The World-Destroying Weakness of Strength Unmastered by Love
Samson and the Sweet, Sweet Taste of Justice
November 10, 2023
My soul is structured in such a fashion that my gods are Ogun, Erzulie Dantò (sometimes Fréda), and Anansi. Yes, I know Anansi is not really a god.
I am a tragic warrior by birth and disposition. I am a spider, a weaver of worlds and words, by birth, disposition and training. I am a lover only by self-teaching begun under duress.
My altar indicates my newfound and hardwon priorities. Ogun would be on a bottom third shelf, but he has grown far too large.
War and weaving is a dangerous combination without love. Think about it. More than once Ogun has shown up to a party and ended up killing everyone over a misunderstanding. What if he could also persuade everyone that he hadn’t? And that they saw something else entirely happen?
A Tragic Misunderstanding
The story of Samson, the Danite judge, has only been understood to be a particular sort of tragedy. A tragedy of disobedience to YHWH, and of the weakness owing to a sad sort of “dick thing.”
This is why it is the most perfect tragedy of the worst kind. That worst has gone unnoticed because the destruction it unleashed is something on the order of cosmic annihilatory. The story of Samson is the story of the form milling of the human spirit, and so the refinement of gender roles as soul technology—ground and geared for exploitation, suitable for building empires, and annihilating Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—and both capturing and amplifying ambient gendered conflict, like a high-efficiency smoke-burning furnace.
The stakes were quite high for the Hebrews even then, because Samson was the last “judge,” or senior tribal elder, to govern that free nomadic people before they bargained their freedom away, actually begging Samuel for a king, for the chance to be like Babylon or Egypt, to massacre, genocide, and enslave their neighbors. They ignored all their prophets, and what remain of the Hebrews remain in the same posture today, as witnesses Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine.
Get It
“The woman,” barren and childless, got the prophecy. “For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.”1
Mă-nō´-ăh, one of the Danites, was the husband of this unnamed woman. The “angel of the Lord”,2 who looked like a regular man, appeared to the woman by herself, and told her to watch her diet: “drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing…”
We come to learn some important things about Samson and his world from the way his father tries, repeatedly, to bargain with the angel. Mă-nō´-ăh asked the Lord to send the man again, so that they could learn what to do with the child.
God sent the angel again, but again only to the woman. She ran to go get her husband, and when they came back to where she had been sitting in the field, the angel was still sitting there. He had been patient.
Mă-nō´-ăh asked him how they should raise the child. The angel just respecified the dietary restrictions. “She may not eat of any thing that cometh of the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing: all that I commanded her let her observe.”3 He gave no details on childrearing.
Mă-nō´-ăh wouldn’t back off, though, and he continued to pester the angel. If not about this then about that. He asked the angel to stay for a sacrifice, so that he and his wife could offer a lamb sacrifice to him. The angel agreed to stay, but he told Mă-nō´-ăh that he would not eat their food, and that if they wanted to make a sacrifice, to make it to the Lord. “Mă-nō´-ăh knew not that he was an angel of the Lord.”4 Dig this, please. Mă-nō´-ăh is not only pushy, but he has not even believed his wife, who told him the very first time that it was an angel of the Lord: “A man of God came unto me, and his countenance was like the countenance of an angel of God, very terrible.”5
Mă-nō´-ăh tried one last power game with the angel, by asking the angel’s name. The angel rebuffed him, telling him that his name was secret. The angel stayed for the sacrifice, and “when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar,…the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar.”6 He never came back, and Mă-nō´-ăh finally believed himself to have been in the middle of a legitimate divine intervention. Now he got scared, and now he tried to scare his wife, who, understand, has believed the entire time. Now he tells her that they will die because they looked upon the face of the Lord. Of course, she she was past all his nonsense. The point of the whole intervention was the child. Why would the Lord kill them now?
She bore and raised the child. When he grew, he appears to have split his time between Zorah and Ěsh´-tā-ŏl, two Danite camps.
Justice in the Light of Innocence
We don’t know how Samson grew up, but when he came of age, he took a liking to a Philistine woman from Timnath. He asked his parents to arrange a marriage for him, and they did not like it one bit, because she was a Philistine. Mă-nō´-ăh complained, “Is there never a woman among the daughters of my brethren, or among all my people…?” But Samson was as hardheaded as Mă-nō´-ăh was, and his mind was made up. Somehow, also, “the Lord…sought an occasion against the Philistines”7 by means of this marriage.
