WPC 2K BNZMRoman 10cpi3|xx\  @X@Epson LQ-1010EPLQ1010.PRSx  @5;X@  Њ    =2L} ZM43|xEpson LQ-1010EPLQ1010.PRSx  @5;X@  Њ    =Roman 10cpiRoman 17cpi2X~F^ 7xxxhx\  @X@$ 7FFFh F\  @X@ that Samson kept the kernel of his vows until Delilah cut his hair. While it is ible that "Had he broken it [the vow] earlier, he evidently would have lost his stDavid L. Washburn 216 N. Douglas Powell, WY 82435 (307) 7549851  @ SAMSON'S PROBLEM: LUST OR LONELINESS? ` ` By any estimation, Samson's spiritual life was a failure. By the time the Philistines captured him, he  7 had broken all of his Nazirite vows,>L. Wood, Distressing Days of the Judges (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975) 335 is overly kind when he concludes that Samson kept the kernel of his vows until Delilah cut his hair. While it is possible that "Had he broken it [the vow] earlier, he evidently would have lost his strength then, for the one was dependent on the other," Samson himself seems to have had a different idea: his strength was linked directly to his hair (Judg 16:17). had slept with at least one woman out of wedlock, and only seems to have called on God when he had a pressing problem such as thirst. ` ` Virtually all commentators assert that he failed because he could not control his glands; he liked women too much. As a recent example, the new volume in the  7p ITC series calls him "the profligate judge.">E. J. Hamilton, Judges: At Risk in the Promised Land (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming). See also Wood 335. ` ` Many of Samson's problems do seem to have stemmed from his relationships with the women in his life; first his Philistine wife, then a prostitute in Gaza, and finally the infamous Delilah. But it is not fair to deduce from this that his problem was sexual. In reality, if we start with the supposition that he was lonely, a lot of puzzling items in his story fall into place.#=%%%ԌThe Case for Loneliness ` ` We don't know that much about Samson's early life; Judges tells us that he was bound by Nazirite vows from birth, and that the Spirit of God began to "stir" him  7@ early (Judg 13:25), whatever that means.B܍Wood 309 understands it to mean that the Lord gave him his great strength at this time. R. G. Boling, Judges (AB; Garden City: Doubleday, 1975) 226 sees the statement as an anticipation of chapter 14. But we can infer a few things from the situation around him. ` ` First, the Samson account differs from most other parts of the Judges cycle; nowhere do we read that the people repented of their evil before God raised up Samson. Virtually all the other major accounts include at least a hint that the Israelites repented before the judge appeared: this is true of Othniel (3:9), Ehud (3:15), Deborah (4:3), Gideon (6:7), and Jephthah (10:1016). The Samson story moves from Israel's descent into sin, straight into Samson's birth. If the people were still in a state of rebellion, they would  7 not have welcomed someone like Samson. B܍On the other hand, if the Ammonite and Philistine invasions were concurrent, as they may well have been (see C. J. Goslinga, Joshua, Judges, Ruth [Bible Student's Commentary; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986] 226227, cf. D. L. Washburn, "The Chronlogy of Judges: Another Look," BibSac 147 (1990) 424, where I suggest that Samson and Jephthah were contemporary with Gideon), then the repentance of chapter 10 might have included the southern tribes who were oppressed by the Philistines. But this is far from certain; the entire section 10:918 concentrates on the Ammonite invasions and the tribes directly affected by them, so it is possible that those areas under Philistine domination did not share in this repentance; they may not even have known that the other tribes had returned to Yahweh. It has been fairly common since Noth to call the tribal alliance of the Judges period "amphictyonic," and if this is in fact the case then this theory falls on its face. However, Orlinsky has made a strong case for the idea that "Except for occasional brief emergency alliances, the Israelite tribes maintained complete autonomy during the Period of the Judges and recognized no central capital or shrine for all Israel" (H. M. Orlinsky, "The Tribal System of Israel and Related Groups in the Period of the Judges," in Studies and Essays in Honor of Abraham A. Neuman, ed. by M. BenHorin et al [Leiden: Brill, 1962] 375387). His view seems to fit the Judges material much better than that of Noth and his followers.  