M³ The Good Role Model

            The Greeks did the same thing with Hercules as the Israelites did to Samson, but with an important, and very interesting, twist. Whereas the Israelites look at Samson as being culturally different and bad, since he was a murdering, fornicating, failure, the Greeks view Hercules’s traits as desirable. Yes, Hercules had some stumbling blocks in that some of his labors didn’t count, but that was more due to Eurystheus being a real jerk about the whole thing.

M³ The Bad Role Model

            So our 2^nd theory about Samson and Hercules is that they are both based on a common figure, and put their own spin on the story. But that also doesn’t quite match up. The spin they should put on the story is that reflecting what their own culture values. Odysseus’s greatness was readily acknowledged by Muslims, but they needed to reframe it to be beneficial to their own culture.

            But Hercules and Samson are the opposite. Samson has more in common with Odysseus than Abraham. The same is true for Hercules, who submits to authority, is humble, and is repentant. It’s like they crossed the streams—"Egon! You said crossing the streams was bad!”

            So what’s going on?

            For all the cultural differences, the Mediterranean is actually a very tiny place. It’s a short sail from Greece to Israel, even hugging the coast. It’s even closer than Egypt! This isn’t to suggest that they were big-time trading partners. But the stories that would spread because of trade all around the Med are the point.

            Word of a super-strong warrior (blessed by the gods) would have spread. Israel would have heard this story, and had to contend with its cultural ramifications. But warrior heroes are not the way of Israel’s culture. Sure it has its appeal, but in the end, combat is not their way. They value heroes like Abraham, Joseph, and Moses, all of which share common traits within the culture. Theirs is the role that needs to be emulated, not a muscled-bound oaf who fornicates and murders. The Israelites use the story of Samson to demonstrate that such a path does not work. Did he kill the enemies of Israel? Yes. Did he do so in a way that reflected the values of the culture? No. And, besides, Moses had a much higher body count, got out alive, and rescued hundreds of thousands of Hebrews all by following God. Samson really only made more trouble.

            What about Hercules? Next week.

            

M³ Mismatched Cultures

            We’re done with Samson! We’re done with Hercules! Mostly. Yeah, I can’t just let them go with what they’ve got. See, there’s an inherent problem with both of these characters. They don’t fit in. We’ll start with a direct comparison of the two

            Hercules and Samson share many things with their respective myths. They are both: strong, warriors, have women trouble, fond of clubs (a jawbone in Samson’s case) and defeat a lion. This is a significant number of similarities, especially in ancient times.

            What gives?

            There are distinct possibilities. 1) One side copied the story from the other. We had something like that with Odysseus and Sinbad, so it’s not really a surprise. Ancient plagiarism happens (wonder if I can get that made into a bumper sticker). 2) These stories are about a common figure, and they each put their own spin on the story.

            But there’s a problem with this, even. With Odysseus and Sinbad, the Muslims rewrote the hero so he fit into their culture. Sinbad had to be pious, humble, and an ordinary man instead of an arrogant warrior king worshipping pagan gods. The rewrite makes sense. It fits. Samson and Hercules don’t.

            We’ll start with Samson, since he’s freshest in our minds. He’s arrogant, a warrior, doesn’t follow any of the rules, immoral, stupid, and selfish. This does not sound like a Hebrew hero. He doesn’t have any of the usual earmarks with, say, Abraham or Moses. He also doesn’t have a real connection with God. He’s strong, and he flaunts it about.

            Hercules, on the other hand, is repentant, humble, follows the rules, is intelligent, and very moral. He actually doesn’t fit in much with the Greeks. Odysseus doesn’t hesitate to show off and proclaim himself a total badass. He also won’t be subject to anyone else’s rules, but Hercules has to work for a total jerk, and just takes it.

            So what gives? What’s going on here? The stories don’t appear to belong to either of their respective cultures, which rules out theory 1. Stay tuned and we’ll dive into theory 2 next week to see if we can make sense of this.

