The Allure of Revenge

I remember from the time I was a little girl, when someone did me wrong I wanted to get them back. This carried into my adulthood. If someone made me mad, I could get revenge by disowning our friendship, or if my husband made me mad I could get revenge by doing something to hurt him back. The problem was that every time I would get revenge, it wouldn’t stop the problem. It just caused a ripple effect of more pain and suffering and my original hurt was never healed from my revenge.

Many years ago, I read the story of Sampson and it changed my life forever. As you know, Sampson had divine strength from God sourcing from the fact that he would never cut his hair. He fell in love with a foreign woman who worshipped other gods, and decided to wed her. Sampson threw a party with 30 guys and decided to tell them a riddle with a prize for solving it. His wife tricked him into telling her the answer and she in turn told the men.

Sampson was enraged that the men got the answer out of his wife. To get revenge, Sampson found 30 men in the village, killed them, and gave their belongings to the men that had solved the riddle. He was so upset, that he went to stay with his parents for a while.

To then get revenge on Sampson, they gave his wife in marriage to the best man at his wedding. Later on, when Sampson’s anger had cooled, he took a gift to his wife to be with her again. However, the father wouldn’t let Sampson see his daughter. He told him he had given his wife to his best man.

Sampson said, “You cannot blame me for everything I’m about to do”. (It’s not my fault, I must get revenge for this). To make them pay, he got 300 foxes, tied them together, set them on fire, and had them run through the crops to utterly destroy their livelihood.

When the Philistines heard what happened and the reason Sampson did what he did to them. They decided to get revenge on Sampson. The took Sampson’s wife and her father and killed them.

When Sampson found out they did this, Samson vowed, “I won’t rest until I take my revenge on you!” He went to the Philistines and killed a great number of them and then went into hiding.

The Philistines retaliated by setting up an attack against Sampson’s people. They wanted to hurt those he cared for until they could find him. His people came to him and said, “Don’t you see what you’ve done? Your anger and revenge is hurting all of us.” Sampson felt justified for what he did. Samson replied, “I only did to them what they did to me.”

Sampson agreed to turn himself over to the Philistines, but when he got there, he picked up a donkey’s jawbone and killed 1,000 Philistines with it. He boasted of his great victory against the Philistines.

After many years, Sampson slept with a Philistine prostitute. The men of the town plotted to get vengeance on him by killing him, but Sampson rose up in the middle of the night and lifted the whole huge town gate out of the ground and carried it off.

Later on, Sampson fell in love with a woman named Delilah and the Philistine leaders saw an opportunity to get a final revenge on Sampson. They told Delilah to find out the secret of his super strength for a payoff. She finally did get him to tell her that he could not cut his hair. So the Philistines captured him, gauged out both his eyes, and chained him up.

As they had him captured for some time, his hair began to grow back. For one last act of revenge, Sampson gathered up his strength and knocked down the pillars of the building many people were gathered in. It killed about 3,000 people… including Sampson. He went down with his own final act of revenge.

Many people remember the story of Sampson for his great strength or how Delilah tricked him. But I see a pathetic life consumed by anger and revenge. As I read this story, I realized that one act of revenge just causes another act of revenge, and then another. It never makes the hurt that was caused to me go away. It doesn’t make me feel better. It just causes more grief, pain, and heartache. The very thing that we think will make us feel finally satisfied becomes a deep grief in our soul that will never go away.

Romans 12:19

Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say,

“I will take revenge; I will pay them back,” says the Lord.

The story of Sampson is the perfect example of the insatiable desire of revenge. It is never satisfied. It only causes more pain. That is why the Lord says to never take revenge, and leave that to Him.

Father God, I am so sorry for when I have taken revenge into my own hands. I see the destruction and pain is causes. I know it doesn’t solve my problems, but only makes them worse. Please help me leave my anger with You and allow You to deal with those who hurt me as You see fit.

#hurt #pain #anger #revenge