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SAMSON

(Heb. šimšôn)

The last of the great judges (Judg. 13–16) who led premonarchic Israel. The Danite Samson is said to have begun delivering Israel from the Philistines, their most persistent and threatening enemy.

As with all of the judges, the depiction of Samson (diminutive of šemeš, “sun”) as a national leader is an editor’s work. In the case of Samson, the notion is held very lightly. Samson engages in a personal vendetta, not a national liberation movement. He acts alone, not as a military leader. The Samson stories have their origins in folktales about a local hero celebrated for the audacity and strength with which he harassed Philistine men and for the prowess and naiveté with which he loved Philistine women. The stories would have circulated independently and were crafted by compilers into a balanced artistic whole.

The Samson cycle begins as a messenger of Yahweh announces to a barren woman that she will bear a son (Judg. 13). In true folkloric fashion, the miraculous quality of his birth sets Samson up as a hero. The messenger specifies the nature of Samson’s heroics (“he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines,” Judg. 13:5) and enjoins Nazirite restrictions on both mother and child. Finally, the story assures the reader that Samson, a bawdy, amoral hero, is nonetheless Yahweh’s man; Samson is the only judge whom Yahweh is said to bless (Judg. 13:24).

The main body of the cycle is organized around Samson’s liaisons with and betrayal by two women. In both cases, Samson’s seeming defeat leads to destruction of his enemies, the Philistines. Samson’s determination to marry a woman from the Philistine village of Timnah sets in motion a series of events narrated in Judg. 14–15. A journey to Timnah is the setting for Samson’s first superhuman feat, ripping apart a lion. The wedding celebration occasions his first conflict with the Philistines. Samson bets his Philistine attendants they cannot solve a riddle. His bride, threatened with death unless she helps, cajoles Samson into telling her the answer and passes it on to her compatriots. Enraged, Samson kills 30 Philistines for booty to pay off his wager. Vengeance leads to countervengeance, culminating in Samson’s slaying 1000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.

Samson’s entanglement with another woman leads to both death and triumph. Delilah, like the Timnite woman, is persuaded by the Philistines to coax secret information from Samson. Like the Timnite, Delilah persists, insisting Samson prove his love, until he reveals the secret of his strength, his hair, which in obedience to Nazirite regulations is unshorn. This time disclosure is fatal. Delilah uses the information to turn Samson over to the Philistines.

The tone of the story shifts from ribald humor and erotic teasing to pathos. The Philistines blind, shackle, and imprison Samson, finally forcing him to dance for them in the temple of Dagon, their god. Once again, betrayal and seeming defeat become the occasion for Samson to destroy his enemies. Samson, praying for vengeance, pulls the temple down. “Those he killed in his death were more than those he had killed during his life” (Judg. 16:30).

The stories are marked as folklore by their hyperbole and their humor. Samson tears a lion apart with bare hands and slays 1000 men with a bone. He later evades capture in walled Gaza, where he has been visiting a whore, by pulling up the city gates and carrying them some 40 miles to Hebron. Samson quite literally “possesses the gates of his enemies” (cf. Gen. 22:17). The stories are full of etiologies, riddles, and outrageous events such as Samson tying torches to the tails of 300 foxes to set fire to Philistine fields. They are marked by folkloric motifs such as Samson’s miraculous birth. These narratives are first of all adventure tales intended to entertain. The stories of a nose-thumbing underdog, they also served to vent frustration.

Interpreters debate the stories’ theological message. Given Samson’s violent and amorous character, many argue that he serves as a negative example. Some see Samson as a foil for Samuel’s greatness. Others view the stories as demonstrating the consequences of breaking a Nazirite vow or of interethnic marriage. In contrast, several scholars view the Samson stories as illustrations of God at work to fulfill the divine purpose of liberating Israel from its oppressors. The latter is more plausible. The storytellers and compilers do not censure Samson. Nor is the motif of the Nazirite vow, found only in Judg. 13 and 16, sufficiently integrated with the rest of the Samson cycle to serve as its overall theme. Moreover, Yahweh is thoroughly implicated in Samson’s actions. Yahweh stirs up Samson (Judg. 13:25) and is behind his passion for the Timnite woman (14:4). The spirit of Yahweh empowers Samson to kill not only a lion (Judg. 14:6) but also 30 (14:19) and then 1000 (15:14-15) Philistines. Yahweh is also involved in Samson’s self-destruction. Samson, captive, blind, humiliated, asks Yahweh for vengeance and death (Judg. 16:28-30); his prayer is granted. As J. Cheryl Exum has shown, the stories portray Yahweh working secretly, through human actions, with all their ambiguity, and openly, in direct answer to prayer, to defeat Israel’s enemies and the enemies’ god.

Bibliography. J. L. Crenshaw, Samson (Atlanta, 1978); J. C. Exum, “Aspects of Symmetry and Balance in the Samson Cycle,” JSOT 19 (1981): 3-29; “The Theological Dimension of the Samson Saga,” VT 33 (1983): 30-45; S. Niditch, “Samson as Culture Hero, Trickster, and Bandit,” CBQ 52 (1990): 608-24; J. A. Soggin, Judges. OTL (Philadelphia, 1981); J. L. Wharton, “The Secret of Yahweh: Story and Affirmation in Judges 13–16,” Int 27 (1973): 48-66.

Carolyn Pressler

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

SAMSON

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)