So it was set in motion, and one day Samson and his parents were walking on the road to Timnath, to proceed with various marriage things. A lion leapt out and attacked! Samson ripped it to shreds with his bare hands when “the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him.”8 His mom and dad didn’t see what happened, so Samson just left the lion corpse on the side of the road.
Walking back after having met with his intended, even more set on marrying her, Samson passed the lion corpse, now home to a hive of bees, and overflowing with honey! Samson grabbed some and ate it, and took some to his folks back home, too. Still, no one saw where he had gotten it from.
Pops went on back to pay for the wife or whatever, and Samson threw a big party for a week out there in Timnath. The bride’s people came to the party, and there were about 30 of them. Samson was feeling himself pretty good, so he started talking mess, and posing challenges. He said, “I will now put forth a riddle unto you: if ye can certainly declare it me within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty sheets and thirty change of garments: But ye cannot declare it me, then shall ye give me thirty sheets and thirty change of garments.”9 Something like a bet on housewarming gifts. They agreed. Samson went and posed his riddle: “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.”
This really stumped his bride’s folks. “And they could not in three days expound the riddle.” On the last day, they buttonholed her and gave her the third degree, threatening her and her family’s life. “Entice thy husband, that he may declare unto us the riddle, lest we burn thee and thy father’s house with fire: have ye called us to take that we have? Is it not so?”10
I want you to linger on this. These people have been enjoying a weeklong party at Samson’s family’s expense, and they extort their own relative in order not to have to pay for housewarming gifts. To save each other from buying an outfit and a sheet, each, they did this, turning the new bride against her new groom. Some celebration.
It worked. She tried to do what her relatives demanded of her. “Thou dost but hate me, and lovest me not: thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people, and hast not told it me.”11 She is wrong, and her people are wrong as hell.
Four Championship Poses of Loveless Strength
1. Honor Killing
Samson basically laughed in her face. “Behold, I have not told it my father nor my mother, and shall I tell it thee?”12 Of course. Why would he tell her the answer to the riddle?
But here necessity is the mother of invention, and Samson’s new bride is an innovator in gender relations. “And she wept before him the seven days, while their feast lasted: and it came to pass on the seventh day, that he told her, because she lay sore upon him…”13 Soliciting pity with tears can be a form of torture capable of extracting secrets. She wore him down with crying.
So the Philistine extortionists won. But Samson was a strong and clever fellow. He was a judge, after all. He figured out what had happened. He told the extortionists, “If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle.”14
Betrayed by his new wife, and hurt in his pride, albeit on her behalf, because she had been violated in the extortion, Samson exercised his strength: “And the spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he went down to Ăsh´-kĕ-lon, and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil, and gave change of garments unto them which expounded the riddle.”15 He killed and robbed thirty of the men of a neighboring town to pay off his wife’s extortioners.
Samson was a bad m*****f****r. There can be no doubt about that. It is important to understand that he is not wrong. He’s meting out rough street justice to incorrigible gangsters.
But in the process, he lost his new wife. “Samson’s wife was given to [Samson’s] companion, whom he had used as his friend.”16
2. Fair Trade and Fair Compensation
Samson still considered the beautiful woman of Timnath to be his lawful wedded wife. So, during the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit her at her father’s house with a baby goat as a gift. “[H]e said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber.”17 But her daddy wouldn’t let Samson see her!
“I verily thought that thou hadst utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to thy companion: is not her younger sister fairer than she? Take her, I pray thee.”18
Samson was furious at this bait and switch. The Philistines had got him again. This man is a judge, understand? Samson is literally an expert in balancing rights and wrongs. He would have been at home in Chicago.19 So when he says, “Now shall I be more blameless than the Philistines, though I do them a displeasure”20 we should get ready for another dose of hot steaming justice.
Samson went out and caught 300 foxes, tied firebrands to the ends of their tails, and sent the foxes running into the cornfields, burning up the corn, the olives, and the grapes.
Of course the Philistines took revenge, like Samson knew they would, though I doubt that he was prepared for them finally to make good their promise to burn his wife’s house down, with her and her father in it.
Samson opened this cycle of vengeance with honor killing. Not of the woman, but of her compatriots. His killing was for his own honor, though it could be taken as compensation for her dishonor, being that he is her husband, and stands in her stead in such matters.
But we now know from experience that honor killing has nothing to do with the woman, and everything to do with the men. Samson would claim to love her—after all, he arrived at her father’s home with a baby goat, to see her—but his actions destroy her and her family.
