Day 74. Judges 16-18

Samson appears throughout his career to have suffered from a testosterone overdose. In our reading for today he is again having woman trouble; this time it is with the famous "femme fatale" Delilah.
We, who have heard Samson's early history, know what Delilah with all her wiles labors so hard to find out—that a nazarite vow had been taken on Samson's behalf even before his birth. That vow would not allow him to cut his hair, and his unshorn locks were the source of his great strength (16:17). So when she at last nags the secret out of him, and his Philistine enemies barber him, the LORD left him (16:20) and Samson was left at their mercy. Gouging out his eyes (16:20) was a symbolic castration, a sign of the loss of his manhood.
Samson loses his strength—but not his cunning. The last act of his life is the greatest of all his practical jokes. Reading this story, we can readily understand why the death of Samson has been a staple of "sandal epics" ever since the invention of motion pictures. His final heroic act of self-sacrifice (16:30) sums up Samson's whole life. It was not a virtuous life by any means, but the charismatic gifts Samson possessed were the very things the People of God needed at a crude and violent moment in their history. That sentence--"Those he killed at his death were more than those he had killed during his life" (16:30)--would serves as a fitting epitaph for Samson, who employed random violence and cruel trickery more than wisdom during his career as a judge. But his actions, though hardly admirable by modern standards, did succeed for a time in delivering Israel from its enemies.
But the real enemies of the People of the Promise—and this is the theme of the Book of Judges—are those Israelites who forsake the LORD for idols. In chapter 17 we are told the story of a rich man from the tribe of Ephraim named Micah. Not only did Micah cast an idol out of silver—probably an image of Baal—but he also had a priestly vestment—an ephod—and teraphim—small images of other domestic gods—made to accessorize his household temple (17:4-5).
But not satisfied with this, he did the unthinkable. Micah suborned a passing destitute Levite to serve as the priest of this homegrown cult (17:10). 'Then Micah said, "Now I know that the LORD will prosper me, because the Levite has become my priest" (17:13).' He had, it seems, acquired a "lucky Levite."
The sentence which begins chapter 18—"In those days there was no king in Israel"—becomes an "iterative" phrase in this last portion of the Book of Judges. Whenever it occurs, it points to the growing religious, moral and political disorder and decay taking place in the Israelite confederacy. To demonstrate this we are told how passing Danites steal Micah's silver idol and kidnap his pet Levite. They carry them away as stolen goods and install them in their newly captured city of Dan (18:17-18) in the far north of Israel. There "they maintained as their own Micah's idol that he had made" (16:31), and this situation continued "as long as the house of God was at Shiloh." In other words, there were now two sanctuaries—the orthodox one at Shiloh and another uncertified one at Dan.
And the chaos and disintegration of the Israelite confederacy will continue throughout the next generation, and will end only when the loose, charismatic rule of the judges is replaced by a strong, centralized Israelite monarchy.