His long hair and restrictive lifestyle amounted to a living indictment of their sin. Their rejection of him is perhaps normal; most believers who are in a state of sin do not like to be reminded of that fact. ` ` Second, the people had been in slavery to the  7`" Philistines for at least a generation, B܍Most treatments of Judges seek to place Samson's exploits within the 40year Philistine oppression, but it is more likely that he arose toward or at the end of this period of time (see Washburn, "Chronology" 414425 for further arguments to this effect).  and the`"%## reaction of the men of Judah, which we will discuss shortly, shows that Israel considered the Philistines unbeatable. Into this scenario comes Samson, his birth announced by an angel, his life's work killing Philistines. He was not a deliverer in the Ehud or Jephthah sense; the angel said he would "begin to deliver" Israel from the Philistines, apparently by weakening their power to the point where a king could  7 arise and throw off their yoke altogether.B܍Many commentators miss the significance of this statement. Goslinga 414, for example, equates "begin Israel's deliverance" and "Israel's deliverance" as though the two are synonymous, which they are not. Samson weakened Philistine power by killing most of their leadership and destroying much of their food supply, but his work was only a beginning. ` ` It is worth noting that Boling 220 appears to attribute the words "begin to deliver" to the narrator of the story, not to the angel: "In Samson's case both the narrator and the audience know how the story in general turns out. Samson will begin the liberation but it will be up to Yahweh to finish it... To judge from 13:25 and 16:22, it is likely that the narrator has here chosen his words very carefully..." Of course, the people around him couldn't see this far ahead, so it was easy for them to treat him as an outcast; history shows that people are prone to do this to anyone who upsets the status quo. ` ` What was Samson's childhood like? He looked and acted different from everyone else, had some visible evidence of the Spirit of God about him (though we do not know what it was, perhaps his incredible strength), and a mission that everyone considered impossible, or even undesirable. He probably didn't have too many  7 friends.FB܍I find the suggestion of Boling 221222, that Manoah "thought of himself as all that was left, head of a oneclan Israel," completely without foundation. On p.224 he calls Samson "the son of a secessionist." The text simply will not support such a contention. In context, Boling's suggestion seems to stem from Manoah's question in 13:12: "What will be the judgment of the lad and his work?" (his translation, but cf. NASB) How he derives from this that Manoah was a "secessionist," I have no idea. We have no information at all about Manoah's politics or vocation.F ` ` How did this kind of isolation affect him? What did it feel like? There are plenty of people around us %## who could answer that question, and an awful lot of them are in the Church. ` ` What happened when Samson reached marrying age, probably around 1416 years? Let us put ourselves in the position of a prospective bride's father, subservient to the Philistines and a committed idolworshipper. Manoah and his unique son approach the door; the boy's hair, his appearance, his mission are all a slap in our faces. Would we give him our daughter in marriage? Samson probably had to endure a neverending stream of rejections. ` ` Marriage was of prime importance in Samson's  7 culture.B܍P. Trutza, "Marriage" in Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976) 4:9597. Plenty of marriages were arranged even before the children were old enough to understand the  7 idea. B܍ibid 96. If Samson could not find a wife, he may have become a little desperate, grasping in any direction for a human relationship to ease the emptiness that he felt. With this foundation in mind, we may examine the major events in Samson's life and see if their  7 circumstances bear out this loneliness hypothesis.a B܍I am assuming that the reader is familiar with the basic details of the Samson story.a The Philistine Wife ` ` Samson went to the neighboring town of Timnah and  7`" saw a girl that he liked, B 7 ԍBoling 229 follows the reading of LXXA and supplies "and she was the right one in his eyes" in 14:1 in order to form an inclusio with the same phrase in verse 3, but such an inclusio is unnecessary and detaches the parenthesis of verse 4 from the preceding verses that it explains. Furthermore, the virtual nonsupport of the variant makes it more than a little suspect. It is more likely that the LXX variant is a simple case of dittography. so he dashed home and`"%## asked his father to get her for his wife. Commentators look at this incident and conclude that Samson was so hopelessly lustful that he didn't care what nationality  7 she was, as long as she was female.  