Judges 13 is not a birth narrative; the narrator’s focus is not primarily the human characters. It is a call narrative, where the Lord sets someone apart for a task. And so in that sense it is still very much about Samson, but in particular about Samson as a parallel to Israel. With the sending of Samson, the Lord is giving the Israelites a picture of themselves.

God called Samson from conception to the service of the Lord. He had no choice in the matter. Samson was wonderfully made. In life he was given the Lord’s blessing and the Lord’s Spirit. He had heavenly gifts. Yet his calling also included certain restrictions. The Lord said, No wine. Wine was the symbol of joy in the Old Testament. Samson was to be set apart from earth’s joys in order to find all his joy in the Lord. The Lord also said, No razor. Samson’s hair had to be kept the way it came—straight from the Creator’s hand—to show that his body was God’s. And then, he was not permitted any contact with a corpse. Samson belonged to the realm of life, not the realm of death. So, God marked Samson before birth with the label, My body, God’s possession.

Samson’s calling is a type of the calling of God’s people. God wonderfully reached out to the Israelites, rescued them from slavery, and made them his people. He blessed them. And at Mount Sinai he made them a holy nation. And in his covenant law, he then called them to live as such. He promised to wonderfully bless them if they followed the lifestyle he gave them. He had marked them with the label, Our bodies, God’s possession.

Israel squandered their blessings, mixing with the heathen nations in spiritual and physical adultery. Our bodies, our choice. And they brought shame upon themselves and became a weak people.

Samson will reflect exactly what Israel was like. As Samson neglected, abused, and basically despised his calling and wanted to be like other men, so Israel rejected its calling, wanted to be like other nations, and acted like them. As Samson pursued foreign women, Israel pursued foreign gods. As Samson had to be blinded and given over to the bitter pain of Gaza before he finally accepted his calling, so too would Israel have to be given over to the bitter suffering of exile in Babylon (Judges 16:21; 2 Kings 25:7). The Samson story mirrors the story of Israel.

In God’s amazing grace, he puts this picture before the church today, because it applies also to God’s people today. The body of Christ has been consecrated to God. At one’s baptism, the Lord marked that person’s forehead with the label, My body, God’s possession. Baptism sets one apart from the world, and throughout one’s life it calls them to faith, to be holy, as God is holy.

We are a lot more like Samson than we think. We belong to the Lord. But turning away from our calling to be set apart from sin is a real thing. John Milton was right to refer to Samson as O mirror of our fickle state. We prefer the label, My body, my choice. And so we struggle with half-heartedness in God’s ways. We do not always truly want to be delivered from our sins. The world offers us a lot of pleasures: alcohol, drugs, pre-marital sex, pornography, wealth, power, status, control. But these pleasures are just as much a bondage as was Israel’s bondage to the Philistines. These things end up controlling us. And we can try to justify our sin, or at least suppress what we know God says about it. Because the trouble is, we can kind of like it there. And so you can end up at a spot where you cannot bring yourself to ask for help. You become OK with sin.

But in showing us the picture of Samson, the Lord wants us to see his amazing grace. For he wants to expose our hearts to us for our good. He looks to convict us of sin so that he might lead us to blessing.