5-2-2 Samson and Job
In the time of his humbling and mocking, in the wake of years of spiritual self-assurance, Job set such a clear prototype of Samson that Samson surely must have realized this, as he ground in the prison house. Job too suffered from blindness in his afflictions (Job 11:20; 17:5; 19:8; 30:12).
Job's last words | Samson at his end |
| Job 30:1 mocked by youth | Judges 16:26 |
| Job 30:6 The wicked dwell in the rocks | Judges 15:8 |
| Job 30:9 " Now I am their song, yes, I am their byword" | Judges 16:25 |
| Job 30:11 " He hath loosed my cord and afflicted me" | In Judges 16:8 the same word is used of the cords with which Samson was bound, and which the Philistines loosed. Only a few weeks later (?) God was afflicting him through Delilah (16:19) |
| Job 30:12 " Upon my right hand rise the youth; they push away my feet...they mar my path, they set forward my calamity" . This indicates Job's poor eyesight and how the youth abused him. | This is exactly what happened to Samson. The lad made him dance, according to Jewish tradition, by poking Samson with sticks (16:25,26) |
| Job 30:17 " My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest" . | Both Samson and Job came to fellowship something of the Lord's future cross: the unnatural darkness, the pierced bones, the constant ache of sinews: as Samson ground and danced, and as the Lord heaved Himself up and down on His sinews to breathe. |
| Job 30:19 " He hath cast me into the mire (sometimes an idiom for prison), and I am become like dust and ashes" . | As Samson in prison came to be like an ordinary man (dust and ashes; 16:11). |
| Job 30:20 " I cry unto thee...I stand up" | Samson cried to Yahweh, standing up (16:28) |
| Job 30:24 " Howbeit he will not stretch out his hand to the grave" | Samson likewise would have come to the hope of personal resurrection. |
According to Samson's appreciation of these links, so he would have reaped encouragement and hope. Job's last words were followed by a final humbling, and then the glorious justification of himself and the judgment of his enemies, to culminate in his future resurrection. One hopes that Samson saw the point and grasped hold of the hope offered (consider how the Lord's words to Peter in Jn. 21:13 would have offered him tremendous comfort in Acts 12:8, if he appreciated them).
And this is not all. There were other words in Job which would have so comforted Samson at the end: " Behold, God is strong...he withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous...and if they be bound in fetters, and be holden in cords of affliction; then he sheweth them their work, and their transgressions that they have exceeded. He openeth also their ear to discipline, and commandeth that they return from iniquity...but the hypocrites in heart...cry not (as Samson did) when he bindeth them" (Job 36:5-13).
