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Class-Book of Old Testament History

<hr class="sect_35" /> <h3> CHAPTER <abbr title="6">VI.</abbr> INVASION FROM THE SOUTH-WEST. SAMSON. <abbr title="Judges">Judg.</abbr> <abbr title="chapter 13 through 16">xiii.–xvi.</abbr>   B.C. 1161<abbr title="through">–</abbr>1120.</h3> MEANWHILE the Philistines215 on the south-west had not only established themselves in the Shephelah, or Low Country, but now commenced that long and deadly hostility to the Israelites, which lasted from this time through the reigns of Saul and David, and was not finally terminated till the time of Hezekiah (2 Kings <abbr title="chapter 18">xviii.</abbr> 8). Their oppressions naturally pressed most heavily on the little tribe of Dan, already hard pushed by the Amorites. From this tribe, then, the Deliverer came. But unlike others who had been called to the same office, he was specially set apart for it even before his birth. On the high hill of Zorah overlooking the fertile lowlands of Philistia lived a Danite named Manoah. To his wife, who as yet had no child, it was announced by an Angel that she was about to become the mother of a son, whom she was to devote as a Nazarite216 unto God from his birth; no razor was ever to come upon his head; wine and strong drink he was never to touch; and he should commence the deliverance of Israel from the Philistines (<abbr title="Judges">Judg.</abbr> <abbr title="chapter 13">xiii.</abbr> 5). These words were announced to Manoah by his wife, and a second appearance of the Angel was vouchsafed to assure both parents of the certainty of these events, which was further confirmed, as in the case of Gideon, by the disappearance of the Angel in the flames which consumed the Danite’s meat-offering (<abbr title="Judges">Judg.</abbr> <abbr title="chapter 13">xiii.</abbr> 20). In process of time the child was born, and was named Samson, either the sunlight, or the strong. As he grew, he became distinguished for supernatural strength, and from time to time in Mahanah-Dan, the camp of the famous Six Hundred of his tribe217, was moved to perform those exploits which made him the terror of the Philistines. His first action, however, when come to man’s estate, did not display that hostility to the national enemy which his parents would naturally have expected. At Timnath, then in the occupation of the Philistines, he saw one of the daughters of the place, whom he was resolved to marry. Very unwillingly did his father and mother give their consent, and went down from Zorah with their wayward son “through wild rocky gorges” to the vineyards of Timnath, situated, as was often the case, far from the village to which they belonged, and amidst rough wadies and wild cliffs218. In one of these Samson encountered a young lion, and, though he had nothing in his hand, rent it as he would have rent a kid. Thinking little of the circumstance, he did not mention it to his father and mother, but went with them to Timnath, and talked with the woman, and she pleased him well. On his second descent through the same wild rocky pass, he turned aside to see the carcase of the lion, and discovered amongst the bones a swarm of bees. A portion of the honey he took himself, and gave a portion to his parents, saying nothing of his exploit, or the place whence he had obtained the honey. The wedding festival was celebrated at Timnath, and lasted several days, on one of which the bridegroom put forth a riddle to his thirty Philistine “companions,” promising thirty sheets and thirty changes of garments to any that guessed it, but demanding the same of them if within the days of the feast they failed to discover it. The young men accepted the challenge, and Samson put forth his riddle, saying, Out of the eater came forth meat, Out of the strong came forth sweetness. For three days the Philistine youths tried to unravel it, and failed. Then they beset Samson’s wife, and threatened to burn her and her father’s house, if she did not ascertain for them the interpretation. During the remaining days, therefore, she implored of Samson with tears the revelation of the secret. At first he was proof against her entreaties, but on the last day of the feast he told her, and she revealed it to the thirty Philistines, who came to him in the evening and said, What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion? If ye had not ploughed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle was the giant’s brief reply, and going down to Ashkelon, one of the five cities of the lords of the Philistines, on the extreme