Samson, wise calculator, intends to close this cycle of vengeance with one last act: “Though ye have done this, yet I will be avenged of you, and after that I will cease. And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter.”21
3. Internal Affairs
Samson went to rest at Etam. The Philistines followed him out of town and set up camp in Judah! Remember, the twelve tribes of Israel camped together, and there were Danites, Benjamites, Judahites, Reubenites, etc. The Philistines camped right in Judah, and that’s an act of war in itself.
“The men of Judah said, Why are ye come against us? And they answered, To bind Samson are we come up, to do him as he hath done to us.”22 There’s some tats that need titting.
The men of Judah went to go talk with Samson. “Knows thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us? What is this that thou hast done unto us?”23 Samson claimed justice, too. “As they did unto me, so I have done unto them.” Sangre por sangre. We know who’s really right, though, don’t we? It comes down to who started it. That’s right, right? If each side has the right to revenge for each violation, the just party is the one who was first aggrieved. That’s just basic math, right?
It didn’t take much at all to break Hebrew solidarity. There was no such thing, really, and who wants to get in the middle of a blood feud? The men of Judah were prepared to hand Danite judge Samson over immediately, and there is no record that they made any argument against it. “We are come down to bind thee, that we may deliver thee into the hand of the Philistines.”24 Samson let them bind him up, but made them promise not to kill him themselves. They agreed, and they bound him with two new cords.
When they got to Lē´-hī, the Philistines were ecstatic. They shouted their grievances at him, and prepared to impose their justice, but “the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands. And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.”25 Samson was bad, for real.
After that massacre, Samson finally got to take a break. God made a fountain from the hole in the ground from which Samson had pulled the jawbone. He judged relatively peacefully for the next 20 years.
4. Lust, Love, and the Last Laugh
The famous story of Samson and Delilah begins with a strange prelude. It doesn’t make much sense according to the terms by which we normally understand the story of Samson. Samson is understood to be a Hebrew Hercules, a superhero for the Lord, a divine dispenser of bubble gum and bone-crushing, face-smashing justice. And you know he’s been out of bubble gum.
So why do we read about how Samson was visiting a prostitute one night in Gaza? And how the Gazites saw this and laid in wait for him to come out, and how he was still not just strong but preternaturally perceptive, and, sensing the conspiracy around him, woke up in the middle of the night, removed the doors of the city, and carried them off into the hills opposite Hebron?
Why this sordid skankery, before the classic tale of Samson and Delilah?
Is the tale of Samson and Delilah romantic? My impression of it from childhood is that it is somewhat romantic. Because Samson, the hero, gets to demonstrate how great he is, and because there’s a love interest. The romance pays for the heroism. There is a trade involved. But his counterparty is unreliable… Never trust a big butt and a smile.
Events with Delilah closely recapitulate those of Samson’s first marriage to the Philistine woman of Timnath, and for good reason. “It came to pass afterward, that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek…”26 The lords of the Philistines got to her quickly, and promised to give her 1,100 pieces of silver each if she could find out the source of Samson’s strength.
She agrees. And she didn’t even need to be threatened. Just bribed. She doesn’t love Samson. Her actions indicate that she knows herself to be a trading piece, a pawn in a power game among men. Though she is not said to be a whore, she is precisely a whore, negotiating the best price for herself in this twisted timocratic marketplace. One might, for literary purposes, consider her to be the “respawned” bride of Timnath to understand the hardening of positions here.
She just straight up asks Samson to tell her his secret, specifically so that it can be used against him. “Tell me, I pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth, and wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee.”27
Samson’s position has hardened as well. Instead of honestly refusing to answer, instead of openly resisting her betrayal or confronting her with her corruption, Samson plays her.
“If they bind me with seven green withs that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and be as another man.”28
Delilah ran and told it, got the green switches, and she herself bound Samson, so that the men hiding in her bedroom could get him.
“And she said unto him, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson.”29 Of course he snapped off the switches and either killed the men or ran them off.
“Behold, thou hast mocked me, and told me lies,”30 Delilah complains. He has lied to her. She is openly attempting to betray him, and he is entertaining her, humoring her, toying with her. He is being something other than a badass justice dispenser. He is being something other than forthright. Whereas before he held it in contempt, only letting it be played, and only thereafter to take his revenge, Samson has now entered into the game of power. He is corrupt, and none of his actions with Delilah can possibly be construed to be loving.