B܍A. E. Cundall, Judges, an Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove: IVP, 1968) 161162; see also Wood 312. Goslinga 419, on the other hand, sees a method to Samson's madness: "To confront them he even went so far as to marry a Philistine woman."  But this view overlooks certain circumstances.  7 ` ` 1) His age. Samson was already at least 18,8 B܍Goslinga 420 estimates his age at around 20.8 and still not married. By this time, a normal Israelite would already have at least one child. The parents' question was a good one: "Isn't there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all our  7 people?"pB܍Boling 229 continues his idea that Manoah was a "secessionist and translates 14:3 "Is there no woman among the daughters of your brotherhood, or among all my force...?" He tends to see military terms wherever he can, and comments, "The 'brotherhood' are those who have cast their lot with Manoah; they comprise his fighting 'force' (]m, as repeatedly in Joshua and Judges)." Needless to say, this suggestion falters on the context, since nothing suggests that Manoah had any kind of "fighting force" and ]m is a word with a broad range of meanings that are not confined to the military realm.p But his father already knew the implicit answer: "No, there isn't. I've tried." Desperation, not lust, drove Samson to consider taking a Philistine  7P wife.B܍Rushing into an illadvised marriage is a common phenomenon among lonely people. This thought is presented in greater detail in R. Rotheiser, The Loneliness Factor (Denville, NJ: Dimension, 1979) 3233. ` ` 2) In his anxiety, Samson didn't consider how difficult it would be to have a Philistine wife while making a life's work out of slaughtering her people. This marriage never had a chance. But a simple lack of sexual control would not lead to such longterm clouding of judgment. Samson hated the Philistines. Sexual urges coupled with that hatred might have led to  7 rape, but not to desire for marriage.VB܍Goslinga 421 understands hE in 14:4 to mean that Samson, not Yahweh, was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines (cf. C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament [10 vols: Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1982 reprint] 2:409). This translation suffers from some problems, not the least of which is that Yahweh is the nearest antecedent in the clause. If Yahweh was the one seeking an opportunity to confront the Philistines, He could easily work through Samson's loneliness and desperation to bring about His plan. On the other hand, Samson at this time had virtually no reason to pick a fight with them. If he understood himself to be a judge in the traditional sense, he would more likely have been making plans to raise an army and stage a formal battle, not seeking occasions for personal confrontation.V Desperation for someone to care, on the other hand, has led many`"%## believers to marry outside the Faith because they have gotten lost in the Sacred Shuffle and cannot find anyone in the believing community who seems to care. This appears to be what happened to Samson. ` ` At Samson's wedding, Goslinga considers it "a little surprising" that Samson's thirty friends were provided by the bride's family rather than from among his own friends. He suggests that "Perhaps this was a departure from the normal custom, since the Philistines would not have wanted too many Israelites at the  7 wedding."?B܍Goslinga 424. Boling 231 follows the versional reading "Because they were afraid of him" to explain why the Philistines provided him with 30 companions. However, as Goslinga rightly points out, this does not fit the context, since "At this time the Philistines did not yet have any reason to fear Samson."? But there is a much simpler explanation: Samson had no friends. Rather than let this depressing thought hang over the girl's wedding, her family provided an entourage for him from among their own people. ` ` At the party, it appears that Samson finally felt like part of the group, and probably even violated his  7 vows by joining the drinking.2B܍Goslinga 413 claims that "Chapter 14 contains no evidence that Samson took part in the drinking at his wedding feast." However, as Boling 231 points out, the very word for the party, mth, means "a drinking bout." The Philistines were wellknown for their beer drinking (Boling 219).2 It is likely, in fact, that the drinking loosened his tongue and incited  7 him to propose his disastrous riddle.