“Let me die with the Philistines!”

(Judges 16:30)

Samson was “one of Israel’s outstanding judges.” (Insight on the Scriptures, volume II, page 849) Once he “went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied them together in pairs with oil-soaked rags around their tails. Then Samson took the foxes into the Philistine wheat fields that were ready to be harvested. He set the rags on fire and let the foxes go. The wheat fields went up in flames, and so did the stacks of wheat that had already been cut. Even the Philistine vineyards and olive orchards burned.” (Judges 15:4, 5, CEV) So he was an innovator of biowarfare – he utilized animals as weapons to take from his enemies their livelihood, so that many of them starved to death.

Then he took direct action against the Philistines. First he “he went smiting them, piling legs upon thighs with a great slaughter.” (Judges 15:8, NWT 1984) Later he vaunted: “With the jawbone of a donkey – one heap, two heaps! With the jawbone of a donkey I struck down 1,000 men.” (Judges 15:16) He did not need modern weapons of mass destruction to kill great crowds of men; rather “Jehovah’s spirit empowered him, and he went down to Ashkelon and struck down 30 of their men.” – Judges 14:19.

At the end of his life it became apparent that Paul counted him as a part of the “great cloud of witnesses” for good reason. (Hebrews 11:32; 12:1)  He was present in the temple of the Philistines (that is, from his standpoint, infidels). There was a feast, and “Samson braced himself against the two middle pillars that supported the house, and he leaned on them with his right hand on one and his left hand on the other. Samson called out: ‘Let me die with the Philistines!’ Then he pushed with all his might, and the house fell on the lords and all the people in it. So he killed more at his death than he had killed during his life.” (Judges 16:29) So he became the first suicide assassin of human history.

Whether we are preparing attacks with biological weapons, going to kill our enemies in an open fight or planning a suicide bombing – in any case “we rely on the same holy spirit that Samson did.” (The Watchtower, December 15, 2011, page 21) What a fine example he gave for Terrorists today!

“Jehovah was with Judah.”

(Judges 1:19)

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that soon “Satan the Devil … [will use] his atheistic hordes to attack Jehovah’s people, to plunder and destroy them,” but then “Jehovah will step in and fight for his people.” (Worldwide Security Under the “Prince of Peace”, page 153) They say, “Jehovah will fight for us as he did in the days of Joshua and other loyal leaders in Israel.” (The Watchtower, December 15, 1986, page 18) This leads to the question, How did Jehovah fight “in the days of Joshua and other loyal leaders in Israel?”

The inspired account says: “Jehovah was with Judah, and they took possession of the mountainous region, but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain, because they had war chariots with iron scythes.” (Judges 1:19) Though Jehovah was successful in the rough “mountainous region,” he was powerless before the “war chariots with iron scythes” used in the lowland. Some time before, when fighting against the Egyptians, he had been walking across the battlefield and “taking wheels off their chariots.” (Exodus 14:25) But decades had passed; military technology had advanced. The iron scythes of the Canaanite war chariots deterred him from sabotaging their wheels. Yet this was not the first time that God lost a battle. Centuries before he had to admit to Jacob: “You have fought with God … and have won.” – Genesis 32:28, NLT.

3000 years have passed since the war against the Canaanites, and war technology has advanced substantially. Instead of “war chariots with iron scythes,” modern armies have atomic bombs, long-range missiles, and submarines at their disposal. In the upcoming “war of the great day of God the Almighty” his servants will be equipped only with “sword” and “bow,” and they will ride on horses. (Revelation 1:16; 6:2; 16:14) Maybe God will “call fire down from heaven,” but this will not be an issue for modern air defense systems. (Luke 9:54) Moreover, in the past God could never fight alone; though he supported them, the Israelites had to slaughter their enemies by their own hands. (Joshua 10:10; 1 Samuel 19:8; 1 Kings 20:21; 2 Chronicles 13:17) But since his modern worshippers “refuse to go to war” and to “do anything else that is in connection with the war,” they can not hope for victory. (The Watchtower, October 15, 1987, page 7; 1989 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, page 116) And even if they would get ‘brighter light’ and go to war, Jehovah’s fighters with bow and arrow could not compete with modern weapon systems. – Proverbs 4:18.