Business Up Front, Party in the Back (or, Samson Was a Nazir-what?)

Five posts into the Samson series, and we still haven’t made it to the really big deal, the thing everybody likes to talk about: his hair.

I’m pretty sure we made his hair the big deal about the same time as the flannelgraph and modern Sunday School came on the scene. (Sorry to burst anybody’s bubble, but nope, John Stamos wasn’t really the father of the mullet; Samson was. And yes, I’ve been known to watch too much TV and movies. But I promise, not lately.)

My theory is the prospect of explaining Samson’s whole story for young kids came off a little daunting and so we took the shears to the story, not to his hair, clipping away to something that felt easier to teach.

To prove out my hunch, I did a little Googling and found that after we trim away the sideburns and hard questions, we’re left with Sunday School lesson plans that have learning objectives looking a little something like these:

• Students will recognize that girls are sneaky.
• Pupils will learn not to listen to sneaky girls.
• Learners will discover that sneaky girls will destroy them.
• Students will remember that girls named Delilah are sneaky and deceitful.
• Learners will be reminded not to cut their hair because it makes them more vulnerable to the wiles of sneaky girls named Delilah.

This is what I remember about Samson too. His hair was a really big deal, and he was a sucker for a sneaky girl.

Samson had it all, and lost it all when a sneaky girl tricked him and cut his hair.

But is this it? Have we taken away all we can from Samson’s story when this is all we see?

What about his utter lack of self control? What about his short fuse and relentless drive for vengeance? What about his superficial motion-going with his Nazirite vow?

His Nazir-what?

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His Nazirite vow. Signing on was no small undertaking.

Most Nazirites were short-termers. They took the vow voluntarily, for a particular period of time, and for a particular purpose — most folks couldn’t keep it up much longer anyway, so stringent were the requirements.

Samson, on the other hand, was different. Like Samuel and John the Baptist, he was a lifer. He was consecrated at birth, with his father taking the vow for him, at the angel’s direction. It’s important, I think, that he never chose this way of life for himself.

As part of the vow, one committed to abstain completely from wine or any other product from the vine, to keep hair and beard uncut and never touched by a razor, not to come in contact with a dead body and to abstain from any unclean foods.

Because of its inherent strictness, the code provided means to be restored to the vow should it be accidentally violated, including a particular burnt offering and something of a do-over beginning with a head shave. So strict was it that in the event that a Nazirite was in the presence of another who died unexpectedly, he would still have to follow this process of restoration, though there was nothing he could have done to avoid such a violation.

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So what about Samson? What about his vow?

I’ll give him credit. Up until that one unfortunate sneaky girl thing, he did a great job on the hair. Jesse Katsopolis would have been proud. But it seems as though he missed the point of the vow altogether.

He kept its form, but lost its heart.

While he may have kept the jots and tittles (though I have to question if he did), his life apart from the vow was one that seemed would only answer to his stomach and other body parts.

And that life apart from the vow really becomes the problem, doesn’t it? The whole point of being consecrated, and in particular with such an extreme vow as the Nazirite, is to be set apart. Samson was to belong fully to the service of the Lord.

Yet he fractured his own soul, fulfilling the appearance of his vow while living another life apart from it.

He went after women, after revenge, after conquests other than those for which he was set apart, but at the end of the day he could hold up his pony tail and boast of his adherence to the rigid vow.

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Oh Samson, you kill me. I haven’t had a pony tail since the third grade. But I find myself standing there with you, holding up whatever proof I can find that I’ve done it all right.

I chase after what fills my own appetite. And live a life apart from the one to which I’ve been drawn, perhaps fracturing my own soul in the process. And then I shout to the crowds of my own righteous acts.

I forget that I draw attention to naught but filthy rags, and were I to grow hair to the ground it couldn’t cover me enough.

Even to preserve the minutia of the Nazirite vow would not be enough.

No, to restore this fractured soul takes everything the Nazarene has got.

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More posts in the Samson series:
Samson and Me
Rhythm
The Wasteland
Meet the Parents

I Can’t Handle the Truth