Commentary Compass

Barry Webb’s The Book of Judges in the NICOT series is one of the strongest sustained readings of Judges because Webb consistently connects close literary observation with the theological movement of the book. He notices structure, repetition, irony, characterization and narrative progression, but rarely treats these merely as literary decoration. They reveal what Judges is saying about Israel, its leaders and the extraordinary persistence of God.

If you want to see Webb at his most distinctive without reading the entire commentary, begin with Judges 13–16, the Samson narrative.

More precisely, read his introduction to Samson, his treatment of Samson’s two great victories in Judges 15 and 16, and especially his Summary Reflections on 13:1–16:31.

This is where a familiar Bible character becomes much more than the strong man with long hair and disastrous relationships. Webb sees Samson as the climax of the downward movement of Judges—and, more strikingly, as a concentrated embodiment of Israel itself.

Why Samson Matters So Much in Webb’s Reading of Judges

By the time Samson appears, Judges has changed.

The earlier pattern is familiar. Israel turns away from Yahweh, falls under oppression, cries out, and God raises a deliverer.

But the pattern deteriorates as the book progresses.

The judges themselves become increasingly implicated in Israel’s disorder. Conflict within Israel increases. After Gideon, the land is no longer explicitly said to enjoy rest. By the final major judge, the decline has reached a new depth.

When the Philistines dominate Israel in Judges 13, Israel does not cry out at all.

Webb considers this omission crucial.

The people are no longer merely oppressed. Their accommodation to Philistine dominance has become so complete that even the impulse to ask Yahweh for rescue appears to have disappeared.

Deliverance must therefore begin before Israel asks for it.

That makes the announcement of Samson’s birth extraordinary. God acts into a situation in which Israel has apparently lost even the desire to be delivered.

The initiative is entirely divine.

This is one reason Webb’s treatment of Judges 13 is worth reading carefully: Samson enters the story not because Israel has finally repented, but because Yahweh remains committed to saving a people who have become frighteningly comfortable with their captivity.

Samson Is Not Merely Israel’s Judge—He Mirrors Israel

This is Webb’s most illuminating insight into the Samson story.

Samson is not simply an eccentric individual who happens to live during Israel’s decline.

Samson is also Israel.

Israel has been separated from the nations by covenant.

Samson has been separated from ordinary life as a Nazirite.

Israel continually wants to become like the surrounding nations.

Samson continually resists the distinctiveness imposed upon him.

Israel goes after foreign gods.

Samson goes after foreign women.

Israel repeatedly experiences the consequences of its own waywardness.

So does Samson.

And eventually, in distress, both turn again toward Yahweh.

This parallel transforms the way Judges 13–16 should be read.

Samson’s chaotic personal life is not an entertaining side story attached to Israel’s history. His story is Israel’s history compressed into one human life.

That is why his contradictions matter so much.

He is genuinely chosen and genuinely wayward.

Genuinely empowered and genuinely self-indulgent.

Used by God and resistant to God.

A deliverer who repeatedly needs deliverance himself.

The ambiguity is intentional.

Webb does not make Samson either a conventional hero or an uncomplicated villain. Samson is disturbing precisely because God really does work through him without thereby endorsing everything he does.

Read Judges 13 for the Shape of Samson’s Destiny

Webb is particularly good at showing how carefully constructed the apparently wild Samson story actually is.

Judges 13 announces two things before Samson is born:

he will be a Nazirite of God,

and he will begin to save Israel from the Philistines.

That word “begin” matters.

Earlier judges produce comparatively complete episodes of deliverance. Samson does not.

The Philistine problem continues beyond his lifetime.

His calling is therefore both grand and deliberately limited. He will set something in motion whose completion lies beyond him.

Webb also highlights the structure of the whole narrative.

Samson’s adult career develops in two major movements.

The first begins with his descent to Timnah and culminates in his great victory at Lehi.

The second begins with his movement to Gaza and culminates in his final victory and death in Gaza.

References to Zorah and Eshtaol help frame the story, while Samson’s father Manoah appears at the beginning and end of the larger narrative.

Beneath the apparent chaos of riddles, women, foxes, violence, feasting, betrayal and revenge lies a carefully directed plot moving toward a predetermined end.

That is characteristic of Webb’s commentary at its best: he helps the reader see theological purpose inside narrative disorder.

The Two Cries to Yahweh Are the Key to Samson’s Faith

This is perhaps the single finest reason to read Webb on Samson.

Samson spends four chapters acting with extraordinary confidence in his own strength.

Yet Webb notices something easily missed:

Samson cries out to Yahweh only twice.

The first comes after his great victory at Lehi in Judges 15.

The second comes in the temple of Dagon in Judges 16.

These are also the two climactic victories of his career.

At Lehi, Samson has defeated the Philistines but is dying of thirst. He cries to God for life.

At Gaza, blinded and humiliated, he cries to God for strength and effectively asks for death with his enemies.

The parallel is remarkable.

In both cases Samson has reached the limit of his own resources.

In both cases he acknowledges dependence upon Yahweh.

In both cases his final victory over the Philistines becomes possible only through what God supplies.

At Lehi, he explicitly describes himself as God’s servant.

At Gaza, he asks God to remember and strengthen him once more.

Webb uses these two prayers to illuminate something that otherwise seems surprising: why Hebrews 11 can name Samson among those remembered for faith.

Hebrews does not require us to reinterpret Samson as secretly virtuous throughout his life.

