Lecture XVI: Jephthah and Samson (part 2)
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D.
II. From the lawlessness of Jephthah on the ex-
treme eastern frontier of Palestine, we pass to
a manifestation of the same tendency in a different,
but not less incontestable form, on the extreme west-
ern frontier. At the same time the new enemies, in
whose grasp we now find the Israelites, reminds us that
we are approaching a new epoch in their history;
that which is to close the period on which we are
now engaged.
"The Philistines" present themselves to our notice,
if not absolutely for the first time, yet for the
first time as a powerful and hostile nation.
In the original conquest by Joshua, they are hardly
mentioned. Their name appears to indicate their late
arrival, — "the Strangers;" and scattered indica-
tions of their origin lead to the conclusion that they
were settlers from some foreign country, from Asia
Minor and its adjacent islands,probably from Crete.
With this agree the notices of their character and
pursuits. Like the Cretans, they were employed as
mercenaries. Like the Cretans, too, they were distin-
guished amongst the marauding tribes for the strength
and variety of their armor. The most complete vo-
cabulary of arms that exists in the Old Testament is
taken from the panoply of a Philistine warrior. Un-
like the rest of the inhabitants of Canaan, they were
uncircumcised, and appear to have stood on a lower
level of civilization. They were almost, it may be said,
the laughing-stock of their livelier and quicker neigh-
bors, from their dull, heavy stupidity; the easy prey
of the rough humor of Samsom, or the agility and cun-
ning of the diminutive David.
The older Avites whom they dispossessed, probably
occupied the southern part of the country, generally
called in the Patriarchal history "the valley of Gerar."
Possibly the Philistines may have been called in by
them as allies against the Invading Israelites, and then,
as in the ancient fable, made themselves their mas-
ters. Possibly, also, they may have become so closely
incorporated with them, as to produce that interchange
of names which, in some of the Sacred Books, has
identified the earlier with the later race. The gigan-
tic stature, too, which marks some of the Philistine
families, may have arisen from their connection with
the aboriginal giants, who lingered in the maritime
plains after their expulsion from the nations.
In these maritime plains, the "Shefela" or "Low
Country," as it was called, on the south-west of Ca-
naan, was their original seat after their first settle-
ment; and in this situation lay their security, as that
of the northern Phœnicians, against the mountain in-
fantry of Israel. Chariots and horses with them, as
with their Phœnician neighbors on the north, and
their Egyptian neighbors on the south, formed their
chief strength. Unlike the Phœnicians, they were
indisposed to commerce. Of the three possible har-
bors on their unbroken line of sandy coast near
Gaza, Ascalon, and Jabneel, they made no use. The
only traces of their maritime origin and situation were
to be found in their worship. The chief deity was
the fish god Dagon, whose image was that of the
trunk of a fish with the head and hands of a man.
Some slight indications of the architecture of his chief
temple are given, its door-way, and its two massive
pillars, supporting the roof and standing sufficiently
close together to be embraced at once. The traces
of his worship were scattered throughout the country;
in numerous "houses of Dagon," of which the
names still linger in different parts of the south of
Palestine. A similar form was ascribed to the female
divinity, Derceto, who in their mythology took the
place of Astarte. The only special deity of the
Philistines known to us, is Baal-Zebub, "the Lord of
the Flies," who had a sanctuary in Ekron, as Dagon
and Derceto had theirs in Ashdod, Gaza, and Ascalon.
These, with Gath, formed the original federation of
the nation; each raised on its slight eminence above
the plain, and ruled by its own king or prince. Their
main support, and the main value of their country,
lay in the vast corn-fields, which almost without a
break reached from the sandy shore to the foot of
the Judæan hills; and which even to the Israelites
furnished a resource in case of famine. Such were
the Philistines, the longest and deadliest enemies of
the Chosen People, whose hostilities, commencing in
the close of the period of the Judges, lasted through
the two first reigns of the monarchy, and were not
finally extinguished till the time of Hezekiah, and
who yet, by singular chance, have, through the con-
tact of the Western world with their strip of coast,
succeeded in giving their own name of "Philistia"
or "Palestine," properly confined within that narrow
strip, to the whole country occupied by Israel.