%B܍Goslinga 425 indicates that "It was somewhat reckless of Samson to use this incident [i.e. his killing of the lion] as the basis for his riddle. To a certain extent he was 'playing with something God had given him, something he should have kept secret.'" Keil and Delitzsch 2:411 indicate that the Greeks made a practice of posing riddles to each other as a form of entertainment, but this fact is virtually meaningless: Samson's riddle occurred in a completely different culture, and nobody at the feast found his riddle entertaining.% ` ` What a sense of betrayal Samson must have felt when he realized that his new bride had already violated his trust! It is no wonder that he stormed`"%## out of the feast, unable even to consummate his  7 marriage.gB܍Boling 231 claims that the marriage was consummated on the first day of the feast, based on Gen 29:23,27. Cundall 166, on the other hand, offers a more plausible comment: "Samson, anticipating the consummation of the marriage, was anxious to stop the flow of tears. But the shared secret meant that the marriage was, in fact, never consummated."g He settled for paying the debt (in a manner of speaking) and returning to his parents' house, still bound to his wife but not fully married. ` ` To the girl's father, Samson's violent departure must have looked like an act of hatred. When he only returned to deliver the garments and then vanished again, the father's only logical recourse was to give her to the "friend of the bridegroom." When he explained this to Samson (15:2), Samson seems to have given him the benefit of the doubt. His words, "This time I have a right to get even with the Philistines; I will really harm them" (NIV) appear to focus on the warriors who pried his secret out of his wife, rather than on the father who gave his wife to someone  7p else.B܍Boling's translation of the father's words again goes far beyond the text. In place of NIV's "I was so sure you thoroughly hated her" he renders "What I say is that you in fact divorced her." He suggests (p.235) that this "is based on the technical term used in matters of divorce (Deut 24:3). This explains the father's ungovernable rage. He has performed an irreparable act in giving his daughter to another man, and she cannot return to Samson under any conditions (Deut 24:14)." There are two problems with this explanation. First, the father's words do not evidence any "ungovernable rage;" his offer of the younger daughter as a replacement suggests just the opposite. He understood Samson's dilemma, and was trying to find a way to help him repair it. Second, Boling's hypothesis requires the Philistines both to know and to be submissive to the finer points of Hebrew law. This is unlikely. He went out and burned the Philistines' food supply, much of which was undoubtedly earmarked for the soldiers that kept the Israelites in submission. Yet, when the Philistines murdered his wife and her father, he took a vicious revenge on them (15:78). This combination of actions suggests that he blamed the Philistines for fouling up his marriage, for ruining %## his one chance to share his life with someone who cared for him. ` ` Goslinga's comment about this vengeful slaughter deserves note: X` `  Remarkably, he made no attempt to organize his fellow Israelites and lead them against the enemy, as Gideon and the other judges had done. No doubt the explanation for this lies in his Nazirite consecration. He knew that he had been called to a special task in which he would need no human help and that he was a unique instrument of the Spirit  7 of the Lord.B܍Goslinga 432.x` Actually, the following episode offers a much better explanation. Samson knew the attitude of his countrymen; they would never stand up against the Philistines, nor would they follow him as a rebel leader. It is unreasonable to assume that his encounter with the men of Judah was the first hint he had that he was alone in his quest. Furthermore, this slaughter had nothing to do with raising an army and throwing off the yoke of servitude; it was an act of %## revenge for the destruction of his marriage, nothing more. The Men of Judah ` ` After Samson avenged his wife's death, he hid out for a while in the deserts of Judah. It is generally assumed that the "rock of Etam" was somewhere near Samson's home, rather than at the Etam in Judah (2 Chr  7 11:6),B܍Keil and Delitzsch 2:414; Boling 236 "somewhere in the southern hills"; Cundall suggests a place "about two and a half miles southeast from Zorah" (p.170). These views are based on the assumption that Samson did not travel very far from home (Goslinga 