Samson and the Philistines

After Abdon died, the Philistines overcame the Israelites and took tribute from them for forty years. They were set free from that distress in the following way.

There was a man named Manoah, of the tribe of Dan, of such great virtue that few men were his equals, and beyond dispute the leading man of his district. He had a wife famous for her beauty, who surpassed the women of her time. He had no children, and, troubled at his lack of descendants, he begged God to give them offspring of their own bodies to succeed them. With that in mind he went regularly with his wife to the outskirts of the town, which lay in the Great Plain. He loved his wife to the point of madness, and because of that he was jealous of her beyond all measure. Once, when his wife was alone, an apparition appeared to her. It was an angel of God, looking like a tall and handsome young man, and he brought her the good news that she would have a son, born by God’s providence — a fine child of great strength, by whom, when he had grown to manhood, the Philistines would be afflicted. He told her too not to cut the boy’s hair, and that he should avoid every other kind of drink (for so God had commanded) and be content with water alone. When the angel had delivered this message he went away, having come by the will of God. [a]

When her husband came home, the wife told him what the angel had said, and she showed such admiration for the beauty and height of the young man who had appeared to her that her husband was astonished, and beside himself with jealousy and the suspicions that passion stirs up. But she wanted her husband’s unreasonable distress taken away, and so she begged God to send the angel again, so that her husband might see him. By God’s favor the angel came again while they were in the outskirts, and appeared to her when she was alone, without her husband. She asked the angel to stay until she could bring her husband, and when that request was granted, she went to call Manoah. When he saw the angel, he was still not free of suspicion, and he asked him to tell him all that he had told his wife. But when the angel said it was enough that she alone knew what he had said, Manoah asked him to say who he was, so that when the child was born they might thank him and give him a gift. He replied that he did not want any gift, for he had not brought them the good news of a son’s birth out of need of anything. When Manoah urged him to stay and share his hospitality, he would not agree; but at Manoah’s earnest request he was persuaded to stay long enough for him to bring one token of his hospitality. So Manoah killed a young goat and told his wife to roast it. When all was ready, the angel told him to set the loaves and the meat on the rock, without the dishes. When they had done so, he touched the meat with the staff he held in his hand; a flame broke out, and it was consumed together with the loaves. Then the angel went up openly, before their eyes, into heaven, with the smoke as his carriage. Manoah was afraid some danger would come to them from having seen God in this way; but his wife told him to take heart, for God had appeared to them for their good. [b]

So the woman conceived, and she was careful to keep the instructions she had been given. When the child was born they named him Samson, a name that means “strong.” The child grew quickly, and it was plain that he would be a prophet, both from the restraint of his diet and from his hair being left to grow. [c]

Once, when he came with his parents to Timnah, a city of the Philistines, during a great festival, he fell in love with a girl of that country, and asked his parents to get her for him as his wife. They refused, because she was not of Israelite stock. Yet because this marriage was from God, who meant to turn it to the Hebrews’ benefit, he won them over, and they arranged his betrothal to her. As he was constantly going to her parents, he met a lion. Though he was unarmed, he took its charge and strangled it with his hands, and threw the beast into a wooded patch beside the road. [d]

Another time, when he was going to the girl, he came upon a swarm of bees making their combs in the chest of that lion. He took three honeycombs and gave them to the girl along with the rest of his gifts. The people of Timnah, afraid of the young man’s strength, gave him for the time of the wedding feast (for he was then feasting them all) thirty of their strongest young men — supposedly as his companions, but really to keep watch on him, so that he would not try to cause them any trouble. While they were drinking merrily and amusing themselves, Samson said, as was usual on such occasions, “Come — if I put a riddle to you, and you can solve it in these seven days, I will give each of you a linen shirt and a cloak as the reward of your wisdom.” They were very eager to win both the glory of wisdom and the prize, and asked him to set his riddle. He said, “A devourer produced sweet food out of itself, though it was itself very unpleasant.” [e]

When they could not find the meaning of the riddle in three days, they asked the girl to find it out through her husband and tell them, and they threatened to burn her if she did not. When the girl begged Samson to tell her, he refused at first. But she pressed him hard and burst into tears, and made his refusal a sign that he did not love her, so he told her about killing the lion, how he had found bees in its chest, and how he had taken three honeycombs and brought them to her. So, suspecting no deceit, he told her everything, and she revealed it to those who wanted to know. Then on the seventh day, the day on which they were to give the answer to the riddle set them, they met before sunset and said, “Nothing is more unpleasant than a lion to those who come upon one, and nothing is sweeter than honey to those who use it.” Samson answered, “Nothing is more deceitful than a woman — for it was a woman who betrayed my meaning to you.” So he gave them the gifts he had promised, taking as his plunder the men of Ashkelon he met on the road, who were themselves Philistines too. But he divorced this wife of his; and the girl, scorning his anger, married his friend, the one who had been his groomsman.

