You can't beat the story of Samson for sheer adventure, romance, and drama. That's why it's one of the few Bible stories that has been filmed by Hollywood directors. For precisely these reasons, it's more difficult to understand the story as part of God's big story in the Bible. It doesn't yield itself to any simple moral or spiritual lessons.

The story begins with a familiar difficulty; several significant Bible stories share this theme: barrenness. Like Sarah and Rachel beforehand and Hannah and Elizabeth afterward, Samson's mother is childless—a sign of utter futility in that culture. Into this dead end God intervenes with the appearance of an angel (he actually appears twice). The story of the angel's appearance is quite elaborate and stunning. Something important is about to happen.

The story establishes right away that Samson is a "Nazirite," a man specially dedicated to God; one of the stipulations for this position was that he not cut his hair. That, of course, becomes the point on which the plot turns.

Next thing we know Samson is a grown man, and in need of a wife. Unfortunately, he falls in love with a ravishing, unnamed Philistine woman. Samson's parents try to talk him out of this marriage, preferring an Israelite woman, but Samson insists with characteristic bluntness: "Get her for me." We sense that this is not going to end well.

At the wedding banquet Samson throws out a riddle, complete with the prospect of a big prize, for the guests to solve. Not surprisingly, they can't figure it out until his Philistine wife, with all the drama of a reality TV star, nags Samson to reveal the answer to her, sobbing, "You hate me! You don't really love me." He gives in, of course, and soon enough the Philistines know as well. Samson isn't surprised: "If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have solved my riddle" (14:18).

This leads Samson into an escalating series of violent exploits against the Philistines, stirring up their hatred and desire for revenge. Along the way he falls for another Philistine woman, Delilah, who begins to serve as a double agent for the Philistines. Every time Samson visits, she begs him to reveal the source of his incredible strength.

Each time she pleads with him he gives her a false lead. She tips off the Philistines, who try unsuccessfully to trap him. Of course, Samson knows what is going on, but still she keeps at it, nagging him every day "until he was sick to death of it" (16:16). Finally, for whatever reason (Scripture doesn't clue us in on this), he tells the truth about his hair. She shaves it off, and Samson is rendered defenseless against the Philistines. Samson is a man driven by his appetites.

The story then takes a sad, and finally a startling, turn. The Philistines capture Samson, pluck out his eyes, and tie him like an animal to a mill wheel, forcing him into torturous slavery. "But," the writer hints, "his hair began to grow" (16:22). Finally a day comes when the Philistines gather in their temple to worship their god Dagon, and they bring in Samson to make fun of him before their god. But Samson, in one last feat of strength and self-sacrifice, prays to the God of Israel for strength to avenge the loss of his eyes. He braces himself against the central pillars and pushes with all his might. The whole temple comes crashing down on him and on all the gathered Philistines.

It's striking how Samson's personal life mirrors that of the Israelites, chosen but ultimately unfaithful. No great moral lesson here, except that if God could work through a man like Samson, God can work even through any of us.