432 rules out Keil and Delitzsch's identification of the Etam in Simeon, 1 Chr 4:32, on this basis), and on the statement that he "went down," which he could not do if he went to the mountains of Judah. but a number of factors weigh against this idea. For one thing, it is unlikely that he went there  7 to "hide out.")B܍This is Boling's term, p.236.) Probably, he withdrew to a point where the Philistines would only come after him, rather than his townspeople: "[H]e was reluctant to endanger the inhabitants of Zorah or other Israelite towns by  7P staying near them."B܍Goslinga 432. For another thing, the place usually identified as the Rock of Etam near Zorah is in a region that was usually considered part of Dan, not  7 Judah.B܍Cundall 170 points out, however, that Philistine oppression on Dan and Judah "had made their common border rather fluid." If he had stayed in this region, the chances are that the Philistines would have attacked a Danite settlement, not a Judahite one. ` ` Third, the expression "went down" is fairly fluid itself. It need only mean that he had to go down to get to the cave, not to the site in general. The fact that such a large force of men from the tribe of Judah`" %## came after him, together with his apparent desire to keep his fellow Danites out of harm's way, argues strongly in favor of the site in the mountains of  7 Judah.B܍Boling unwittingly supports this contention when he says, "Samson has left home, plundered the Philistines, and found a hideout in territory belonging to Judahites; they are the ones who must handle the problem of extradition." (p.238) ` `  Imagine Samson's surprise when he saw a force of 3,000 men approaching, not Philistines, but his own people. Then they told him that the Philistines were arrayed for war with a force that seems to have been  7 onethird that size.]B܍Boling's insistence on rendering "thousands" as "contingents," is as unnecessary as it is unlikely. He claims (p.238) that "The recovery of the old military usage, later obscured as 'thousands,' once again brings a popular story into the realm of the plausible." He offers no explanation as to why "thousands" would not be "plausible."] The Israelites outnumbered the Philistines three to one, but were afraid to fight. Instead, they brought their whole army to capture one  70 of their countrymen and turn him over to the enemy.B܍Wood 319 attributes the men's actions to jealousy, but it is more likely that their betrayal of Samson grew out of simple fear of the Philistines. ` ` What kind of effect did this have on Samson? He was supposed to begin Israel's deliverance, but it was clear by now that he would have to do it alone. There are those who criticize Samson for not raising an army  7 and fighting the Philistines headon,TB܍S. Schultz, The Old Testament Speaks (New York: Harper, 1960) 112.T but had he tried, no one would have followed him; the Philistines had everyone cowed. The words of the Judahites explicitly prove this: "Don't you realize that the Philistines are rulers over us? What have you done to us?" When threatened with a battle, the very people %## that Samson sought to deliver turned on him and  7 expected him to die as a result of their betrayal.B܍Goslinga contradicts himself in commenting on this episode. On p.433 he suggests that Samson "felt that many Israelites would not take kindly to his presence (however much they may have admired him), because they feared the Philistines' vengeance [for his slaughter in Timnah]." (emphasis mine) However, on p.434 he acknowledges that "This whole experience [with the men of Judah] must have been extremely disappointing for Samson; his own people failed utterly to understand that he had been sent to deliver them." Based on their actions, which I agree had to be "extremely disappointing" to Samson, there is no ground for suggesting that they "admired him" in any conceivable way. ` ` Where were these Judahites when Samson was slaughtering the Philistines with a donkey's jawbone? If he could defeat such an army with a single contrived weapon, what might they be able to do if only with  7` rocks and clubs? B܍Cundall's words here are poignant: "Even this exploit failed to rouse them from their apathetic acceptance of the situation (p.172)." These questions must have crossed Samson's mind. When the dust settled, after a lifetime of rejection, he stood alone with his great victory,  7 perhaps more alone now than ever before.!B܍As R. Gotesky, "Aloneness, Loneliness, Isolation, Solitude," An Invitation to Phenomenology, ed J. Edie (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1965) 211240 points out, simply