southern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, he slew thirty men and of the spoil brought the stipulated reward. Then in great wrath he returned to Zorah. But when wheat-harvest came round, his passion for the woman was somewhat rekindled, and he resolved to present her with a kid, and now learnt from her father for the first time, that, probably during his absence at Ashkelon, thinking he utterly hated her, he had bestowed her upon another. Thereupon Samson, being enraged, resolved to wreak his vengeance on the Philistines, and catching, probably in pitfalls and snares, 300 foxes, he fastened them tail to tail with lighted firebrands in the midst, and sent them into their cornfields, olive-yards, and vine-yards. Terrible was the mischief thus inflicted in a country, which even now, “in the summer months, is one sea of dead-ripe grain, dry as tinder219.” At length the Philistines ascertained who was the author of this destructive conflagration, and went to the house of his late wife, and burnt her and her father to death. Thereupon Samson avenged himself by inflicting upon them a great slaughter, and went and took up his abode on the lofty cliff of Etam, probably not very far from Bethlehem. Thither the Philistines pursued him, and demanded his surrender of the men of Judah. So utterly lost to all feelings of honour, so degraded from its former high estate was this tribe, that 3000 men actually scaled the rocky cliff, and brought Samson bound with two new cords to his enemies. On his approach, the Philistines raised a mighty shout. But at the moment supernatural strength was given to the captive. He burst his bonds as though they had been cords of flax burnt in the fire, and seizing the jawbone of an ass, and aided probably by the now inspirited Israelites, slew a thousand of the Philistines. In memory of this exploit, he named the place Ramath-Lehi (the casting away of the jawbone). Sore athirst after his exertions, he feared that from sheer exhaustion he might fall once more into the hands of his foes, but from a hollow place in Lehi God caused water to issue, and his spirit reviving he called the spot En-hakkore (the Spring of the crier) (<abbr title="Judges">Judg.</abbr> <abbr title="chapter 15">xv.</abbr> 16<abbr title="through">–</abbr>19). Samson is next found at Gaza (the strong), which though allotted to and conquered by Judah (<abbr title="Joshua">Josh.</abbr> <abbr title="chapter 15">xv.</abbr> 47; <abbr title="Judges">Judg.</abbr> <abbr title="chapter 1">i.</abbr> 18) had fallen into the hands of the Philistines, who now encompassed the gate of the city, intending to capture him in the morning. But at midnight he arose, and taking the doors of the gate and the two posts, carried them, bar and all, to the top of the hill before Hebron. After this, he fell in love with Delilah, a Philistine courtesan, of the valley of Sorek, apparently near Gaza. This last amour led to his capture and death. For the enormous reward of 1100 pieces of silver from each lord, equivalent to 5500 shekels, the five lords of the Philistines persuaded her to undertake the task of discovering the secret of his great strength. Three times she importuned him to reveal the mystery, but he succeeded in putting her off with wiles. Green withes, new ropes, the binding of his seven clustering locks to the web, all these expedients were powerless to detain him prisoner, and he escaped with ease from the hands of the Philistines. The fourth time, however, she succeeded, and he told her all his heart, revealing the secret of his Nazarite vow. Accordingly, while he was asleep upon her knees, she caused the seven locks to be shaved off, and when he awoke the giant found that his strength had departed from him. The watching Philistines sprang into the chamber, took him, bored out his eyes, and brought him bound with brazen fetters to Gaza, where they made him grind in the prison-house (<abbr title="Judges">Judg.</abbr> <abbr title="chapter 16">xvi.</abbr> 21). Then a day was fixed for a solemn festival in honour of Dagon, their national deity, half man and half fish220, to whom the deliverance of the nation from their dreaded foe was ascribed. In the midst of the feast, Samson was brought in to make sport for his unfeeling captors. The temple, where the festival was held, situated probably on a sloping hill, was full of men and women, and even on the roof upwards of 3000 were packed together. The blinded giant was led in by a lad, and at his own request was suffered to feel the pillars on which the temple stood. Standing there, he prayed that his old strength might for this once be restored to him, and that he might be enabled to wreak a complete revenge on his unfeeling enemies. Taking hold of the pillars with both hands, and praying that he might die with the Philistines, he bowed himself with all his might, and the temple walls fell in, and crushed the lords of the Philistines and the assembled crowd. Samson’s body was extricated from the ruins, and in sad procession was borne by his brethren and kinsmen “up the steep ascent to his native hills,” and laid between Zorah and Eshtaol in the burial-place of Manoah his father (<abbr title="Judges">Judg.