The best known of the Israelite judges is certainly Samson, especially among school-children. Here was a real-life superman, who drew his superhuman strength of courage from his life-long dedication to God as a Nazirite. The Nazirite vow could be temporary, but with men like Samson and Saint John the Baptist it was life-long, making them not unlike our own monks and nuns of the Church today. Except that for Samson, the choice was made for him by God and his parents, and he had to remain faithful for as long as possible. Entrusting the wicked woman Delilah with the secret led to the unfortunate breaking of the vow and disaster for Samson and his people.
But meanwhile, with the vow yet in place, this was one of the things this superman was capable of doing: taking down a thousand man with only the jawbone of an ass for weapon. I should warn you that it is utter mayhem and slaughter for six minutes, but the number of soldiers that keep running at him, as the bodies keep piling up, has an element of comedy. You could say he had reason: they tried to steal his wife from him and then had her and her father killed. The story is in the fifteenth chapter of the book of Judges.
Such would have been the heroic stories that Our Lord Jesus Christ grew up with. With one foot in eternity, He would have remembered his friend Samson from long ago.
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