W. Robert Godfrey

and to grow in our understanding and appreciation of the Bible, and particularly then learn the lessons that God would have for us from the life of Samson.

And what we're going to see, I think, is very often to get the real message of the Bible, we have to keep both the big picture of the Bible and the specifics of the context we're looking at, the text we're looking at, in our minds together.

If we let the text at hand get disconnected from the big picture, we may not see what this text is really after.

But if we just look at the big picture, then the text at hand becomes kind of bland and sounds like every other text.

So we want the text to have its unique message, but we're really going to understand that only when we look at the whole big picture and see the message as a whole.

So what is the context?

What is the context we're going to be looking at?

Well, Samson was a judge.

That's the first thing we need to bear in mind.

The clue is that he's in the book of Judges.

That's sort of the giveaway.

Titles are important.

So Samson is a judge.

And when we look carefully at the book of Judges, not all scholars are agreed about this, but I'm convinced, and you know I'm always right, I'm convinced there are 12 judges in the book of Judges.

And I think this is very intentional on the author's part because 12 is an important number in the Old Testament, and it relates to the tribes of Israel.

It talks to the composition of God's people.

It talks about how God is relating to his people.

So I think in a certain sense, the book of Judges is saying, this is my dealing with my people as a whole in this time period through these 12 Judges.

But then when we look carefully, we discover that of the 12 judges, we're only told very much about six of them.

We might almost be tempted to say the other six are fillers.