cry ‘Our God has given our enemy into our hand’. The story is dramatic in the extreme. If the pattern of a saviour’s coming announced before his birth is meant to make us look forward in time to the gospel story, then perhaps when the saviour in his death destroys his people’s enemies that too points ahead to a great New Testament event, and we shall hardly be surprised at the high drama of Judges 16. But what does it all imply for the reader today? We must learn from Samson himself, and a tragic