“The children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.” The Bible.

‘An Angel of the Lord appeared unto a woman in Israel and said unto her, ‘Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not; but thou shalt conceive, and bear a son by thy husband.’

The woman was puzzled. She and her husband were well beyond their child-bearing years. They had tried for many years to be parents.

To no avail they had prayed; and sacrificed; and done many, many righteous deeds.

That husband and wife had eventually grown resigned to

accepting that it was the will of their God, almighty Jehovah, that they be barren forever.

They were especially troubled by having been visited by an Angel from the Lord because they feared that they were too old to safely care for a baby.

Again to no avail, they gave a great deal of thought and prayer to trying to discover what sin of theirs God had eventually forgiven.

They were even more perplexed when a priest observed to them that sometimes God allows righteous persons to suffer as if they were guilty of committing evil deeds. It had not been difficult for that priest to cite many poor righteous persons in their Community who were undeservedly denied God’s blessings of ordinary necessities of daily ordinary living.

From the Bible itself, that priest cited examples of blameless righteous persons who God did not care to spare being victims:

Able who God did not protect from being murdered by his brother, Cain.

Job, who God Himself gave permission to Satan to hurt.

Noah, who God allowed to drink himself into an undignified drunken stupor although God had blessed him earlier on with ‘face-face’ conversation virtually countless times.

Abram the Chaldean: to no other person with whom He had an intimate friendship did almighty God Jehovah promise world-wide dominion; “In thee shall all families of the Earth be blessed.”

And yet, when Abram died at age 175 years old, his burial in a nondescript cave was without special ceremony. Nor were the date and site memorialized for posterity.

Moses, who God denied entry into the Land that God had promised Moses more than once; that Moses of whom the Bible says, ‘And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.”

Uriah the Hittite. God allowed King David to seduce Uriah’s wife into adulterous pregnancy even while Uriah was absent from home fighting in a war for King and country.

To hide his satanic evil, King David had engineered Uriah’s death in battle. God, instead of punishing King David and Uriah’s wife, murdered their newborn baby!

After hearing from that priest about the many persons who, their righteousness notwithstanding, had not been spared by God from being victims of suffering, that poor husband and wife found it a little easier to accept the responsibility of parenthood with which God had chosen to burden them.

‘And the woman bear a son, and called his name, Samson.’

The Father and Mother of Samson were to be as unfortunate in their son as, many generations in the future in Israel, Joseph and Mary would be, in that they would live to see their son, notwithstanding whose birth had been announced by a good Angel from God, die a brutal death while in custody of Law Enforcement, having been convicted of crimes.

The parents of Samson, at his burial in his thirtieth year, must have recalled some things about that herald Angel, allegedly sent by God, that in retrospect were suspicious.

That Angel had refused their offer of food as their thanks for his having removed the curse of barrenness from Samson’s Mother. ‘Samson’s father had said unto the Angel, of the Lord, I pray thee, let us detain thee, until we shall have made ready food for thee. And the Angel of the Lord had answered Samson’s Father, Though thou detain me, I will not eat of thy bread.’

As well, and somewhat testily, that Angel had refused to tell Samson’s parents its name: ‘Samson’s Father asked the Angel of the Lord, What is thy name, that when thy sayings come to pass we may do thee honor? And the Angel of the Lord said unto Samson’s Father, Why askest thou after my name, seeing it is secret?’

At their son’s funeral, their only child, considering the utterly useless and shameful life Samson had lived, those parents could not help suspecting that that herald Angel had been sent by Satan, particularly because throughout their son’s deliberately shameful life, that herald Angel never returned to help them correct their son.

From the beginning as a young adult, Samson had shown no intention to make his parents proud of him.

When he intended to marry, he defied their family traditions and religion. He deliberately went against his parents objections; he left his Israelite community and chose a wife from among the Philistines in Gaza.

In those days, the Israelites lived as people conquered by the Philistines. Samson, in arrogant defiance, deserted his parents to live with his Philistine wife among Philistines in Gaza.

That young Philistinian woman seems to have been as much a mindless rebel as Samson. She and Samson had run off to get married in secret. When their marriage became known, a gang of Philistine men ambushed her when Samson was absent from their home. They burnt her to death.

Since the identities of his wife’s murderers were not known to Samson, and since there were no biological remains in the ashes, Samson left that neighborhood in Gaza, and lived with harlots, here and there, while he engaged in acts of violent terrorism against civilians and the Government:

In time, he murdered up to thirty innocent Philistine civilian men for their clothes.

He set fire to farmers’ vineyards, olive groves, and corn fields.

In a battle with a Philistine army, he killed a thousand soldiers.

Eventually, the Philistine authorities bribed a harlot to betray Samson when he was asleep.

Samson was taken into custody. He died in custody. His corpse was given to his parents. The harlots lived wealthily and happily ever after.

That Samson’s life ended disappointingly after its beginning had been blessed by the direct participation of the Lord Himself, is of no particular significance in the Biblical history of the Israelite nation.

According to the Bible’s telling of Israelite history, there were similar disappointing endings of the lives of other favourites of Jehovah God:

High Priest Eli, High Priest Samuel, Isaac the Hebrew, Jephthah the Gileadite, John the Baptist, King David, King Saul, King Solomon, Moses, Prophet Elisha.

In other words, having been chosen by almighty God Jehovah to be His favorite Nation, has definitely not always benefited the people of Israel.