being alone is not necessarily a painful experience, and solitude can even be delightful. Being lonely, however, is always painful. Rotheiser (6889) distinguishes five types of loneliness; Samson's encounter with his countryment deepened his feeling of what Rotheiser calls "AlienationLoneliness." The Gaza Woman ` ` There is no excuse for Samson's sin with this prostitute, but we may be able to discover a reason why it happened. When commentators encounter this episode, they are usually so busy expounding and decrying the  7p fact that Samson spent the night with a prostitute"B܍Cundall 173174. that they overlook the most fundamental question of the passage: why did Samson go to Gaza in the first place? ` ` Surely it was not just to find a prostitute. The idolatrous Philistines controlled the entire region, and their idolworship had infected virtually all the  7 people.#B܍ibid 161. Undoubtedly, there were cult prostitutes all over southern Dan, so Samson could have found one`" %##  7 much closer to home.$B܍Wood 326. Gaza was at least a day's march from Samson's home town of Zorah. If he went all the way there just to find a prostitute, then he was not only uncontrolled, he was stupid. ` ` It is more likely that he went there to carry his battle to the Philistines. His life shows a certain  7` amount of recklessnessU%B܍Goslinga 439 relates this recklessness to the same kind that incited him to offer his riddle, but this is not the kind of recklessness to which I refer. By this term I mean that he tended to throw himself at the Philistines singlehanded whenever he got the chance, with little regard for his own life or his chances of victory.U, probably brought on by the  7 very loneliness that we have been discussing.&B܍Again using Rotheiser's terminology, this recklessness stemmed from feelings of "RestlessnessLoneliness," that is, "the constant dissatisfaction and restlessness within us which perpetually keeps us frustrated and in a state of unrest. . . a certain restlessness and insatiability" (Rotheiser 72). Samson's restlessness, no doubt, was aggravated by his sense of alienation: if he could strike bigger, more impressive blows against the Philistines, the people might accept him in spite of their previous rejection. After his singlehanded victory over a thousand soldiers, he may have concluded that he had nothing to lose. And the rejection by his countrymen showed him that, if he died in the attempt, nobody would miss him. ` ` Once in the city, he fell prey to a prostitute's  7P advances.'B܍Boling's comment on this fact is both accurate and amusing: "The woman was going about her publicly recognized business; the judge of Israel was not going about his publicly recognized business (p.248)." While I do not have personal experience in this area, I am told that these women know how to spot loneliness in a potential customer and to manipulate it to their advantage. If the picture of Samson that is developing is accurate, this is probably what happened to him. Again, this does not excuse his sin, but it explains how it could happen and shows how vulnerable a hurting person can be. It also shows how the support of the believing community could have %## averted a lonely person's descent into sin, if only the believers had taken the time to pay attention to him. ` ` When confronted with the men of the city, Samson ran. Granting that he took the city gates with him, he ran nonetheless. Why didn't he stand and fight them? He could not doubt that God was still with him; he still had the strength to destroy the city gates. It is probable that the combination of loneliness and the shame of realizing his sin made him feel unworthy of another great victory. Pain compounds with pain, and the great warrior tucks his head and flees, albeit in his own unique way. The Case of Delilah ` ` Contrary to what we usually hear, there is no  7 solid evidence that Delilah was a Philistine.[(B܍W. J. Beecher, "Delilah," in ISBE 2:820. Wood 328 assumes that she was a Philistine, but grudgingly admits that the size of her payoff suggests otherwise (p.339 n38). Goslinga 441 suggests further that she may have been a prostitute, or at least "not a woman of hig morals." Again, nothing in the text supports this statement.[ The only hint we have is the fact that she cooperated with them to betray Samson. But given the political and religious situation, any Israelite could have betrayed him just as easily. In fact, 3,000 Israelites had  7 already done just that.)B܍M. O'Connor, "The Women in the Book of Judges," Hebrew Annual Review 10:289 gives her the benefit of the doubt: "Delilah [was] forced to serve political designs prompted by Samson's previous successes."  