Of all the tribes of Israel, that on which these new-
comers pressed most heavily was the small tribe of
Dan, already straitened between the mountains and the
sea, and communicating with its seaport Joppa only by
passing through the Philistine territory. Out of this
tribe, accordingly, the deliverer came. It was
in Zorah, planted on a high conical hill over-
looking the plain, which from its peculiar relation to
these hills was called "the root of Dan," that the
birth of the child took place, who was by a double
tie connected with the history of this peculiar period,
as the first conqueror of the Philistines, and as the
first recorded instance of a Nazarite. In both respects
he was the beginner of that work which a far greater
than he, the Prophet Samuel, carried to a completion.
But what in Samuel were but subordinate functions,
in Samson were supreme, and in him were further
united with an eccentricity of character and career
that gives him an absolutely singular position amongst
the Israelite heroes.
It was, as we have remarked, the age of vows, and
it is implied in the account that such special
vows as that which marked the life of Sam-
son were common. The order of Nazarite, which
we find actually described in the code of the Mosaic
Law, was already in existence. It was the nearest
approach to a monastic institution that the Jewish
Church contained. It was, as its name implies, a sep-
aration from the rest of the nation, partly by the ab-
stinence from all intoxicating drink, partly by the
retention of the savage covering of long flowing
tresses of hair. The order thus begun continued to
the latest times. Not only was Samuel thus devoted,
but Elijah in outward appearance was under the same
rule; in the time of Amos, there was a flourishing
institution of Nazarites; and at the very close of the
Jewish Church there were at least two who bore in
their habits and aspect the likeness of the earliest of
these ascetics — John, the son of Zachariah, the aus-
tere preacher in the wilderness, and Jacob, or James,
the Bishop of the Christian Church at Jerusalem. It
was as the first fruits of this institution, no less than
as his country's champion, that the birth of Samson
is ushered in with a solemnity of inauguration which,
whether we adopt the more coarse and literal repre-
sentation of Josephus, or the more shadowy and re-
fined representation of the Sacred narrative, seems to
announce the coming of a greater event than that
which is comprised in the merely warlike career of
the conqueror of the Philistines.
Wherever the son of Manoah appeared in later life,
he was always known by the Nazarite mark.
Like the Merovingian kings, whose long tresses
were the sign of their royal race, which to lose was to
lose royalty itself, — like the hierarchy of the Eastern
Church, whose long beards are in like manner the
inalienable sign of their priestly functions, — so the
early vow of Samson's mother was always testified by
his shaggy untonsured head, and by the seven sweep-
ing locks, twisted together, yet distinct, which hung
over his shoulders; and in all his wild wanderings and
excesses amidst the vineyards of Sorek and Timnath
he is never reported to have touched the juice of
one of their abundant grapes.
But these were his only indications of an austere
life. It is one of the many distinctions be-
tween the manners of the East and West, be-
tween ancient and modern forms of religious feeling,
that the character of the Jewish chief who most
nearly resembles the founder of a monastic order
should be the most frolicsome, irregular, uncultivated
creature, that the nation ever produced. Not only
was celibacy no part of his Nazarite obligations, but
not even ordinary purity of life. He was full of the
spirits and the pranks, no less than of the strength,
of a giant. His name, which Josephus interprets in
the sense of "strong," was still more characteristic.
He was "the Sunny," — the bright and beaming,
though wayward likeness of the great luminary which
the Hebrews delighted to compare to a "giant rejoic-
ing to run his course," "a bridegroom coming forth
out of his chamber." Nothing can disturb his
radiant good-humor. His most valiant, his most cruel
actions, are done with a smile on his face, and a jest
in his mouth. It relieves his character from the stern-
ness of Phœnician fanaticism. As a peal of hearty
laughter breaks in upon the despondency of indi-
vidual sorrow, so the joviality of Samson becomes a
pledge of the revival of the greatness of his nation.
It is brought out in the strongest contrast with the
brute coarseness and stupidity of his Philistine enemies,
here, as throughout the Sacred History, the butt of
Israelitish wit and Israelitish craft.
Look at his successive acts in this light, and they
assume a new significance. Out of his first achieve-
ment he draws the materials for his playful riddle.
His second and third achievements are practical jests
on the largest scale. The mischievousness of the con-
flagration of the corn-fields, by means of the jackals,
is subordinate to the ludicrousness of the sight, as,
from the hill of Zorah, the contriver of the scheme
must have watched the streams of fire spreading
through the corn-fields and orchards in the plain below.
The whole point of the massacre of the thousand
Philistines lies in the cleverness with which their
clumsy triumph is suddenly turned into discomfiture,
and their discomfiture is celebrated by the punning
turn of the hero, not forgotten even in the exultation
or the weariness of victory. "With the jawbone of
an ass have I slain one mass, two masses; with the
jawbone of an ox I have slain an assload of men."