           

            

M³ Not a Hero

            I know I already answered the question as to whether Samson is a hero (he’s not), but it bears more explanation as to why. Mostly it comes down to how he goes about things. Yes he killed a mighty number of Philistines, who were enemies of the Israelites, but he hardly dented them. It’s not until much, much later when King David is around that they finally rout the Philistines completely.

The absolute best that can be said of Samson is that he would have made the Philistines think twice about going into Israel for fear that there were more like him. But at the same time, they had never before encountered a single one like Samson, so there was no reason to fear there would be more.

And we also have to examine Samson’s qualities as a hero. Abraham and Moses are our two templates, and they both tick off the same boxes. They are humble. They’re respectful to God. They’re family men. They pray and communicate with God often. They make a lasting difference to all of Israel. They were pretty selfless, thinking of serving God first, never themselves.

Samson, though, is all about himself. I’m sure he would fit in well on Facebook, posting his riddle about honey (though he’d probably kill the riddle with a selfie of him eating the honey out of the lion’s corpse). He has womanized, murdered, stolen, murdered some more, sought revenge, slept with prostitutes, and just been an absolute jerk overall. Oh, and he’s complete and total dumbass. Seriously, I think only Siegfried shows less intelligence than Samson, but it would be a photo-finish.

This story should never be looked at as one where Samson is a role model. He’s not! He’s breaking commandments and acting more like a savage than an Israelite. In fact, Samson is probably a message of what not to be. The warrior hero of the Greeks may work for them, but it’s a poor fit for an Israelite. Samson can hurt the Philistines, but he can’t do anything good for the Israelites, nor does he care about anyone other than himself.

            Israelite heroes have always followed a specific pattern, which is conspicuously absent from Samson’s character. He just is ineffective because he doesn’t have those traits. Moses, Abraham, Joseph, and Joshua are all phenomenal Israelite heroes who don’t abuse the power they have, but use it to help their people.

            Samson, if anything, is a message of how physical strength corrupts. The strongest warrior is nothing more than a bully who doesn’t even respect God.

M³ Samson's Downfall

            So this is Samson’s last chapter. He will not have a sequel. There will be no final redemption for him. Yep, I said it. Instead we have the illusion of redemption. Post-haircut, Samson is shackled and working at the mill. But the Philistines were not thinking because they didn’t keep cutting his hair. For reasons passing understanding, this man that they had taken such great pains and expense to capture was not closely monitored.

M³ Little Covenant, Big Covenant

            Samson is sans hair. This is a clear violation of his covenant, and we have confirmation that he no longer has strength. It was unobtrusively slipped into verse 20 that “the Lord had left [Samson].” This reinforces that the strength was a gift directly tied to the covenant regarding Samson’s hair. No other force governs it. Certainly, Samson was never beholden to following other commandments.

This is interesting as it shows a departure from the Abrahamic Covenant. That one, as we’ve already gone over, stipulates that Israel needs to follow God’s path, which is actually a very broad range of commands, but the payoff is that the Lord is with them always.

Samson’s covenant is a micro-scale version of this with only one requirement, don’t get a haircut, and you’ll be strong. If you get head lice, you have to live with it. No hair = no strength. This is a highly specific covenant, but what is interesting is that Samson, in holding to this covenant, does not hold to the Abrahamic Covenant at all. He’s breaking commandments left and right with murder and theft, he’s had a Philistine wife, been with a prostitute, and Delilah.

Could it be that the adherence to the lesser covenant gave him power to get what he wanted, so he saw no reason to follow the larger covenant? Samson doesn’t appear to have any regard for anyone but himself. He even caused suffering to his fellow Israelites, but it didn’t appear to bother him that they were angry with him.

So after all the people who have been hurt by him, has he done any good? Has he been a hero? If so, to whom? Yes, he will kill thousands of Philistines in the end (sorry, spoilers), but does that change anything for his people? Was he a good example for them to emulate?

(Answers: No, no, no one, no change, not a good role model)

M³ Wow Samson Is so Stupid

            We knew from the riddle that Samson thought he was smarter than he actually was. It’s not until this moment, however, that we realize the depth of Samson’s stupidity. Not once, not twice, but count ‘em, three times does Delilah ask for Samson’s secret. She’s not even subtle about it, with a casual “Please tell me what makes your strength so great, and how you could be bound, so that one could subdue you” (Judg. 16:6).