7@ ` ` Delilah's name is Hebrew, her lineage unknown.*B܍Gesenius, Lexicon 225, cf ISBE 2:820. Boling 248 derives her name from Aramaic and translates it "flirtatious;" this seems a bit stretched. On p.252 he refers to her "high social status," but gives no explanation of or authority for such a statement. In treating the SamsonDelilah pericope, we must eventually face the fact that we know absolutely nothing about her. But Judges 16 sets out a clear sequence of events. First, Samson fell in love with her. Next, the`" %## Philistines came to her with their offer. After that, she agreed to betray him and started playing her mind  7  games on him.+B܍The verbs in this sequence are all wawĩconsecutives, thus denoting a stepbystep progression; nothing in the context suggests that any shuffling of the events is needed. Based on this progression, it is difficult to view her as the scheming seductress that Hollywood and Handel have made her out to be. It is possible that she really cared for him. ` ` This is the only place where we are ever told that Samson loved someone. By this time he would have been suspicious of anyone who claimed to love him, so Delilah must have done something to convince him that she cared for him before the Philistines approached  70 her.,B܍The statement by Wood 330 that "Samson's resultant conduct in the clutches of the scheming, ruthless Delilah gives a graphic commentary on the power of passion to control and ruin any man" is thoroughly overblown and based on assumption. After her relationship with Samson was established, the leaders of the Philistines came to her and demanded that she betray him. True, they offered  7 her a staggering sum of money.N-B܍Boling 248249, following a suggestion by Freedman, would move the waw from "hundred" and make it a suffix on 'elep, with the resultant translation "each man's unit, one hundred." Thus, according to his idea, Samson's price was only 500 shekels. He reasons that the price of 5500 shekels is "incredible, when it is reacalled tha the total of confiscated rings taken from the Midianites/Ishmaelites in 8:26 was only 'one thousand seven hundred shekels.' While prices obviously fluctuated, it is worth comparing the four hundred shekels which Abraham paid for a family burial place (Gen 24:15,19), the fifty shekels which David paid for the oxen and threshing floor of Araunah (II Sam 24:24), and the thirty shekels which the covenant code sets as the value of a slave (Exod 21:32)." ` ` These comparisons, however impressive on the surface, are meaningless. In the first place, we are dealing with Philistines trying to trap an enemy, not with simple purchases or plunders. Second, the Philistines feared Samson enough to dedicate a major feast/sacrifice to his capture, so it is far from inconceivable that they would have been willing to pay a staggering price to bring him down. Once we understand how much they feared him, and how important his capture was to them, there is no need to tamper with the text as it stands.N But it is also true that their offer must have amounted to "an offer she couldn't refuse." Imagine her listening to them, pondering for a moment and saying, "No, I don't think so. I love him too much." Then imagine the Philistines saying, "All right. We understand. Have a nice day."@%##Ԍ` ` Such a picture is ludicrous, of course. Delilah undoubtedly knew that if she refused she would be killed. So she agreed, and carried out the betrayal. ` ` In any event, Samson did not get involved with her just to satisfy his lusts; he really cared for her. Judg 16:4 clearly says he loved her, and her question in 16:15, "How can you say 'I love you' when you won't  7 confide in me?'" confirms his love for her..B܍Goslinga 442 misses this fact entirely. When Delilah starts asking questions about Samson's strength, Goslinga says "One has to wonder why he did not flee Delilah's seduction right at this point." The obvious answer is because he loved her. There is no hint that he understood why she was asking; up to the point where she accused him of not loving her, the whole thing seems to have been a game to him. ` ` This relationship proved his undoing, but once again it is unfair to say that he fell because of lust,  7 or because he had a weakness for women./B܍So Cundall 175. C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982 reprint) 2:399400 follow the same assumption: "[I]t looks as if Samson had dishonoured and fooled away the gift entrusted to him, by making it subservient to his sensual lusts. . ." Again on p.419 they say "Samson gave himself up once more to his sensual lusts." By contrast, O'Connor 289 concludes that "Samson's vow is broken, through no fault of his."  