Samson was the last of the Judges of Israel. His life is described in the Hebrew Bible in chapters 13 to 16 of the Book of Judges.

Story

According to the Bible, Israel was under the oppression of the Philistines. At this time an angel from God appeared to Manoah, an Israelite from the tribe of Dan, in the city of Zorah, and to his wife, who was barren. This angel predicted that they would have a son. In accordance with Nazaritic requirements, she was to abstain from wine and other strong drink, and her promised child was not to have a razor used upon his head. In due time the son was born; he was reared according to the provisions of the Nazariteship.

The Philistines among the Israelites naturally became very familiar with them. So infatuated was Samson with a Philistine woman of Timnah that, overcoming the objections of his parents, he married her. The wedding-feast was a seven-day banquet, at which various kinds of entertainment were in vogue. Samson, equal to the demands of the occasion, proposes a riddle for his thirty companions. Upon the urgent and tearful implorings of his bride he tells her the solution, and she betrays it to the thirty young men. To meet their demands he slays thirty Ashkelonites, and in anger leaves the house of his bride and returns home. The father of the young woman gives her to Samson's companion, probably his right-hand man; so that when, after some time, Samson returns to Timnah, her father refuses to allow him to see her, and wishes to give him her sister. Samson again displays his wrath, and through the strange plan of turning loose pairs of foxes with firebrands between their tails, he burns the grain of the Philistines. Inquiry as to the cause of this destruction leads the Philistines to burn the house of the Timnite and his daughter, who had stirred up Samson's anger.

Samson then smote the Philistines "hip and thigh," and took refuge in the rock of Etam. An army of them went up and demanded from 3,000 men of Judah the deliverance to them of Samson. With Samson's consent they tied him with two new ropes and were about to hand him over to the Philistines when he snapped the ropes asunder. Picking up the jawbone of an ass, he dashed at the Philistines and slew a full thousand. At the conclusion of Judges xv. it is said that "he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines ['sway] twenty years."

Ch. xvi. records the disastrous end of Samson. His actions at Gaza display his strength and also his fascination for Philistine women. The final, fatal episode, in which Delilah betrays him to his enemies, is similar in its beginnings to the art practised by the Timnitess. Samson's revenge at the feast of Dagon was the end of a life that was full of tragic events.

In Rabbinic Jewish literature

The rabbis identified Samson with Bedan (I Sam. xii. 11); Bedan was a judge mentioned by Samuel in his farewell address (I Sam. xii. 11) among the judges that delivered Israel from their enemies. However, the name "Bedan" is not found in the Book of Judges.

The name "Samson" is derived from "shemesh" (= "sun"), so that Samson bore the name of God, who is also "a sun and shield" (Ps. lxxxiv. 12. As God protected Israel, so did Samson watch over it in his generation, judging the people even as did God. Samson's strength was divinely derived (Talmud Sotah 10a). Samson resembled God in requiring neither aid nor help (Midrash Genesis Rabbah xcviii. 18).

Jewish legend records that Samson's shoulders were sixty ells broad. He was lame in both feet (Talmud Sotah 10a), but when the spirit of God came upon him he could step with one stride from Zoreah to Eshtaol, while the hairs of his headarose and clashed against one another so that they could be heard for a like distance (Midrash Lev. Rabbah viii. 2). Samson was said to be so strong that he could uplift two mountains and rub them together like two clods of earth (ib.; Sotah 9b), yet his superhuman strength, like Goliath's, brought woe upon its possessor (Midrash Eccl. Rabbah i., end).

In licentiousness he is compared with Amnon and Zimri, both of whom were punished for their sins (Lev. R. xxiii. 9). Samson's eyes were put out because he had "followed them" too often (Soṭah l.c.).

It is said that in the twenty years during which Samson judged Israel he never required the least service from an Israelite (Midrash Numbers Rabbah ix. 25), and he piously refrained from taking the name of God in vain. As soon, therefore, as he told Delilah that he was a Nazarite of God she immediately knew that he had spoken the truth (Sotah l.c.). When he pulled down the temple of Dagon and killed himself and the Philistines the structure fell backward, so that he was not crushed, his family being thus enabled to find his body and to bury it in the tomb of his father (Midrash Gen. Rabbah l.c. § 19).

In the Talmudic period many seem to have denied that Samson was a historic figure; he was apparently regarded as a purely mythological personage. This was viewed as heretical by the rabbis of the Talmud, and they refure this view.


Disambiguation