Signs and Wonders (27 page)

The woman ran joyfully to her husband. “We are to conceive! I am to bear a son! An angel told me.”

“How do you know it was an angel?”

“He was terrible and bright. I hid my eyes. He was beautiful and said strange things. That I must not drink wine or eat anything unclean. And that the boy’s hair must never be cut. What does that mean?”

Manoah was a learned man. He said: “The law given to Moses lays down rules for those selected by God for some special purpose. These men do not drink wine or eat anything unclean. Nor are they permitted to cut their hair.”

“I don’t know what it all means,” cried the woman. “But I know that I am to bear, and I know that he will be special. And I thank God for him.”

She conceived, and drank no wine or ate anything unclean. She bore a son. Her happiness bathed him in a golden light when she first saw him, and she named him Samson, meaning “like the sun.”

At the age of eight Samson was working in the fields with his father, and doing the work of a grown man. He was almost as tall as his father; it was plain to see that he would be of gigantic stature. His wits were keen, also, and he asked questions all day long.

“How is it, Father, that we dwell in the land that God promised us, but that the Philistines dwell here, also, and hold the strong places, and are better fighters? What good is such a promise?”

Manoah said: “The Lord brought us here, but He made it clear that the promise was ours to keep, also. For when Moses gave us the law we vowed to keep it. And we have continually broken it. We forget our own customs and adopt the ways of the Philistines and Canaanites and yearn after their easy gods. We kiss our hand to the moon, and worship the moon queen in the groves and high places. Even that stone demon, Baal, who eats babies, even him we run after, forgetting our own God, maker of heaven and earth. And every time we of Israel offend the Lord in this way He punishes us. He deprives us of our strength and courage. And when the enemy comes against us, we submit. We have seen the Amorites and the Moabites and the Hivites; now we are oppressed by the Philistines.”

The boy had been listening intently all this while. “When I grow up,” he said, “I will smite the Philistines.”

He grew to be a young man, and he was as big as two men. He had the strength of a wild bull, and men feared him. But he was merry-hearted and playful, and he hungered for adventure. Alone and unarmed he went to the Philistine city of Timnah, an unheard of thing for an Israelite to do; it was certain death. The Philistines gazed in wonder at this huge young Hebrew with his unsheared pelt of hair. They thought him more a bear than a man, and were careful not to offend him.

A young woman, fresh as flowers, looked at him from the window of her house, and he saw her. She smiled at him, and he blazed up like stubble. He raced home to his parents.

“I have been to Timnah! I saw there a daughter of the Philistines, and I must have her. Get her for me as wife.”

His mother cried, “Are there no women among the daughters of your people?”

His father said, “Can you not choose a wife among your own kind? Must you go courting among the daughters of the uncircumcised?”

“Get her for me, Father. She pleases me well.”

His parents saw that he was moved beyond himself. And since there was always a margin of him that was unknowable to them, they did not stand against him in this, and gave him their blessing.

He went down again to Timnah, and was passing through a vineyard, when a lion attacked him. He heard the terrible roar that is meant to freeze the spirit of the prey, making flight impossible. But his blood danced as though he had heard a trumpet. He whirled about and caught the lion in midleap. He held it aloft, and with one quick movement shifted his grip to its back legs, and dashed out its brains against a rock.

He went into Timnah and saw the maiden at the window. She smiled at him. He said: “I want you. Will you have me?”

“I never thought to marry a Hebrew,” she said. “But they are all afraid of you, the young men. Yes, I will. Send your father to see my father.”

Samson returned to the lion. He wished to give her its skin to make into a cape. A swarm of bees had lighted in the lion’s body and had made honey there. Samson took the combs of honey and ate some, and took the rest to his mother and father. They ate the honey and it was good. He did not tell them from where he had taken it. And his father went to see the girl’s father, and the marriage was arranged.

Samson gave a nuptial feast for the young men of Timnah, according to custom. There were thirty young Philistines, hot-blooded and arrogant—and not well pleased to see this girl, who was the beauty of Timnah, marry an Israelite. But they dared not move against Samson.

