The Pulpit Commentary — Judges — Section 159

value, neither more nor Iese, and there ia no reason why we should not appraise them at their true value. Samson did not overrate hie strength when he submitted to be bound by the men of Judah, nor when he put the gates of Gath upon hie ehouldere, and carried them to the hill over againRt Hebron. But the transition to presumption commences as soon as we forget that we have nothing which we have not received, and begin to use what we have for our own purposes, and not for God's glory, and reckon upon its continuance, whatever use we make of it. When a gift or power generates self-conceit, as if it originated with ourselves, presumption has begun; the use of it for our own glorification is the next step; security in its continuance, however much we abuse it, is the third stage of presumption. \Ve seem to see this in the history of Samson. He was the child of prayer, and of great expectations. From hie mother's womb he was consecrated to God in the bonds of a special covenant. From his birth he had the special blessing of God resting upon him. From hie youth he was moved in an extraordinary manner by the Spirit of the Lord. Before his birth he we.a announced as the deliverer of Israel. To enable him to fulfil hie grand destiny, he was endowed with supernatural strength ; and to mark how entirely that strength was God's gift, it was tied to the outward sign of hie Nazarite vow, hie unshorn locks. But very early he began to show a certain unfit- ness for his great task. Hie marriage with the Timnathite was a distinct downward step from the platform of heroic self-consecration to the service of God. That God designed to make use of that act in forwarding hie own purposes does not in the least affect its nature as a subordination of high spiritual resolves to self-will and carnal lusts. Again, in his assaults upon the Philistines we see much more of a wayward resentment of personal injuries than of enlightened patriotic efforts to deliver hie country from a degrading foreign yoke. Hie wife betrays his secret, so the Philistines of Ashkelon are slaughtered and plundered ; his wife is given to another man by her father, so the whole country is wasted with fire to avenge the wrong ; she is put to death, and he avenges her death by a great slaughter of her countrymen. Hie visit to Gaza, and the extraordinary feat of carrying away the gates upon his shoulders, savoured more of the wanton display of great powers fur self-glorification than of a sanctified use of them for God's glory. But it is in the painful transaction with Delilah that we chiefly see that presumptuous abuse of great gifts which precedes a great fall. Unwarned by the previous treachery of Philis- ti11e women, unmindful of previous deliverances from imminent peril by the mercy of God, he gave himself up to the wantonness of self-confidence. Either not seeing or despising her designs for hi~ destruction, he went on step by step toward his ruin, as an ox goeth to the slaughter; he tampered with hie solemn vow as a N azarite, which hitherto he had respected, and placed it at the mercy of a heathen harlot, and never woke from his delusion and presumption till he found himself a helpless cap- tive in the hands of his enemies, deprived of his eyesight and of his liberty, an object of acorn, and, still worse, an occasion of blasphemy against God. The lesson is a striking one in every way, and it ia one much needed; for nothing is more com- mon, or more fruitful in falls and failures, than a selfish misuse of God's gifts, and a presumptuous confidence in the possession of them. We see it in men like Napoleon Buonaparte. A giant in abilities, but those abilities were used only for self-exalta- tion. Success led him on to blind self-confidence. He thought his power was his own, and could never be ta.ken from him. He fell at last into the wantonness and fatuity of presumption, acting with incredible folly, and bringing upon himself an utter ruin. But we see the so.me thing with regard to spiritual gifts. The possession of spiritual discernment, or of eloquence in expounding the word of God, or of influence over men, begets conceit. The sense of having only what God has given us, and of being tenants at will of his mercies, becomes weakened, and spiritual pride ia permitted to grow. Then men begin to use their gifts unfaithfully, i. e. not with a single eye to the glory of God and the good of men's souls, but for them- selves. They use them and display them to feed their own vanity, to increase their own consequence and importance. They use them to gather parties around them- selves of which they may be the heads and leaders. Sometimes they use them for gain, for filthy lucre, seeking the advancement of their own worldly intere~t?, whilo they are ostensibly working for God. Every kind and degree of such 11, spmt need~ 17U THE BOOK OF JUDGES. ICH. XVI. 1-22