Samson was so provoked at this wrong that he resolved to punish all the Philistines as well as her. It was summer, and the crops were almost ripe for reaping. He caught three hundred foxes, tied lighted torches to their tails, and sent them into the fields of the Philistines, and so the crops of the fields were destroyed. When the Philistines learned that this was Samson’s doing, and knew why he had done it, they sent their rulers to Timnah and burned his former wife and her relatives alive, as those who had been the cause of their misfortunes. [f]

When Samson had killed many of the Philistines in the plain, he lived at Etam, a strong rock in the tribe of Judah. The Philistines then made an expedition against that tribe. The people of Judah said that they were not being treated justly, punished while they were paying their tribute, and only on account of Samson’s offenses. The Philistines answered that if the men of Judah did not want to be blamed themselves, they must hand Samson over into their power. So, not wanting to be blamed themselves, they came to the rock with three thousand armed men. They complained to Samson of the bold outrages he had committed against the Philistines, men able to bring disaster on the whole Hebrew nation, and told him they had come to take him and hand him over into their power; so they asked him to bear this willingly. When he had received their sworn assurance that they would do him no other harm than handing him over to his enemies, he came down from the rock and put himself in the power of his countrymen. They bound him with two ropes and led him off to hand him over to the Philistines. They came to a certain place now called the Jawbone, because of the great deed Samson did there, though in former times it had no particular name at all. The Philistines, who had camped not far off, came to meet them with joy and shouting, as if they had done a great thing and gained what they wanted. But Samson broke his bonds apart, snatched up the jawbone of a donkey that lay at his feet, and fell upon his enemies. Striking them with the jawbone, he killed a thousand of them and put the rest to flight in great disorder.

After this slaughter Samson grew too proud of what he had done. He said that it had not come about by God’s help, but that his success was due to his own courage; and he boasted that it was out of dread of him that some of his enemies had fallen and the rest had run away when he used the jawbone. But when a great thirst came on him, he realized that human courage is nothing. He bore witness that everything must be credited to God, and begged him not to be angry at anything he had said, nor to give him up into the hands of his enemies, but to help him in his trouble and rescue him from the misfortune he was in. God was moved by his pleas and raised up for him a plentiful spring of sweet water at a certain rock. That is why Samson called the place the Jawbone, and it is called so to this day. [g]

After this fight Samson held the Philistines in contempt. He came to Gaza and took lodging at an inn. When the rulers of Gaza learned he had come there, they seized the gates and placed men in ambush around them, so that he could not get away unnoticed. But Samson, who knew of their schemes against him, got up about midnight and threw his strength against the gates, with their posts and beams and the rest of their woodwork. He carried them off on his shoulders, took them to the mountain above Hebron, and set them down there. [h]

In the end, however, he broke the laws of his country, abandoned his own disciplined way of life, and imitated the strange customs of foreigners; and this was the beginning of his miseries. He fell in love with a woman who was a prostitute among the Philistines; her name was Delilah, and he lived with her. Those who ran the public affairs of the Philistines came to her and with promises induced her to get out of Samson the cause of the strength that made him unconquerable by his enemies. So when they were drinking and talking together in the usual way, she pretended to admire the deeds he had done, and schemed to get out of him by cunning how he came to surpass others so far in strength. Samson, to fool Delilah — for he had not yet lost his senses — replied that if he were bound with seven green vine shoots, still pliable enough to be twisted, he would be weaker than any other man. The woman said nothing more then, but told this to the rulers of the Philistines and hid some soldiers in ambush inside the house. When he was drunk and asleep, she bound him as tightly as she could with the shoots; then she woke him and told him that some of the people were upon him. But he broke the shoots and tried to defend himself, as though some of the people were upon him. In the constant company Samson kept with her, the woman pretended to take it very badly that he had so little confidence in her love that he would not tell her what she wanted to know — as if she would not keep secret what she knew it was in his interest to keep secret. But he fooled her again, and told her that if they bound him with seven ropes he would lose his strength. When she gained nothing by doing this, he told her the third time that his hair should be woven into a web. When even after this the truth had not come out, at last, at Delilah’s pleading (for he was doomed to fall into some calamity), Samson wanted to please her, and said, “God cares for me. I was born by his providence, and that is why I let my hair grow, for God charged me never to cut it; my strength depends on the growth and keeping of my hair.” When she had learned this much, she cut off his hair and handed him over to his enemies, when he was not strong enough to defend himself against their attacks. They put out his eyes, bound him, and had him led about among them. [i]

But in time Samson’s hair grew again. There was a public festival among the Philistines, when the rulers and the most prominent men were feasting together. (The hall they were in had its roof held up by two pillars.) They sent for Samson, and he was brought to their feast so that they could mock him over their wine. Thinking it one of the greatest misfortunes not to be able to take revenge when he was insulted like this, he persuaded the boy who led him by the hand that he was tired and needed to rest, and asked him to bring him near the pillars. As soon as he reached them, he threw himself against them with all his force and brought the house down by overturning its pillars, with three thousand men inside, who were all killed, and Samson with them. Such was the end of this man, after he had ruled over the Israelites twenty years. This man indeed deserves admiration for his courage and his strength, and for the greatness of spirit he showed at his death, and because his anger against his enemies went so far that he died with them himself. As for his being ensnared by a woman, that must be put down to human nature, which is too weak to resist the temptation to that sin. But we ought to bear him witness that in every other respect he was a man of extraordinary virtue. His relatives took away his body and buried it at Sarasa, his own home town, with the rest of his family. [k]