</abbr> <abbr title="chapter 16">xvi.</abbr> 31). As Judge, Samson’s supremacy had lasted twenty years. The words of the Angel to his parents had declared that he should begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines, and in truth his work was only begun. Its completeness was marred chiefly by himself. “His acts were dictated mainly by caprice and the impulse of the moment; he frittered away the great powers which had been bestowed upon him, and forgot the Divine call which he had received. Still these incomplete results may in some measure be fairly ascribed to the character of his countrymen; they always permitted him to stand unaided and alone, and even surrendered him to the enemy221.” The work that he began needed a very different man to complete it, the spirit of the people needed renewal, and an internal reformation was essential. Before recounting the means whereby this was brought about, the Sacred Narrative presents us with a little history, which strikingly illustrates the repose and peacefulness which characterized some of the calmer intervals in the disturbed period of the Judges. From Bethlehem-Judah there went forth during a season of famine222 two Ephrathites of the place, Elimelech and Naomi, with their sons Mahlon and Chilion, to seek a home across the Jordan in the land of Moab. Here Elimelech died, and his two sons married two of the daughters of Moab, Orpah and Ruth. After a period of about ten years his sons also died, and Naomi hearing that the famine had ceased in the land of Israel, prepared to return to her native town accompanied by her daughter-in-law Ruth, whom no entreaties could induce to remain amongst her own people. It was the beginning of barley-harvest223 when they returned, and Ruth went to glean near Bethlehem in the fields of Boaz, a man of wealth and a kinsman of Elimelech. The appearance and the story of the beautiful stranger, which he learnt from the townspeople, attracted the attention of Boaz to the Moabitess, and he permitted her not only to glean in his fields, but to share with his labourers the provisions supplied them. By the advice of her mother-in-law, Ruth afterwards claimed kinship with the wealthy Boaz, and he was not slow to acknowledge it. A nearer kinsman, however, was first asked to discharge these duties, which included not only the redemption of the land that had belonged to Elimelech, but also the taking of Ruth in marriage to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance (<abbr title="Deuteronomy">Deut.</abbr> <abbr title="chapter 25">xxv.</abbr> 5<abbr title="through">–</abbr>10). On his declining to perform the latter duty, Boaz redeemed the land in the presence of ten elders of Bethlehem and the assembled people, and married Ruth, by whom he became the father of Obed, the grandfather of King David224. A more pleasing picture of Hebrew country life can hardly be imagined than the story of “the gleaner Ruth,” illustrating, as it does, “the friendly relations between the good Boaz and his reapers, the Jewish land-system, the method of transferring property from one person to another, the working of the Mosaic Law for the relief of distressed and ruined families, but above all handing down the unselfishness, the brave love, the unshaken trustfulness of her, who though not of the chosen Race was, like the Canaanitess Tamar (<abbr title="Genesis">Gen.</abbr> <abbr title="chapter 38">xxxviii.</abbr> 29; <abbr title="Matthew">Matt.</abbr> <abbr title="chapter 1">i.</abbr> 3) and the Canaanitess Rahab (<abbr title="Matthew">Matt.</abbr> <abbr title="chapter 1">i.</abbr> 5), privileged to become the ancestress of David, and so of great David’s greater Son” (Ruth <abbr title="chapter 4">iv.</abbr> 18<abbr title="through">–</abbr>22). <hr class="chap_50" /> <h2 class="vm_30 h2head"> BOOK <abbr title="8">VIII.</abbr> FROM THE TIME OF SAMUEL TO THE ACCESSION OF DAVID.</h2> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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