The carrying off the gates of Gaza derives all its force
from the neatness with which the Philistine watchmen
are outdone, on the very spot where they thought
themselves secure. The answers with which he puts
off the inquisitiveness of Delilah derive their vivacity
from the quaintness of the devices which he suggests,
and the ease with which his foolish enemies fall into
them, trap after trap, as if only to give their conqueror
amusement. The closing scenes of his life breathe,
throughout, the same terrible, yet grotesque irony.
When the captive warrior is called forth, in the mer-
riment of his persecutors, to exercise for the last time
the well-known raillery of his character, he appears as
the great jester or buffoon of the nation; the word
employed expresses alike the roars of laughter and
the wild gambols with which he "made them sport;"
and as he put forth the last energy of his vengeance,
the final effort of his expiring strength, it is in a stroke
of broad and savage humor that his indignant spirit
passes away. "O Lord Jehovah, remember me now;
and strengthen me now, only this once, O God, that
I may be avenged of the Philistines" [not for both
of my lost eyes — but] "for one of my two eyes."
That grim playfulness, strong in death, lends its par-
adox even to the act of destruction itself, and over-
flows into the touch of triumphant satire with which
the pleased historian closes the story; "The dead
which he slew at his death were more than they
which he slew in his life."
These are the general features of Samson's life. The
sudden breaks in the narrative, showing more
clearly than elsewhere the imperfect state in
which the history of these times has come down to
us, warn us off from a too close scrutiny of its de-
tails. But there is no portion of the sacred story
more stamped with a peculiarly local color. Unlike
the heroes of Grecian, Celtic, or Teutonic romance,
whose deeds are scattered over the whole country or
the whole continent where they lived — Hercules, or
Arthur, or Charlemagne, — the deeds of Samson are
confined to that little corner of Palestine in which was
pent up the fragment of the tribe to which he be-
longed. He is the one champion of Dan. To
him, if to any one, must be the reference in
the blessing of Jacob; "Dan shall judge his people
as one of the tribes of Israel." In his biting wit and
cunning ambuscades, which baffled the horses and
chariots of Philistia, must probably be seen "the ser-
pent by the way, the adder in the path, that biteth
the horse's heels, so that his rider shall fall back-
wards."
It was at a spot well known in the history of his
tribe — in Mahaneh-Dan, or the "Camp of
Dan" — that the first aspirations of his career
showed themselves. There, underneath the mountains
of Judah, the little band which broke away to the
north at the commencement of this stormy period,
had pitched their first encampment, and there also
was the ancestral burial-place of his family. Amongst
his fathers' tombs, and amidst the recollections of
his fathers' exploits, the Spirit of Jehovah began to
"move him" — to strike, as the expression implies,
on his rough nature as on a drum or cymbal,
till it resounded like a gong through his native
hills.
Then began what were literally his "descents" of
love and of war upon the plain of Philistia,
from Zorah on the hills above. The vines on
the slopes of these hills, the vineyards of Timnath,
and of Sorek, were famous throughout Palestine. It
was probably amongst these, as the maidens whom
the Benjamites surprised amongst the vineyards of
Shiloh, that he met both his earliest and his latest
love. The names of the surrounding villages bear
traces of the wild animal whom he encountered, and
used as instruments of his great exploits — Lebaoth
("the lionesses"), Shaalbim ("the jackals"), Zorah
("the hornets"). The corn-fields of Philistia — then,
as now, interspersed with olive-groves, then, also, with
vineyards — lay stretched in one unbroken expanse
before him, to invite his facetious outrage. Once he
wandered beyond the territory of his own tribe, and
that of his enemies, but it was only into the neigh-
boring hills of Judah. In some deep cleft, such as
doubtless could easily be found in the limestone hills
around the vale of Etam (the Wady Urtâs), he took
refuge. The Philistines then, as afterwards in David's
time, had planted a garrison in the neighborhood.
The lion of Judah was cowed by their presence.
"Knowest thou not the Philistines are rulers over
us?" Out of the cleft he emerges, and sweeps them
away with the rude weapon that first comes to hand.