Instead, Webb directs attention to the moments when Samson, stripped of self-sufficiency, entrusts himself to God and acts in dependence upon him.

That gives the Hebrews reference real exegetical grounding in Judges itself.

It also prevents two opposite mistakes.

We need not sanitize Samson.

But neither should we read his failures so exclusively that we become unable to recognize genuine faith when it appears.

Samson’s Final Victory Is Also a Reconciliation With His Calling

Samson spends much of his life resisting the identity announced before his birth.

His Naziriteship marks him as separated to God.

Yet Samson continually seeks intimacy with Philistine society.

His strength makes him exceptional, but much of his desire is directed toward ordinary gratification.

Only near the end does his calling and his chosen action finally converge.

The hair that symbolized his consecration begins to grow again.

Samson calls on Yahweh.

His final action is deliberately directed against the Philistine centre of power and worship.

He dies doing what the messenger announced before his birth: beginning Israel’s deliverance from Philistine rule.

Webb therefore takes Samson’s end seriously without sentimentalising it.

The story is still tragic.

Samson has lost his freedom, his sight and finally his life.

But his death is not simply the final consequence of failure.

It is also the moment in which his destiny as Israel’s deliverer reaches its greatest fulfilment.

The Most Disturbing Insight: Samson Has Become “Israel Reduced to One Man”

Webb pushes the Samson–Israel parallel still further.

Earlier in Judges, Israel repeatedly cried out to Yahweh.

By Samson’s time, Israel no longer does.

Samson does.

That means that at the end of the judges cycle, the cry of Israel has contracted to the voice of one man.

Webb can therefore describe Samson as something like remnant Israel—Israel reduced to one man.

The thought is both hopeful and ominous.

Hopeful, because even when the nation has ceased to seek Yahweh, one representative figure still turns toward him.

Ominous, because it shows how far Israel has deteriorated.

How far must God reduce his people before they rediscover their need of him?

This makes Samson much more than the conclusion to a sequence of judges.

His story raises the question that the remainder of the Deuteronomistic history will continue to explore:

What happens when the people God has set apart repeatedly refuse their distinctiveness?

Webb’s Connection Between Samson and Zedekiah Is Worth Pondering

One of Webb’s more striking canonical observations comes at the end of his summary reflections.

Samson, Israel’s final judge, is blinded and taken down into Philistine territory.

Centuries later Zedekiah, Israel’s final king before the Babylonian catastrophe, will also be blinded and carried into captivity.

Webb sees Samson’s fate as ominously anticipating the later fate of Israel’s monarchy.

The point should not be pressed into an exact prediction.

Its value lies in the recurring biblical pattern.

The representative leader comes to embody the condition of the people.

Samson’s personal captivity therefore foreshadows something much larger: the possibility that Israel itself will eventually experience what its last judge experienced.

Judges is already moving toward exile.

Webb Also Helps Explain Why Samson Is Both Repellent and Sympathetic

Webb has an unusual ability to take Samson seriously without turning him into a respectable religious figure.

Samson is impulsive, violent, sexually reckless and often driven by personal grievance.

Yet the story also makes him strangely compelling.

He is isolated.

Used by people.

Betrayed.

Eventually blinded and publicly humiliated.

And despite everything, he remains a man upon whom the calling of God has rested since before his birth.

Webb recognises that the reader is meant to experience this tension.

Samson can repel us and attract our sympathy almost simultaneously.

That is not a weakness in the narrative.

It is part of its power.

The later judges have progressively become more like the Israel they are meant to save. Samson completes the development.

The deliverer now needs almost as much rescuing as the people.

And yet Yahweh still delivers through him.

If You Have Only 30 Minutes With Webb

I would read these portions in this order:

1. Webb’s opening introduction to Judges 13–16
This gives the architecture of the Samson narrative and establishes its place as the climax of the judges cycle.

2. His comments on Judges 13:1–5
Especially the missing cry for deliverance, Samson’s Naziriteship and the statement that he will “begin” to save Israel.

3. Judges 15:14–19
For Samson’s first great cry to Yahweh: victory followed by helpless dependence.

4. Judges 16:23–31
For the temple scene, Samson’s second prayer and the fulfilment of his calling through death.

5. “Summary Reflections on 13:1–16:31”
If you read only one substantial portion, read this. Webb draws the entire interpretation together here: Samson as Israel, the two cries, Hebrews 11 and the larger canonical implications.

Why This Is the Best Place to Sample Webb

Webb is valuable throughout Judges.

His treatment of the book’s structure, the downward spiral of the judges, Deborah and Barak, Gideon, Jephthah and the horrific epilogue all repay careful reading.

But Samson displays nearly all Webb’s strengths in concentrated form.

He reads the story as literature without reducing it to literary artistry.

He tracks narrative structure without losing theology.

He takes seriously the flaws of the human characters without allowing them to obscure divine agency.

He places an individual episode within the movement of the whole book.

And he notices canonical connections without making those later connections erase what Judges itself is saying.

Most importantly, Webb helps us see that Samson’s strange life is not a distraction from the theology of Judges.

It is its culmination.

The final judge embodies the final condition of Israel:

set apart but longing to assimilate,

chosen but resistant,

powerful yet helpless,

suffering from his own rebellion,

and finally dependent upon the God whose commitment to his people has outlasted theirs to him.

That is why, if you want to discover what makes Barry Webb’s commentary special, Samson is the place to begin.