            She’s not using any subtlety whatsoever, and we can only guess as to why. Personally, I envision it as Samson is too stupid to understand it in other terms, so she has to be direct. The thing is, he lies to her the first three times. And each time she asks him the question, he miraculously wakes up in those conditions. It’s a complete coincidence! /sarcasm.

            And she persists until Finally, after she had nagged him with her words day after day, and pestered him,” he gives in. Why? Because he’s an idiot. It would be one thing to have her ask it once and him lie about it, but after the first incident where he ends up bound by bowstrings, you’d think he’d do the mental arithmetic to figure out Delilah was working for the bad guys.

            Anyone possessing even a modicum of intelligence would have stopped and said, “she might be up to something. Maybe I should leave.”

            Instead we have Samson falling for the same trick time and again. And, chances are, that the circumstances under which she’s asking the question are the same each time. See, the pattern goes like this: She asks the secret, he tells a lie, she follows-up and binds him, she yells that the Philistines are upon him (which they were since they hid), and Samson kills them.

            Now, the first two times it doesn’t say he was asleep, but it would be pretty weird for him to simply allow her to tie him up while he’s awake. The third time gives us the instance that is most likely. He was asleep when it happened.

            But how did he get sleepy? Well, chances are that because he loved her, they engaged in some intimate activity that left him sleepy afterwards. He was probably so drowsy that it was pretty easy to get him to talk, too. And while Delilah is not a prostitute, she has no qualms about using Samson’s love for her against him, and she probably used sex as a weapon as well. Samson loved her, but she never returns that love in word or deed. But there’s really no reason for her to do so. The story clearly states that Samson fell in love with her, and given Samson’s penchant for breaking covenants and taking what he wants, she could very well have just been another object that he desired.

            The only other thing we know about Delilah is that she disappeared. After turning over Samson, she is out of the story, persona non-grata, Lady Not-appearing-in-this-story. It’s not surprising, but it is noteworthy, especially since a movie version of the story had Delilah fall in love with him and stick around when Samson brought the house down, but that’s next week.

            Oh, and Samson has now broken his Covenant with God, which is a drop in the bucket compared to everything else he’s done.

M³ Delilah Unleashed

            Having had his fill of murder, Samson takes off “to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute and went in to her” (Judg. 16:1) to drown his sorrows after murdering Philistines. I choose to believe that murder made him depressed, because if it excited him to the point he needed female companionship, this is one disturbed individual (well, more disturbed than we’ve already gone over).

            Now, to be clear, this prostitute is not Delilah. He meets Delilah afterwards. In fact, it makes a point of saying “After this he fell in love with a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah” (Judg. 16:4). The prostitute was in Gaza, he went to Hebron after that, then into the valley of Sorek. Nowhere does it mention that Delilah is a prostitute. The story goes out of its way to introduce her as a woman with a name.

            Furthermore, the lord of Philistines offer to “each give [Delilah] eleven hundred pieces of silver” to discover the secret of Samson’s strength (Judg. 16:5). The nobility do not treat prostitutes this way. If she was a common prostitute, they would have threatened to kill her if she didn’t cooperate, as was done to Samson’s wife. Clearly, then, Delilah is something different.

            The amount of money they’re offering her is staggering, which is both a show of their desperation, confidence in her ability to get the information, and a clue that Delilah must have a certain status among the lords.

            Sadly, the only other information we have about her is how she manipulates Samson, which is next. Oh, and btw, we can add adultery to Samson’s list of broken commandments.

M³ Revenge Is A Dish Best Served by Whoopin' Ass

Revenge Is A Dish Best Served by Whoopin’ Ass

            Samson’s Revenge by fox doesn’t go unnoticed by the Philistines. So they kill him!

            No, sorry (it might have been better that way).

            Instead they burn his wife (ex? It’s kind of unclear given Samson’s reaction) and her father.

            Samson takes this as a slight against him, promising “will I be avenged of you” which is about as B movie villain as you get.