The spring and the rock which witnessed the deed,
though now lost, were long pointed out as memorials
of the history. The scene of his death is the
great Temple of the Fish God at Gaza, in the ex-
tremity of the Philistine district. But his grave was
in the same spot which had nourished his first youth-
ful hopes. From the time of Gideon downwards, the
tombs of the Judges have been carefully specified. In
no case, however, does the specification suggest a more
pathetic image, than in the description of the funeral
procession, in which the dead hero is borne by his
brothers and kinsmen, "up" the steep ascent to
his native hills, and laid, as it would seem, beside the
father who had watched with pride his early deeds,
"between Zorah and Eshtaol, in the burial-place of
Manoah his father."
The arrangement of the narrative into its separate
parts — the manner in which the humor, the strength,
the headstrong rashness of Samson are worked up to
the catastrophe — have not unnaturally suggested to
the great Hebrew critic of our age the supposition
that the story may even in early times have been
wrought into a dramatic poem. But it is a remark-
able proof of the latent force of the Biblical history,
that a series of incidents and characters so peculiarly
local, so abruptly and faintly depicted, should yet have
furnished to our own poet the materials for a drama,
which not only, as has been before observed, is the
best likeness in modern form of the ancient classical
tragedies, but is also, beyond any other of his works,
interwoven with the modern experiences of his own
eventful life.
Even in Milton's earlier days he seems to have
dwelt with unusual pleasure on the gran-
deur and the fall of Samson, as the image of
what he most admired and most cherished in the
troubled world of English politics; as when he thinks
that he "sees in his mind a noble and puissant na-
tion rousing herself like a strong man after sleep
and shaking her invincible locks; or as when, in
more elaborate style, he draws out the fine allegory
specially suitable to his own times, but, with slight mod-
ifications, applicable also to the general relations of
rulers and Churches: — "I cannot better liken the
state and person of a king than to that mighty
Nazarite, Samson; who, being disciplined from his
birth in the precepts and the practice of temper-
ance and sobriety, grows up to a noble strength
and perfection, with those his illustrious and sunny
locks, the Laws, waving and curling about his god-
like shoulders. And, while he keeps them undimin-
ished and unshorn, he may with the jawbone of an
ass, that is, with the word of his meanest officer,
suppress and put to confusion thousands of those
that rise against his just power. But laying down
his head amongst the strumpet flatteries of prelates,
while he sleeps and thinks no harm, they wickedly,
shaving off all those bright and weighty tresses of
his laws and just prerogatives, which were his orna-
ment and his strength, deliver him over to indirect
and violent councils, which, as those Philistines, put
out the fair and far-sighted eyes of his natural mind, [Phar I sees]
and make him grind in the prison-house of their
sinister ends, and practise upon him; till he, know-
ing this prelatical razor to have bereft him of his
wonted might, nourish again his puissant hair, the
golden beams of law and right, and they, sternly
shook, thunder with ruin upon the heads of those,
his evil counselors, but not without great affliction
to himself."
The richness of the story becomes still more evi-
dent when we see the austere consolation which
Milton derived from it in the sufferings of
blindness and poverty and age, and the in-
dignant sense of public and private wrong: —
"O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
. . . I, dark in light, exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong.
. . . .
O dark, dark dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse,
Without all hope of day!"
. . . .
"God of our fathers! what is man,
That thou towards him with hand so various,
Or might I say, contrarious,
Temper'st thy Providence through his short course,
Not evenly, as thou rul'st
The angelic orders and inferior creatures mute,
Irrational and brute;
Nor do I name of men the common rout,
That wand'ring loose about
Grow up and perish, as the summer fly,
Heads without name, no more remembered;
But such as thou hast solemnly elected,
With gifts and graces eminently adorned,
To some great work, thy glory,
And people's safety, which in part they effect:
Yet toward those thus dignified, thou oft,
Amidst their height of noon,
Changest thy countenance, and thy hand . . .
Nor only dost degrade them, or remit
To life obscured, which were a fair dismission,
But throw'st them lower than thou didst exalt them high."
And we may well end this troubled period with
that grand conclusion, with which, after
the chorus consoles his sorrowing kindred: —
. . . "Samson hath shit himself
Like Samson, and heroically finished
A life heroic," . . .
"All is best, though we oft doubt,
What the Unsearchable dispose
Of Highest Wisdom brings about,
And ever best found in the close.
Oft He seems to hide His face,
But unexpectedly returns,
And to His faithful champion hath in place
Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns,
And all that band them to resist
His uncontrollable intent;
His servants He, with new acqvist
Of true experience from this great event,
With peace and consolation hath dismissed,
And calm of mind all passion spent."
from The History of the Jewish Church, Vol. I : Abraham to Samuel,
Lecture XVI: Jephthah and Samson.
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1879, pp. 286-301
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