F

XIV.

SAMSON.

ROM the lawlessness of Jephthah on the extreme eastern frontier of Palestine, we pass at once to a manifestation

of the same tendency in a different, but not less incontestable, form on the extreme western frontier. At the same time the new enemies, in whose grasp we now find the Israelites, remind us that we are approaching a new epoch in their history.

"The Philistines" now 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 the scattered indications of their origin lead to the conclusion that they were settlers from some foreign country. Unlike 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 neighbors, from their dull, heavy stupidity; the easy prey of the rough humor of Samson, or of the agility and cunning of the diminutive David.

Possibly the Philistines may have been called in by the older Avites as allies against the invading Israelites, and then, as in the ancient fable, made themselves their masters. Be that as it may, the Philistines were the longest and deadliest enemies of the chosen people, whose hostilities, commencing in the close

of the period of the Judges, lasted through the first two reigns of the monarchy, and were not finally extinguished till the time of Hezekiah.

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 overlooking 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 gave him his singular position amongst the Israelite heroes.

This was the age of vows, and it is implied in the account that such special vows as that which marked the life of Samson were common. The order of Nazarites, which we find 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 separation from the rest of the nation, partly by the abstinence from all intoxicating drink, partly by the retention of the savage covering of long flowing tresses of hair. The order thus begun continued till the latest times. 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 representation of Josephus, or the more shadowy and refined 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.

Whenever the son of Manoah appeared in later life, he was always known by the Nazarite mark. The early vow of his mother was always testified by his shaggy, untonsured head, and by the seven sweeping 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 between the manners of the East and West, between ancient and modern forms of religious feeling, that the Jewish chief, whose position most nearly resembles that of 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 rejoicing 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 sternness of Phoenician fanaticism. As a peal of hearty laughter breaks in upon the despondency of individual 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 fresh significance. Out of his first achievement he draws the materials for his playful riddle. His second and third achievements are practical jests on the largest scale. The mischievousness of the conflagration of the cornfields by means of the jackals is subordinate to the ludicrous aspect of the adventure, as, from the hill of Zorah, the contriver of the scheme watched the streams of fire spreading through cornfields 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 exaltation or the weariness of victory: "With the jawbone of an ass have I slain one mass, two masses; with the jawbone of an ass I have slain an oxload 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 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 merriment 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 by which he "made them sport;" and as he puts 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 paradox even to the act of destruction itself, and overflows into the touch of triumphant satire, with which the pleased historian closes his story: "The dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life."

There is no portion of the sacred narrative more stamped with a peculiar local color than the account of Samson. 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 belonged. 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, may probably be seen "the serpent by the way, the adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider shall fall backward."

The scene of his death is the great temple of the fish-god at Gaza, in the extremity of the Philistine district. But his grave was in the same spot which had nourished his first youthful hopes. From the time of Gideon downward 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 his 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 burialplace of Manoah his father."

"When all abroad was rumor'd that this day

Samson should be brought forth to show the people
Proof of his mighty strength in feats and games,

I sorrow'd at his captive state, but minded