Samson’s Miraculous Birth: Samson is admittedly the most problematic of all Israel’s judges. Any honest interpreter would have to acknowledge that he or she would rather skip over some parts of his story; evidence that most do ignore it is the fact that few sermons are preached on every verse in Judges 13–16. Small wonder. Samson does not conform to our idea of how a biblical hero should act. This arrogant, duplicitous, womanizing trickster is hardly an exemplary model of biblical morality. Moreover, his story itself, on the whole, does not follow the familiar pattern we have come to expect in the book of Judges. Samson was born under supernatural circumstances, his advent heralded by the angel of the Lord. He was a miraculous though unsolicited gift to Israel, who handed him over to the e…