Hillside Swedenborgian Community Church

Judges 14:1-14 (New International Version)

Samson went down to Timnah and saw there a young Philistine woman. When he returned, he said to his father and mother, “I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah; now get her for me as my wife.”

His father and mother replied, “Isn’t there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife?” But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me. She’s the right one for me.” (His parents did not know that this was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over Israel.) Samson went down to Timnah together with his father and mother. As they approached the vineyards of Timnah, suddenly a young lion came roaring toward him. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him in power so that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat. But he told neither his father nor his mother what he had done.  Then he went down and talked with the woman, and he liked her.

Some time later, when he went back to marry her, he turned aside to look at the lion’s carcass. In it was a swarm of bees and some honey, which he scooped out with his hands and ate as he went along. When he rejoined his parents, he gave them some, and they too ate it. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the lion’s carcass.

 Now his father went down to see the woman. And Samson made a feast there, as was customary for bridegrooms. When he appeared, he was given thirty companions.

“Let me tell you a riddle,” Samson said to them. “If you can give me the answer within the seven days of the feast, I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes. If you can’t tell me the answer, you must give me thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes.”
 ”Tell us your riddle,” they said. “Let’s hear it.”

 He replied,
     ”Out of the eater, something to eat;
      out of the strong, something sweet.”
      For three days they could not give the answer.

I’m generally addled by riddles. Some of us are better at that kind of mental exercise than others, but by the time that Samson’s riddle is posed, we’re onto the answer, at least on the literal level. “Out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet.” We recognize that Samson is drawing upon what has happened to him along the way to Timnah, and therefore we understand the answer, which is answered Jeopardy-fashion by posing the answer in question form: “What is stronger than a lion, and what is sweeter than honey?

But does any one of us have a ready answer for the deeper message that God has put to us in this story from the ancient Word? Can we identify which of our personal spiritual issues threaten to devour us and what among our spiritual journey tastes as sweet as honey?

In order to apply this unusual biblical tale to our personal lives, we need to employ the tools of spiritual biblical study and explore this unusual tale as a spiritual myth, which it is was surely intended to be. Symbols are flying all over the place in the story of Samson: tearing a lion apart with bare hands; secret of strength coming from never cutting one’s hair; a treasure trove of honey amassing in the dead carcass of the lion. What does the divine have in mind for us in such a tale?  

Surely, this tale is about an incredible strength—in fact, two kinds of incredible strength. First, there is the famous strength of supposedly the strongest animal in the animal kingdom, the lion. And then there is the legendary biblical strength of Samson, the strongest man in the Bible, who in this instance of demonstration of his strength tears apart an attacking lion with his bare hands.

We also need to unpack who the Philistines are, what a marriage feast is, and how one would ever find a motherlode of a honey inside the rotting carcass of slain lion. So let’s take Samson first. I’m not sure that we do him any justice to call him the Arnold Schwarzeneggar of scripture, but I think you get the picture. He topples whole buildings with the push of his hands and in this case pulls a lion apart. Famously, his strength came from his long hair! (You can see why this was my favorite Bible story to show my Dad in high school: the strongest man in the Bible was strong because he had long hair—“Not womanly, Dad: manly!”)

As the great Swedenborgian Bible expositor William Worcester has pointed out, hair is the least living thing about us. And at the same time, it can be the most beautiful feature about us. (Okay, for some of us that’s not really an option.) The correspondence of hair as the outermost aspect of our body is truth in its most basic, outermost level, or the Bible in its most literal outermost level. Truth as a child might understand it.

Swedenborg writes in Apocalypse Explained that “The power in the Word in the sense of the letter is the power of opening heaven, by virtue whereof communication and conjunction is effected; and also the power of fighting against falsities, thus against the hells. A person who is in genuine truths from the literal sense of the Word, can cast down and dissipate all the diabolical crew and their arts, in which they place their power, which are innumerable, and this in a moment, by only a look, and an effort of the will. In fine, in the spiritual world nothing can resist the power of genuine truth, confirmed from the literal sense of the Word.” (Apocalypse Explained, 1086)  So, let us take note that the very early, first, most basic receptions of truth open the floodgates of the celestial powers into our being. Long before it becomes the finest wine, truth already has all the power of God in it to protect us, guide us, and build us.

We see this further confirmed in the figure of Samson, who was in fact a Nazarite, one who not only didn’t cut his hair but also followed a special diet which included refraining from strong drink, as in wine. Wine represents a higher, transformed, spiritual intelligence, and plays a pivotal role as part of the Holy Supper. The fact that Samson does not drink wine means that in this Bible story we’re being given a lesson about truth in its most basic, simple forms and the awesome power of such basic truth in facing our life situations.

