W. Robert Godfrey

Only slaves came out of Egypt and it creates a community of mutuality.

The judges have become progressively weaker, and the judges themselves have become progressively more sinful, and the fruitfulness of their deliverance has become shorter term.

And so we can almost anticipate what's going to happen with this next judge who's about to come.

Well, we're returning to Samson.

We've looked a little bit at the riddle of Samson when we started and then a little in the last lecture on the need for judges.

And now we're going to turn to the need for Samson himself as it's presented to us, beginning at Judges 13, verse 1, the Samson story.

takes up four chapters in the book, chapters 13 through 16.

Of course, we know these chapters are all added later, but still they're helpful for us today to find out where we are and orient ourselves.

And there we find the book of Judges declaring in verse one, and the people of Israel again, and that certainly is the case, it's again.

This is the fourth or fifth or sixth time this is said in the book of Judges.

And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

Now, that's a perfectly good translation, but in light of what's going to happen in this story and happens in other stories in the book of Judges, we might have left it just a little more literally because literally what it says is, and the people of Israel again did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord.

Now, that's important because eyes are very important in this story.

It's going to very much revolve around what Samson sees and what Samson does in relation to what he sees and how at the end Samson loses his sight.

So the theme of sight is introduced here by the author right at the beginning.

It's not only going to be a story about Samson's eyes, it's also going to be a story about the Lord's eyes.

And this is set down right at the beginning.

Again, the people did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

Now you notice there's no great detail given here about what that evil was.

And our expectation is that almost certainly it was just like the evil that had been done in earlier times in the book of Judges.