Immoral or Imprecatory? Samson’s Prayer (Judg 16:28)

April 12, 2024 at 11:32 am (OT-Judges)

by R. Fowler White

Judges 16:28 Then Samson called to the Lord and said, “O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes.”

Samson’s prayer quoted above is most frequently interpreted as a selfish, vindictive petition to the Lord God [Heb. Adonai Yahweh]. More often than not, this interpretation follows on the heels of Samson’s conduct before his suffering and death at the hands of the Philistines. The prayer is consequently seen as the last in a long string of personal misdeeds born of motives, standards, or ends that were defiled with many weaknesses and imperfections. In short, Samson’s prayer is viewed as immoral and wicked at its core, if not in its entirety. But was it? Very few commentators seem even to have seriously considered whether the prayer might be more accurately interpreted as an imprecation, indeed a holy imprecation. Consider the following points in favor of that interpretation.

To begin, let’s clarify what it would mean to say that Samson’s prayer was imprecatory. As many others have pointed out, an imprecation would be a petition to God that He would bring adversity, defeat, or death upon an enemy for the wrongs done to Him, to His people, and/or to the deliverer He appointed for them. So it would be in Samson’s case. Mocked and persecuted by the Philistines (Judg 16:21-27) as God was chastening him (cf. 16:20), Samson asked for and—it should be noted—was granted the strength to avenge their wrongdoing against him (16:28), thus exalting the God of Israel over Dagon the god of the Philistines (cf. 16:23-24) (see Keil and Delitzsch).

Second, we should notice the similarities between the petition of Samson in Judg 16:28 and the petition of Deborah and Barak in Judg 5:31. As Samson calls for strength to punish the Philistines and to destroy their temple, so Deborah and Barak called on the Lord to do to all His enemies what He had done to the Canaanite king Jabin and his army (see also Ps 83:9). Presumably, we should read the Philistines’ destruction in Judg 16:29-30 as one of the Lord’s answers to the exclamatory prayer in Judg 5:31. Making an echo of 5:31 in 16:28-30 even more plausible is the fact that the victory of the once-again-long-haired Samson (16:22) mirrors the victory of the long-haired warriors (5:2, Heb. pĕrāʿôt; see Deut 32:42) in the days of Deborah and Barak. Remarkably, however, commentators who are so ready to disparage Samson’s prayer seem quite unfazed by the rather obvious imprecatory nature of the prayer offered—in celebratory song, no less—by Deborah and Barak.

Third, we should not overlook the last line of the Song of Deborah and Barak: But [may] your friends be like the sun as he rises in his might (Judg 5:31b). While seeking God’s curse on His foes (5:31a), the Song also seeks God’s blessing for His people, comparing their end to the sun rising in and to its full strength. The simile seems again to gesture in Samson’s direction. How so? As we saw above, the first gesture came in the Song’s opening, where Israel’s long-haired warriors (5:2) appeared as a literary foreshadowing of Samson, Israel’s future long-haired deliverer. Likewise, in the Song’s closing, God’s friends are compared to the sun, a reference that suggests another intertextual allusion to Samson. The allusion emerges in Samson’s proper name, which, according to a large majority of interpreters, derives from the Hebrew word šemeš (shemesh) for “sun.” Though commentators often see Samson’s mother capitulating to pagan myth by naming her boy after the ancient sun-god, the evidence of her affirmation of and faith in his divine appointment is quite clear in Judg 13:2-7, 23. In this light, it is better to hear in the boy’s name the same polemical chord that was struck in the idiom used in the final petition from the Song of Judges 5. As Deborah and Barak had prayed that God would bless His friends with sun-like strength and glory (5:31b), so Samson’s mother named her boy after the sun, anticipating that, in accord with His revealed purpose, God would indeed bless him to begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines (13:5).

Bringing the preceding discussion into focus, Matthew Henry captures well the context of Samson’s prayer and, in doing so, illuminates its imprecatory nature. Commenting first on “When [the Philistines] were destroyed,” Henry states:

It was when they were praising Dagon their god, and giving that honour to him which is due to God only, which is no less than treason against the King of kings, his crown and dignity. Justly therefore is the blood of these traitors mingled with their sacrifices.

Moreover, says Henry,

It was when they were making sport with an Israelite, a Nazirite, and insulting over him, persecuting him whom God had smitten. Nothing fills the measure of the iniquity of any person or people faster than mocking and misusing the servants of God, yea, though it is by their own folly that they are brought low. 

Henry highlights a pertinent point: Samson did indeed suffer humiliation for his own sinful foolishness, but his divine chastisement came at the hands of an enemy of God, of His people, and of His chosen deliverer for His people. Philistia, then, was to be held accountable for its treatment of wayward Samson and Israel, just as Assyria and Babylon will later be held accountable for their assaults on wayward Israel and Judah.

Henry goes on to observe:

Samson pulled the house down upon them, God no doubt putting it into his heart, as a public person, thus to avenge God’s quarrel with them, Israel’s, and his own. … He gained strength to do it by prayer, v. 28. That strength which he had lost by sin he, like a true penitent, recovers by prayer; as David, who, when he had provoked the Spirit of grace to withdraw, prayed (Ps. 51:12). … [Samson] prayed to God to remember him and strengthen him this once, thereby owning that his strength for what he had already done he had from God, and begged it might be afforded to him once more, to give them a parting blow. That it was not from a principle of passion or personal revenge, but from a holy zeal for the glory of God and Israel, that he desired to do this, appears from God’s accepting and answering the prayer.

Especially when he cites Samson’s sin, his plea for God’s remembrance, and God’s granting of his petition, Henry’s comments are compelling. The point we’re left to ponder is that if Samson’s prayer was indeed immoral in its motive, standard, or end, God’s silence about its immorality and His favorable answer to it are at best puzzling. A better explanation is found in seeing Samson’s prayer as an echo of the imprecatory petition of Deborah and Barak, indeed as a plea for God to do to the Philistines what He had done to the Canaanites.