Scripture and look at them with some detail and question our own assumptions that we have taken through the years and look to consider what the real occasion here is so much that we don't know, and we'd like to know more. But I pray that as we continue, you'd help us to have even more and more insight into the life of Samson. We ask this in Jesus name, amen. Well, in about, I don't know, ten minutes, we're going to start the service and we today are going to unlearn creeds and confessions. It yeah, it brings in the crowd if you announce that just like, Biblical Chronology, I mean, they will flood the gates. Oh, good. We have a Catholic credalist with us today, so thanks for the help. You all take a little break and we'll join back in a moment. All.