Dear Friend,

Reflection by Jeffrey Morrow, Ph.D.

Judges 13:2-7, 24-25a 

When we read today’s first reading from the Book of Judges in its broader narrative context, we might be struck by an oddity. The story concerns Samson, the judge of Israel, and yet Samson is not the saint we should strive to emulate. The story of Samson is full of his sins and flaws. He is neither a model leader, nor a model follower of God. When we go back to Genesis 3:15, and we read the Lord’s warning to the serpent concerning a son of Eve, we can find many individuals throughout the Old Testament that might turn out to be that specific child posing a threat to the devil: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Is it Abel? Cain takes care of that possibility through his fratricide. Is it Seth, the new son born to Adam and Eve? Maybe it’s Isaac, the result of a miraculous birth? The list of potential candidates grows as the Old Testament progresses. Even Samson might have fit the bill:  

“His wife was barren and had borne no children. An angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, ‘Though you are barren and have had no children, yet you will conceive and bear a son. Now, then, be careful to take no wine or strong drink and to eat nothing unclean. As for the son you will conceive and bear, no razor shall touch his head, for this boy is to be consecrated to God from the womb. It is he who will begin the deliverance of Israel from the power of the Philistines.’” 

Samson’s flaws and sins show him not to be the one foretold after the Fall. And yet, there’s a way that even Samson points forward to Christ. Jesus too was “consecrated to God from the womb.” If Samson was to “begin the deliverance of Israel from the power of the Philistines,” Jesus effects the deliverance of His people from the power of sin.

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Jeffrey L. Morrow, Ph.D., is Professor of Theology at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology. A Jewish convert to Catholicism, husband, and father of seven, he is co-author with Jeff Cavins and others of A Catholic Guide to the Old Testament (Ascension Press, 2023).