So let’s talk about the basic situation of Samson wanting this Philistine wife. A marriage, of course, is a deep union—really becoming one with something. The Philistines, however, would seem to be the wrong place for him to be wanting oneness, because they represent the spiritual condition of knowing truth and right from wrong, but not loving it sufficiently to live it into action consistently. The Philistine spiritual problem is really about a divergence between the life of our desires and inclinations and the spiritual truths and knowledges that we have that might change how we deal with the dramas of our will. So, truly Samson’s desire for a Philistine wife would seem to be a bad deal—yet, there it is: he had an overwhelming desire for her. He really, really wanted this alluring potential partner, and that ferocious temptation is, in fact, the lion that comes roaring at him on the way to Timnath—it is a lion that, in fact, seeks to devour him.

Now, animals always correspond to our emotional life, our feelings and affections. Animals are in the domain of the heart. Animals, thus, may have a positive or a negative correspondence, depending on the context. The dove, for instance, is perhaps the highest emblem of divine love, and it is that animal which alights upon the Lord at his baptism. But in this instance we have not just any animal but the strongest animal coming right at us—and it is coming at us while we’re on the way toward effecting a union with the temptation to split off our convictions and our knowledge of truth from our living. To not think about it, to rationalize, to justify falsely.

One of the most valuable spiritual learning experiences I had was when I was in first grade. It occurred around an episode with the best friend of my older sister, a girl named Kathy who lived on our block. She was over at our house a great deal, and I looked up to her somewhat. One day I got mad at her for a reason I can no longer recall, but I do recall how viciously I cursed her. I don’t remember the specifics of that, either, but I do remember the anger I felt and how I relinquished deliciously all self-control. I gave myself over to being as hurtful as I could creatively muster. My mother overheard it and called me aside either later that day or perhaps the next day. I also don’t recall too much of what she said to me, but for two details: how much in the wrong I was in the spiritual posture of hatred I exhibited; and how it was imperative for me to go over to her house and apologize. I don’t believe I had ever undertaken a formal apology. What sears in my memory is feeling the truth of what my mother was saying and how hard it was to ring the doorbell. I delayed awhile walking up and down the street and lingering a good bit on their porch just standing there. But finally I rang and apologized to Kathy; she was terrifically gracious, and it all unfolded beautifully. Skipping home I was raised up into the most exquisite elation: an intense experience of joy that tasted sweet as honey.  

The way I interpret that experience now today is that in my living I was tempted to try to kill another and I gave myself over towards a union with that temptation, even though I could sense that I was not behaving aright. A word of basic, simple outermost truth came to me from above (mom), and I affirmed that truth and actually repented in my heart, when I agreed that I should actually do something to make amends. It was the Lord working through the channels of our spiritual universe moving from angels through my mother into me, and it was the awesome power of the goodness of God’s way that met the lion of my pride and self-justification and ripped it to shreds. And just as God tucks all kinds of wondrous delights in tiny molecular crevices everywhere in this creation, God placed a honeycomb inside that dead carcass, so that every time I come back by it and remember it as I did this week for this talk, I experience such a beautiful and delicious treat.

This lesson is very important to understand when we contemplate the big question of why God permits evils. This question is such a stumbling block for so many in believing that there is a God, in believing that this hard world can possibly be of divine design. The great faith traditions, though, have always recognized that the hard edges of living as finite little beings in this rugged terrain is itself the curriculum. That which poses our difficulties itself holds the key to spiritual growth.

We need to know the Philistines show themselves to be an especially persistent foe. They keep coming back, and that’s because this particular dynamic in our spiritual growth is a pervasive aspect of living. I mean, who can live out one’s best inclinations every day all day long every day of the year? Samson even goes on to take up with yet another Philistine woman—Delilah. Read the rest of his story in Judges to see how that turns out, because it is the most famous part of Samson’s story in the Bible. Swedenborg said that in many ways he was assailed by trials more fiercely as he deepened into his spiritual path. That fits with his teaching on evil, in which he insists that facing the negative principle of life is absolutely essential to spiritual growth, and that the stronger we become, the greater strength of challenge we can meet. Therefore, let’s just forget about reaching some high spiritual altitude where nothing negative can tangle with our hearts and thoughts anymore. Not in this life. In this life the higher art is learning how to return to a centered place in God over and over again.

 But at the end of the day Samson did not find a good marriage among the Philistines. Thank God for him, and thank God for us when we do not either!

When we feel undermining forces inducing us to cheat a little bit on the integrity of basic spiritual laws (not telling the truth, fudging on financial dealings, in subtle ways attacking or killing another person), and thus find ourselves contending with a roaring lion again, let us again thank the Lord for knowing the answer to Samson’s riddle—because we know how out of that which would eat us comes something for us to eat! And oh my goodness, we know how out of the strong comes something sweet.