“And Samson went to Gaza, and saw there a harlot, and went in unto her. [And
it was told] the Gazites, saying: Samson is come hither. And they compassed him
in, and lay in wait for him all night in the gate of the city, and were quiet all the
night, saying: Let be till morning light, then we will kill him.”
Judges 16 concludes the story – and life – of Samson, the thirteenth and last Hebrew judge. Abravanel
paints the man in complex hues. Very complex, as the lead verse above conveys. “And Samson went to
Gaza, and saw there a harlot, and went into her.” Samson’s libido, Abravanel posits, was overcharged. At
brothels, he was a regular. His last visit to Gaza’s red-light district proved his undoing. A fickle floozy
betrayed him to the Philistines – for a pot of silver.
In all fairness, Samson was much more than a womanizer. Indeed, his supernatural strength
overwhelmed Philistines, mortal enemies of the Chosen People. As the Book of Judges states on two
separate occasions: “And he judged Israel twenty years.” Why the repetition, Abravanel asks? His
answer sheds light on this inscrutable individualist, cut from a different cloth.
In Judges 15, we read: “Wherefore the name thereof was called En-hakkore, which is in Lehi unto this
day. And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.” To provide context, Samson had
massacred one thousand Philistines, a heartless foe that subjugated the Jews. After the killing spree,
understandably enough, Samson was exhausted. Parched, he called out to God. God delivered a miracle,
spring water. Of Samson’s piety, a verse makes it explicit. We focus on the verse’s proper noun: “En-
hakkore.” It means beseeching the Maker. “And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty
years.” Moving to our chapter, Judges 16, again we find the same information about Samson’s
judgeship. “And he judged Israel twenty years.”
What, Abravanel asks, is the reason behind the Book of Judges reiteration? For Abravanel, the key in
understanding Samson focuses on one aspect of Jewish observance: compliance with Nazarite law. In
Judges chapters 14 and 15, he toed the Nazarite line. As a result, the Creator lavished him with strength
and valor. Judges 16 shows us a different and darker side. Accordingly, Judges 15, desiring to mark
Samson’s moral decline (flouting Nazarite law), writes if you will, a eulogy, as if he died: “He judged
Israel twenty years.”
Yet, Samson didn’t truly die in Judges 15. In fact, he was very much alive – as an unfiltered Judges 16
graphically depicts. Awash in testosterone, he slept with slatterns. One in particular caught his fancy.
“And it came to pass afterward, that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.”
After Samson’s massacre of the Philistines (Judges 15), local chieftains put a bounty on his head. And a
plan.
They approached Delilah, Samson’s beloved, promising her a tidy sum of money, if she would betray her
paramour. The plan called for Delilah to coax Samson into revealing the true source of his preternatural
might. She would then exploit Samon’s secret and neutralize him, rendering him powerless. At that
juncture, Philistines would pounce.
Pounce they did. In a moment of weakness and vulnerability, Samson bared his heart and disclosed his
secret weapon to Delilah. Sort of. “And he told her all his heart…There has not come a razor upon my
head; for I have been a Nazirite unto God from my mother's womb. If I be shaven, then my strength will
go from me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man.”
Hair, though, was not the source of Samson’s success; God was. When the judge’s conduct had been
deemed meritorious, divine providence fortified him. Invincible – courtesy of Heaven’s miracles.
However, when Samson strayed after his eyes, when he gave in to a galloping libido, providence packed
up. Enervated.
Sans help from Above, all looked bleak for Samson (and the downtrodden Hebrews). “The Philistines laid
hold on him, and put out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of
brass; and he did grind in the prison-house.”
But, that’s not how the story – or Samson’s life – ends. While in captivity in Gaza, his hair, of course,
began to grow. Still, Samson’s former turbo-strength stalled. As stated, being shaven or hirsute played
no part in this Biblical script. Divine providence reinforced or removed, Samson’s prowess.
Philistines praised their gods for having apprehended and imprisoned Samson. They also, as it turned
out, celebrated prematurely. “And it came to pass, when their hearts were merry, that they said: Call for
Samson, that he may make us sport. And they called for Samson out of the prison-house; and he made
sport before them; and they set him between the pillars.” A blinded Samson was led into the jam-
packed stadium to entertain the crowd.
Above the din, a deeply contrite Samson returned to God, murmuring prayer in desperation. “And
Samson called unto the LORD, and said: O Lord GOD, remember me, I pray You, and strengthen me, I
pray You, only this once, O God, that I may be this once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.”
But before uttering supplication to God, he spoke to the young guard who had escorted Samson from
his cell. “And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand: Suffer me that I may feel the pillars
whereupon the house rests, that I may lean upon them.” The ward complied.
Samson stood positioned between two massive, support columns, touching both. “And Samson took
fast hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house rested, and leaned upon them, the one with his
right hand, and the other with his left.” To God he cried. “And Samson said: Let me die with the
Philistines. And he bent with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people
that were therein. So the dead that he slew at his death were more than they that he slew in his life.”
“Then his brethren and all the house of his father came down, and took him, and brought him up, and
buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the burying-place of Manoah his father. And he judged Israel
twenty years.” To the Philistines’ credit, Abravanel notes, they granted Samson a proper burial in Israel.
They could have just as soon exhumed his body from the rubble and abused it.
To return to Abravanel’s question about the reiteration of Samson’s judgeship, here is the upshot. After
Samson ditched Nazarite laws, from a spiritual perspective, he died. Apropos, we read: “And he judged
Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.” However, Judges 16 records his bodily death. Attesting
to what had been his notable life achievement, it salutes the man who “judged Israel for twenty years.”