“If they bind me fast with new ropes that were never occupied…”31
Or, “If thou weavest the seven locks of my head with the web…”32
Samson has nothing but lies and mind games for Delilah, the living commodity selling herself as dear as she can get. The woman who has been forced into whoredom is the more honest here. And she innovates in her gender role, improving upon the method of her predecessor.
“How canst thou say, I love thee, when thine heart is not with me?”33 You don’t really love me. She is right. He doesn’t. She doesn’t love him, either. Who’s wrong first, again? I forgot. Who violated whom first here, in this situation?
Delilah cannot produce tears. Both she and Samson are too corrupt, too jaded, for tears to flow or to work if they did. “And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death; That he told her all his heart…”34 Repeated guilt-tripping accusations and lying with bits of truth are also sufficient methods of torture to extract secrets. She wore him down with harpying. Imagine a greasy chihuahua–looking rat dog yapping intermittently for hours, for days, for weeks.
Imagine Delilah’s frame of mind upon finally extracting Samson’s secrets. Consider that she had been willing to be sold into domestic slavery as a wife. That was OK. That was women’s lot in life, and still is, basically, for now. Samson was a prestigious fellow, and it might have been a fine arrangement. But now, after all he put her through, she might actually have been happy to succeed in betraying him. She might actually have enjoyed finally being able to deliver him into the hands of his enemies.
She got her money, and she made him fall asleep on her lap, so she could cut his hair off and finish the job.
The Philistines blinded him and put him to work in a prison mill, but his hair began to grow back, and with it his strength.
“Call for Samson, that he may make us sport. And they called for Samson out of the prison house; and he made them sport: and they set him between the pillars.”35
The part of the story that everyone knows and remembers is that Samson had the last laugh. “And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might, and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.”36
Justice In the Darkness of Corruption
At every single turn Samson could have avoided the tragedy that ultimately befell him. His strength was not enough to save his life.
He could have loved his first wife of Timnath by revealing to her that he understood her predicament. He could thereby have tried to ally with her. He did not. After his first honest refusal to betray the meaning of his riddle, he chose cleverness and revenge instead.
Samson could have pledged his devotion to his first wife of Timnath when her father refused his entrance. He did not. He chose anger and revenge instead of protesting his love for her or even claiming that only she was his intended. Had he done so, this would have avoided the men of Judah feeling that they had to betray him.
Even there, with the cold men of Judah, a man possessed of a loving spirit could have asked for solidarity. He could have asked them to negotiate with the Philistines on his behalf!
There was absolutely no reason for Samson to have destroyed the gates of Gaza. He could simply have left.
Samson never showed Delilah that he understood her predicament. It looks to me like he was merely buying a wife. And that is the meaning of the prostitute prelude. Marriage had become a flesh trade. There was no difference. The story about the Gazan prostitute and the story of Delilah are about the same thing. One can call it marriage or one can call it prostitution, but they are the same subject, and Samson now accepts these arrangements. One can never trust a big butt and a smile because a big butt and a smile are not what woman is made of, and in fact are often negatively related under patriarchy and exploitation, and therefore no subject but an incoherence. If that’s what one sees when looking at a woman, one solicits betrayal.
Samson never even attempted to win Delilah’s love, admiration, or respect as anything other than a “husband,” i.e., a mark to be exploited, as she was doing. He kept making a fool of her instead, so that she was even glad when the Philistines finally got him.
It is important to understand that Samson is not wrong until he plays with Delilah.
It is most important to understand that Samson is never right.
Samson never landed on love.
13 Judges 5 (KJV).
13 Judges 3.
13 Judges 14.
13 Judges 16.
13 Judges 6.
13 Judges 20.
14 Judges 4.
14 Judges 6.
14 Judges 12–13.
14 Judges 15.
14 Judges 16.
Ibid.
14 Judges 17.
14 Judges 18.
14 Judges 19.
14 Judges 20.
15 Judges 1.
15 Judges 2.
The school of “law and economics” is one of the more disgusting excrescences of ℝeality, converting questions of morality and justice into math problems dependent on contingent facts and figures.
15 Judges 3.
15 Judges 7–8.
15 Judges 10.
15 Judges 11.
15 Judges 12.
15 Judges 14–15.
16 Judges 4.
16 Judges 6.
16 Judges 7.
16 Judges 9.
16 Judges 10.
16 Judges 11.
16 Judges 13.
16 Judges 15.
16 Judges 16–17.
16 Judges 25.
16 Judges 30.