Samson שמשון
a Nazirite from birth, a judge who fought the Philistines
Shimshon was born around 2810 in the tribe of Dan, to a childless couple of Tzorah. An angel told his mother the boy would be a Nazirite from the womb — no wine, no razor — «and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines». The word «begin» matters: he did not finish the work.
His strength appeared without army or strategy: he tore a lion apart bare-handed, carried off the gates of Gaza, struck down a thousand men with a donkey's jawbone, sent foxes with torches into enemy fields. Scripture credits none of it to muscle but to «the spirit of the Lord came upon him».
His weakness lay elsewhere. Three Philistine women shaped his fate, and the last, Delilah, sold the secret of his hair for eleven hundred pieces of silver. Blinded, he ground grain in a Gaza prison. Brought out to entertain at a festival of Dagon, he found the pillars: «Let me die with the Philistines» — and killed more in his death than in his life.
He judged Israel twenty years.