Judges are mainly military leaders, but also act as civic leaders filling the judiciary, executive and legislative duties. The Judges that were most successful were those that turned to the Lord for help and were humble. The tribes of Israel were not a cohesive unit during these 200 years, though sometimes they helped each other. A judge was over a region, and therefore might be a few judges at a time. It is interesting to me that although we see the cycle of peace and apostasy many times during the reign of Judges, there were extended periods of time with peace. The Children of Israel have a bad reputation for being disobedient, but the consecutive years for peace ranged from 20-80 years, and the consecutive years for unrest ranged from 3-40 years. The total years of peace outnumber the total years of unrest. So, Israel knew how to be peaceful and how to keep covenants, it's just unfortunate they had to go through the cycle many times.
I had a hard time with this lesson. There are parts of the Bible that i wish we knew exactly what is a correct translation or not. This is one of those parts. How lucky we are to have Mormon rehearse a story and then say "And thus we see. . " and he tells us the meaning of the story. So many stories in the Old Testament just do not make sense with how we know the gospel today. The story of Samson is one of those stories. I think I must have brooded too much over this, but in chapter 4 of Judges we are told that marrying outside of the covenant was "of the Lord" and I just couldn't figure out why, in addition to "the Spirit of the Lord" coming upon him when performing a physical feat, when he obviously broke his covenants. After thinking about why the Lord would help Samson even though he is doing unrighteous things, here's what I think. I think Samson is an antithetical type of Christ. They have things in common in the beginning, but not toward the end.
Both the birth of the Savior and the birth of Samson were announced by an angel.
Both Samson and the Savior were given calls to deliver Israel.
Both Samson grew up dedicated to God.
But when Samson came of age and considered marrying, he chose a different way than the Savior.
Samson killed, Christ helped people live.
Samson focused on himself, Christ focused outward.
Samson gave into temptation, Christ did not.
Samson set aside covenants, Christ lived within the covenant even though he knew he would be the one to fulfill the covenant.
Samson's motives were revenge, branching from pride, Christ's motives were love even to those who did wrong to him.
The bottom line is, Samson was sent to do a job and was blessed with great physical strength to do it. He was also blessed with spiritual strength, but he chose to use physical strength to accomplish the goal himself. His strength actually became his weakness. In addition to many other possible lessons, I think we are to learn that deliverance doesn't come with physical strength or by anything we think of on our own. Deliverance comes physically and spiritually and the only one who can help us with that is the Savior. I think it is a point to the later Jews who were looking for a Savior to save them politically. They assumed that they didn't need a spiritual Savior because they were living the life of sacrifices and laws. But the Savior came to save us spiritually and physically as well.
There is so much more that I learned from this lesson. It was impossible to discuss all the connection that were given to me. But I am so thankful for those connections and for the source.
No comments:
Post a Comment