He was joyous, and said to them: “I will give you a riddle to solve, with a wager attached. If you can guess the answer in seven days, I will give you each a fine new set of garments. If you do not guess it, then you shall give me thirty sets of garments.”

“Speak your riddle,” they cried.

He said: “Out of the eater came meat, out of the strong, sweetness.”

For three days the young men tried to guess, but no one could begin to think of an answer. They went, all thirty of them, to Samson’s bride, whom he had left in her father’s house, for she was loathe to go among strangers. The leader of the young men said to her: “Coax the answer to the riddle out of your husband so that we may win our wager.”

“I want him to win!” she cried.

“Oh, no. If you don’t do as we say, we will burn your house down, and you in it. For you enticed us to a feast that we might be robbed by your Hebrew, and there is death in our hearts.”

These were the most savage young fighting men of Timnah, eager for the kill. And she was afraid. When Samson came to her, she wept and said: “You don’t love me. You must hate me.”

“What do you mean?”

“This riddle. Why don’t you tell me the answer? If you loved me, you would tell me.”

“I want to keep it secret till I win the wager.”

She wept and wept, and said: “No, you don’t love me. You won’t tell me what I want to know.”

He told her. And on the seventh day the young Philistines went to him and said: “We have guessed the answer. Honey and lion, lion and honey! Ho, ho, ho!” They jeered him. And he knew that they had gotten the answer from his bride and did not know what more she might have given them. But he held back his rage and departed.

Now he knew the time had come for him to smite the Philistines. He went down to the great harbor city of Ashkelon, killed thirty men, stripped the corpses of their garments, and took them back to Timnah to the young men who had won the bet. Then he sought his wife. But his father-in-law stopped him and said: “What do you want?”

“My wife,” said Samson.

Her father said: “After the affair of the riddle I thought you hated her. So I gave her to another young man as wife. She has a younger sister, though, very beautiful. Take her, instead.”

Samson said: “No matter what I do to the Philistines now, I shall be more blameless than they.”

He went into the woods and caught three hundred foxes and tied their tails together, two by two. Between the tails he tied torches, and set the torches on fire. The foxes ran toward the river to put the fires out, but the fields and orchards of the Philistines lay between them and the river. As the foxes passed through, they set the crops on fire. The shocks burned, and the standing wheat, and fig trees and olive trees.

When it was reported that Samson had done this, the young Philistines went to Timnah and set fire to the house belonging to his father-in-law. The house burned and all in it, his wife and her father. Samson hunted down the young Philistines who had killed his wife and slew them all. They fought against him with sword and spear, but did not draw a drop of his blood. He cut them down like grass, and they died where they stood.

Now the Philistines hunted Samson like a wild beast. He went up into the hills and dwelt on the top of the rock called Etam. This rock towered above villages belonging to the tribe of Judah. The Philistines marched against Judah and encamped near the villages. They sent heralds, saying, “We want the man, Samson, who has fled to your rock. Deliver him into our hand, or we shall take your villages and slaughter you all, men, women, and children.”

A band of Judeans climbed the rock and found Samson. They said: “Do you not know that the Philistines are our rulers? What have you done to them?”

“I have done to them what they have done to me and mine,” said Samson. “I avenged the blood of my wife.”

The leader of the Judeans said: “We have come to deliver you into the hands of the Philistines.”

“Do you intend to kill me yourselves?” said Samson. “Must I fight my brothers?”

“We shall not kill you,” said the Judean. “But we must bind you fast and give you to them. Else they will attack our villages and kill us all, men, women, and children, as they have vowed.”

“Bind me,” said Samson. “Deliver me. They may not thank you for your gift.”

They bound him with rope and took him down the rock, and handed him over to the Philistines. A picked guard of Philistines, big, burly men in helmets and breastplates, raised their spears against him. He lay trussed on the ground and they pressed about him, raising their spears high. He did not wait for death. He felt no fear. He fixed his eyes on the sky and waited calmly for the word of the Lord.

