This entry is part of the "God's Grand Narrative" Bible reading group out of Casady School and St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Oklahoma City.
Samson is what some would call “a hot mess.” I know it is tempting to see him as a full throated hero of the Hebrew Bible, and he is later held up by the writer of Hebrews of a man of great faith. But the heroism is more complex, particularly because it is located within the convoluted shadows of the Judges.
His mother, the wife of Manoah, has a hard time getting pregnant and makes a plea to God (a typology of Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel). When she is blessed with a son, they dedicate him as a Nazarite to God, who will lead his people in defeating the greatest enemy of that period, the Philistines. The Nazarite vow was prescribed in the Halakhah for those that wanted to live a particularly devout life. Nazarites were required, among other things:
- Follow the Halakhah closely
- Abstain from wine or any sort of grapes or raisins
- Not cut their hair
The prohibition against wine people generally understand. But grapes and raisins? The answer is nebulous. Some sources say it was because grapes were associated symbolically with blood and a Nazarite was not to handle blood. Or it could be that grapes and raisins were associated with sacrifices made by fertility religions (something we talk about in greater detail in 7th grade), and to abstain from those things was to be careful not to give any impression of unfaithfulness to God. And this would apply also to raisin cakes. But honestly, who really likes raisin cakes? But I digress…
Grown to full stature, one of the first things Samson demands of his father is to marry a Philistine woman. Samson has a penchant for Philistine women. These are ancient stories, so they aren’t always going to spell things out for you, but this one should seem obvious. The last thing a Nazarite would do is unite himself to a woman who practices a different religion. But did you see what the parenthetical said?
(His parents did not know that this was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over Israel.)
Wait! What? It was from God? This raises all sorts of questions. Is God using hypocritical acts as a means of positioning Samson to fight Philistines? Is his lackadaisical Nazarite vow a guise? Is this ancient counter-intelligence? Or is he just a lousy Nazarite?
What then is set into motion are a series of what I would call “seedy” stories about Samson:
- Touches a dead animal, forbidden by Jewish law, and eats honey out of the carcass.
- Feeds this impure honey to his parents without their knowledge.
- Loses an impossible bet with his Philistine bridegrooms because his Philistine fiance manipulates him.
- Pays the bet by killing thirty men.
- When his Philistine father-in-law gives away his bride, Samson burns down the village with 300 helter-skelter foxes.
- When he is arrested for burning down the village, Samson kills a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.
I see a literary pattern, that of a reckless man throwing himself boorishly into various situations that inevitably lead him to killing Philistines, which was the purpose of his life.
Which leads to the most well known story; Samson and Delilah. See again the introduction to this story at the outset of chapter 16:
“One day Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute. He went in to spend the night with her.”
I can assure you that visiting a prostitute is not something Halakhah allows. But it re-enforces the sketchy nature of our hero. He meets Delilah, a Philistine woman, who then tries to repeatedly kill him by asking for the source of his super-strength, and each time he lies to her, killing the men that she had unleashed on him.
(His parents did not know that this was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over Israel.)
And then, for no apparent reason whatsoever, he tells her the truth, this after three attempts at killing him. Cut off his hair and he loses his strength. The men fall upon him, gouge out his eyes, and send him to prison. Eventually, his hair begins to regrow and he performs one last feat that kills thousands of Philistines, collapsing the temple pillars, when 3000 Philistines are on the roof. And there, Samson dies.
One. Hot. Mess.
Literary device calls this the “anti-hero.” An antihero or antiheroine is a protagonost who lacks conventional heroic qualities, such as idealism, courage and morality. They often possess dark personality traits such as disagreeableness, dishonesty, and aggressiveness. These characters are usually considered "conspicuously contrary to an archetypal hero.” (Wiki)
Though the writers of Judges may not have been explicitly aware of the device, an anti-hero is what they were writing about, and it fits into the larger atmosphere of the book of Judges; a people struggling to live into their identity in their God, and follow the ethical edicts presented in Halakhah. The complexity of this story is in that pesky parenthetical. Is this what God wanted? Does God use the flawed and sketchy to accomplish his purposes? What about the hero-hero? What about the life well-lived? Those are also found in the book of Judges, the undulating, up and down ride of the book of Judges.
I said earlier in our reading when we came to the story of Noah, and I'll say it for this one also, “Samson is no children’s story.”
Our next reading will be the book of Ruth.
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