            Oh, right, he’s supposed to be the hero. Sorry, my bad.

            So he started slaughtering them. And the Philistines went up against Judah, slaughtering them. At which point the tribe of Judah wants a time out. The logic of all of this is that the Philistines don’t believe they can take down Samson, so they’ll just continue hurting other people to get to him, and it works as Judah “will bind [Samson] fast, and deliver [him] into [Philistine] hand[s].”

            When the Philistines got him, though, he broke through his bindings picked up a trusty jawbone, and “slew a thousand men.”

            Samson is good at killing people. We already knew that, but he’s definitely kicked it up a few notches since losing his wager. He’s graduate to outright murder, and has even brought more misery to his own people by provoking the Philistines into an attack. Yes, he is killing Philistines, but it’s not really deterring them much. There’s no talk of any kind of withdrawal or lessening of the occupation of Israel. If anything, the Philistines are more intent on making the lives of the Israelites miserable as punishment for Samson’s actions.

            It should also be noted that Samson is just killing Philistines, and not necessarily Philistine soldiers. We’re not told it’s a Philistine army, and the place where Samson sets about killing is not remarked in any way except by the name Samson gives it: Ramath-Lehi or “Jawbone Hill.” Was this a Philistine outpost? Was it a rest stop in the wilderness? We don’t know, but it became a mass graveyard thanks to Samson.

M³ Retribution by Fox

            After Samson’s stunt with murdering people to pay off a wager, and being thoroughly ticked at his wife, he’s MIA for a while. When he comes back, his wife has been given to someone else, but dear old dad-in-law tries to placate Samson with a younger, prettier daughter. But Samson is still ticked off, and decides to get revenge in his own particular idiom.

            He catches 300 foxes (I don’t know, from Fox City, I guess), and then ties a pair of them together by the tails, and turns them loose on the countryside. Oh, did I forget to mention he also tied a burning torch to them, too? Right, so 150 pairs of panicked foxes go tearing through the crops of the Philistines.

            First, his method of revenge on the Philistines is a bit excessive. He disappeared, but still has to take his anger out on them, but this is nowhere near equitable. It’s like setting off a nuclear weapon for stealing a bike. It’s also aimed at the wrong people. While the wealthy Philistines will feel a little bit of sting to their pocketbooks, it’s the peasants that will suffer. They won’t have any food. Lastly, this will not convince any of the Philistines to withdraw from Israel.

            Secondly, this is just one more example of Samson’s cruelty. The guy has no conscience whatsoever. Even though foxes were seen as a nuisance, the cruelty is apparent. Samson is not a good person by any stretch of the imagination.

            Why is this guy considered a hero, again?

M³ Riddle Me This

            Okay, so, Samson has a wife, and he’s still brimming with machismo. What’s a guy to do? Slay a lion! No, really, that’s what he does. He takes the jawbone of an ass and beats the lion to death with it. I mean, sure, why not? That’s one way to impress people, right?

M³ Love Is in the Air (sort of)

            Samson, brimming with machismo because of his strength, decides he wants a wife. A nice, pretty Philistine girl—time out! Okay, this is a big deal. A big, big deal. Samson should be marrying a nice, pretty Israelite girl. But he’s not. His parents are not happy with him, either. This is a violation of the Abrahamic Covenant. Yes, we break out the capitals for this one.

M³ Strong Guy with Long Hair

This is another kind of covenant, the benefits of which to Samson are that he will be uber-strong. Not Hulk level, more like Spider-Man.

            In the Ancient World, this is pretty darn strong. Herc is more like Hulk level as in one of his labors he actually lifts up the world for Atlas (but that’s another show). The reason for Samson’s strength is that he is to begin the battle against the Philistines. See, the Israelites done gone and got themselves occupied by a foreign power after Joshua took the land of Canaan.

M³ A Child Is Born

            No, not that child, that’s much later.

            Yes, I know I promised Arthur, and I’m getting there, but I have to talk about Samson after talking about Herc. I know, it doesn’t make sense, but it—well, okay, it probably won’t for a while, but it’s still really interesting.