The Lord did not speak, but He sent a spark of His spirit to earth, and it lodged in Samson’s breast. He felt a great, warm glow swelling within him. He took a huge breath and stretched his arms. The ropes that bound him burst like threads. He leaped up, leaped away from the half circle of Philistines. He had no weapon, but saw the skeleton of an animal lying on the ground. He snatched up a big bone; it was a jawbone—the jawbone of an ass. Swinging it like a club, he charged the astounded Philistines. The bone cudgel was a white blur in his hands. Bone crashed against metal, and the metal split. Bone of ass crashed against bone of man, and the bones of the men were shattered. He moved among them steadily like a reaper advancing on a stand of corn. With his bone sickle he winnowed their ranks, killing a thousand of them. The rest fled. He threw away the jawbone and danced for joy. And he named the place Ramath-lehi, meaning “jawbone hill.”

His labors had brought a great thirst upon him, and there was nothing to drink. Dead bodies lay in the stream and the water was unclean. He burned with thirst. He said to the Lord: “You have delivered me from my enemies. Must I now die of thirst?”

The jawbone split; he heard it crack. He picked it up and looked at it in wonder, for he had beaten in the helmets of the enemy with it and it had not chipped. Now it was split. He lay it on the ground again, and water spouted from the bone. It was clean, cold water, pure as a spring. He drank of it, and revived, and said: “Thank you, Lord, for wonders large and small.”

After this great deed, the Philistines feared Samson and retreated to the cities of the coast. And the people honored Samson. The tribe of Dan and neighboring tribes chose him judge, and he judged them for twenty years. His judgments were wise, but he never put on the gravity of a judge. He kept a certain playfulness of spirit and a joyous heart before the Lord. And the Lord was pleased and stoked up the fires in Samson.

He was a huge man and his passions were a furnace. And the Philistine women beckoned to him. One day he went into Gaza, a city of the enemy, went there carelessly, as was his wont, defying attack. He went to the house of a certain harlot. He was seen, and the word flashed among the Philistines: “Samson is here.” They set an ambush. Armed men lay in wait for him. They hid in the shadow of the city’s gate. They were sure that they would kill him this time. The walls were too high to climb, and manned by sentries. The gate was the only way to come in and go out.

The captain of the guard said: “He will not leave her till morning. We shall wait all night. He will come out in the morning and meet his death.”

But Samson arose at midnight and left the harlot’s house. There was no moon; it was very dark. Silently as a deer he raced to the city gates. Before the sleepy men knew what was happening, he had burst through them, knocking them out of his way as if they were children. He came to the gate. It was locked. He seized the iron bars, and with an enormous tug tore the gates out of the stone walls, and bore the entire huge grating aloft. He held the gate between him and his attackers, and their weapons clanked vainly against the massive bars. He laughed a great, joyous laugh and strode off with the gates on his shoulders. He carried them to the top of the hill that overlooks Hebron.

The Philistines held a war council in Gaza. All the chieftains went, and the captains. “Behold,” said the high chief. “Behold the broken gates of this city. Who would believe that one man could tear them out of their stone sockets and bear them on his shoulders to the hill above Hebron? But a man did so. His name is Samson. He is the Israelite who has plagued us for many years, and driven us from our inland holdings. We must rid ourselves of this man once and for all.”

The warriors brandished their swords, crying, “Kill! Kill! Kill!”

“Yes, of course,” said the chief. “Killing is what is needed. But with this man it is easier to say than do. He is enormous. His strength is beyond imagination. When you behold him, you feel not like a man but like a grasshopper. Let us not underestimate him. He wrings the necks of lions as if they were sparrows. With the jawbone of an ass he slaughtered a thousand of us and routed our army. And you have seen the shattered walls of this city, where once the tall gates stood. By force alone we cannot overcome him. We must use guile. But he is not easy to trick, either. We need a plan.”

A crafty man arose and said: “Even the strongest person has his weakness. We must seek out this weakness, and through that one crack in his armor deliver the death blow. Now, this man was visiting a harlot in Gaza when you sought to entrap him. And we know how he rioted among the women of Timnah. And there have been other tales. Undoubtedly, his weakness is women. He lusts for women and will dare anything when his desire is upon him. What we must do now is find a woman of great beauty. And this woman will be in our pay and will be a snare to him.”