• Oonstantine Porphyr. (I"- p. 41, Bonn ed.), Eustathlus, and Strabo (pp. .'UO, 457) say ttiat £«^u».' meant 'hill'; and the name waa comiuoo in tbe Greek world.
378
SAilSON
SAMSON
their subject (the Syr. and LXX Luc. wrongly introduce him in 1 S 1'2")- The same thing is true of the name of his father Manoa^ (oi3? ' rest,' 'resting-place'), J" 13™- 16^'; but after the Captivity the inhabitants of Zor'ah, Samson's native towti, are called (1 Ch '2^^'^) Manahe- THITES ("Bnj;), a circumstance which luight imply that Manoah was the heros eponymos of a Danite clan, and was only afterwards assigned as father to the judge Samson (cf. the case of Jefhtuah in Jg U'). ii. The Narrative.—
Ch. 13. The barren wife of the Danite Manoali of Zor'ah haa a vision of the auj;el of Jahweh in tlie torni of a man, who pro- mises to her a son who from his mother's womb is to be a ' consecrated one ' to God (D'.iSx Tn, see Nazirite), and who is to make a commencement of freeing the people from the Philistine .yoke. Therefore his motiier is to abstain from all intoxicatiuf hquors and guard against everything that defiles; no razor is to come upon the head of the child. At Manoah's prayer the angel appears a second time, and repeats his instruc- tions. Only after he ascen'is in the flame of the offering pre- sented to Jahweh and disappears, do Manoa^ and his wife recognize who had been their guest. The boy, when bom, is Darned Samson, and grows up under the blessing of Jahweh.
Ch. 14. Arrived at manhood, Samson, not without opposition from his parents, makes choice of a Philistine girl at Timnah to be his wife. On his way there he kills a lion, and on his return journey eats of the honey which he finds in the carcase. At the wedding feast he makes this the subject of a riddle for the young men, and, when his young wife coaxes him into telling her the solution and betra}^ it to them, ho leaves her in ill humour.
Ch. 15. Having recovered himself, Samson will visit his wife in her parents' house, but finds that she has been given by her father to another. In revenge he destroys the ripe harvest fields of the Philistines by foxes with burning brands. The Philis- tines retaliate by burning his wife and all her house, an act which Samson again avenges by slaughtering many of them (vv.1-8). Having made his escape to the territory 'of Judah, which, however, owned the Philistine suzerainty, he allows himself, on their menaces, to be handed over by the inhabitants bound, but bursts his bonds and slays a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. The wearied Samson is re\'ived by Jahweh by means of a spring flowing from the jawbone
(VT.9-19).
Ch. 16. While Samson is visiting a harlot at Gaza he is betrayed, and his enemies think to seize him in the morning. But he catches up the folding-doors of the city gate, posts and all, and carries them to the top of a mountain by Hebron (w.i-^). His paramour, Delilah, in the Vale of Sorek is bribed by the Philistines to deliver him over to them : three times he deceives her as to the source of his strength, and bursts the bonds wherewith she has bound him. At last he confesses that his strength lies in his God-consecrated hair, and after he has been shaved while asleep he falls defenceless into the hands of the Philistines. The latter put out his eyes and set him to slaves' work in the prison at Gaza (w.-*-^). At the festival in honour of their god Daoo.v, the conquered foe is to be exhibited as a spectacle to the assembled people. But with the new growth of his hair the blind man feels his strength return, and after prajing to Jahweh he pulls down the pillars of the house in which the Philistines are assembled, so that they all perish alon^ with himself in the ruins. His body is buried by his relatives in the family sepulchre. His judgeship had lasted twenty year* (w.23.31).
iii. The Sources. — Of all the narratives in the Book of Judges, that about Samson is the only one that is not composed from the two ancient sources which supplied the material of the book — in all probability the Judrean source (J) and the Ephraimitic (K). The attempt to distinguish two sources throughout has only once been made, and that superlicially, by von Ortenberg, but cannot be regarded as successful. On the other hand, it has been rightly recognized by van Doominck (1879) and Stade (1884) that ch. 14 has undergone extensive revision, and Bohme (I8S5) has proved the same for ch. 13. In both chapters the aim of this revision is religious ; the whole personality of Samson is meant to be brought under the religious point of view more than is the case in the par- ticular narrativea. Bohme has .shown at the same time that ch. 13 bears marks of the source J, and thus the whole Samson history will have to be assigned to this source. That E has no share in it is explained by the circumstance that for the Ephraimitic source the jud^e who ' began to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines' (13°) was