Like a lot of people, Samson was searching for that everpopular "meaningful relationship" to give his life the fulfillment that it was lacking. Delilah filled that void, and their relationship only got complicated when the Philistines intervened in it. ` ` While it is true that the text says Delilah "nagged him to death" to discover his secret (16;16), it is also true that the cocky, selfassured egotist that is usually portrayed could have found a better way to deal with a nagging wife. It is more likely that Samson finally revealed his secret in order to repair the relationship. She went so far as to claim that he`"%## didn't really love her. Now that he had finally found someone to share his life with, Samson couldn't endure that kind of separation. ` ` In the end, he told her everything. This is not the mark of a man who is merely tired of being nagged, nor is it the mark of a man so filled with lust that he will do anything to possess his woman. It is the mark of a man who is once again desperate, afraid of losing what he has been losing over and over all his life. He couldn't go back to being alone; even revealing his secret would be better than that. His action shows a man who had been so deeply hurt that he didn't care any  7 more, as long as Delilah continued to love him.0B܍This, too, is a common practice of lonely people: overexertion in an attempt to be a "pleaser" and retain someone's affection, regardless of the cost (Rotheiser 2324). Samson's Death ` ` No doubt, Delilah's betrayal was the low point in an alreadydepressing life. At last Samson had found someone he could open his heart to, and even she turned on him. Now he sat in prison, blind and useless. His hair grew back, as is well known, and he somehow discovered that his strength returned with it. But what could a blind warrior do? As far as he was concerned, his life was over. All he could do was sit and wait for death to claim him, alone as usual.`"%##Ԍ` ` Then he saw his opportunity. All the leaders of the Philistines would be at the feast of Dagon where he  7  was forced to perform for them,1B܍The Hebrew expression is "made them laugh." The exact nature of this "performance" is not clear, but it certainly involved humiliation and humor at his expense. and he seems to have  7 known the layout of the building.2B܍Goslinga 450. Boling 251, once again following Freedman, says "The gag, 'roof,' where they stood probably refers not to the temple but to some unspecified structure, or perhaps even a nearby hill, from which the bulk of the crowd watched the proceedings." This is not only foreign to the context, but fails to account for the fact that Samson's destruction of the temple killed more people than he had killed in his lifetime. I do not know of any passage in the OT where gag ever hints at a meaning of "separate structure," much less "hill" (cf. TWOT 1:149), and sitting on the roof was a common practice in antiquity. For one of the few times in his life, Samson prayed. It was a prayer of hopelessness; all he wanted was revenge for his eyes. His final cry, filled with despair, summarized the way he had lived: "Let me die with the Philistines." Sufficient for him was the fact that they were dying, too. It was time to get this life over with. Probably, few people have ever been so  70 content to see the end come.3B܍It has often been noted that the famous composer Hector Berlioz welcomed his own death just as eagerly, and for the same reasons: he was a misfit, rejected by those around him, with little or nothing left to live for. See, for example, H. D. McKinney and W. R. Anderson, Music in History (3rd ed.; New York: American Book Co., 1966) 481486; H. Thomas and D. L. Thomas, Forty Famous Composers (Garden City, NY: Halcyon House, 1948) 92103. Conclusion ` ` As we have seen, this loneliness hypothesis explains a lot of puzzling features of the Samson story. It explains why he took a Philistine wife, how he happened to be in Gaza to encounter a prostitute, and why he opened himself up to Delilah. Rather than a man to be scorned for his lack of selfcontrol, Samson appears as a man to be pitied, someone who slipped through the cracks in the Household of Faith. His failure was as much the fault of the prejudiceblinded people around him as it was his own fault. His life`"%## warns us to examine our own world with a clearer eye: there are a lot of Samsons all around us, and more and more of them are slipping through our own cracks. We need to plug those cracks before any more are lost. @%## (NOTES