Judges 13-16 Complete Jewish Bible
Sampson
rule Israel for 20 years and is a womanizing failure. Yet his god competes in
tribal killing of many people. It is important that Sampson does not pray to
Dagon.
Guide: CJB emphasis in bold (CJB online),
text in green; NIV in magenta ; Nomads* discussion in yellow; and my comments in gray.
*Participative
Sunday-school-class at UBC led by Ken Tipton. My continually improved statement
about Genesis 1:26-28 is at the end of this.)
Major
concerns
1.
The
writer seems concerned about “evil-from-Adonai’s-perspective” rather than evil.
a.
This may be an artifact of competitive monotheism: evil people
can attribute their behavior to their God.
b.
The tribes intermarry yet ruthlessly destroy entire
cities in sex squabbles.
2. Like Abraham’s wife, Sarah,
Manoach’s wife has a miraculous conception rather than a Divine conception (Mary).
3. While Sampson is labeled a nazirite,
Samuel and John the Baptist seem so described; https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/encyclopedia-of-the-bible/Nazirite-Nazarite.
No
association with “Nazarene”.
4. Sampson’s sex story seems a
contest between Adonai and Dagon.
a. A leader of Israel fatally
choosing women from uncircumcised tribe seems a subplot.
b. “Angel” and “man of God” seem
interchangeable.
c. The angel talks with the woman
of another tribe.
d. The value of food and burnt
offerings is debatable.
Perhaps Hebrews cites Sampson because
of the lessening/denigration of Dagon.
The scripture, CJB
13:1 Again the people of Isra’el did what was evil from Adonai’s perspective [If the writer had no agendum, “evil” would be sufficient.],
and Adonai handed
them over to the P’lishtim for forty years.
2 There was a man from Tzor‘ah from the family of
Dan, whose name was Manoach; his wife was barren, childless. 3 The
angel of Adonai appeared
to the woman and said to her, “Listen! You are barren, you haven’t had a child,
but you will conceive and bear a son. 4 Now, therefore, be careful not to drink
any wine or other intoxicating liquor, and don’t eat anything unclean. 5 For
indeed you will conceive and bear a son. No razor is to touch his head, because the child
will be a nazir Nazirite [consecrated] for God from
the womb. Moreover, he will
begin to rescue Isra’el from the power of the P’lishtim.” [A virgin-born messiah to
Israel? See “miraculous conception” in
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/eshet-manoah/#.]
6 The woman came and told her husband; she said, “A man of God came to me; his
face was fearsome, like
that of the angel of
God. I didn’t ask him where he came from, and he didn’t tell me his name. 7 But
he said to me, ‘Listen! You will conceive and bear a son, so now don’t drink
any wine or other intoxicating liquor, and don’t eat anything unclean, because
the child will be a nazir Nazirite [no association with “Nazarene”]
for God from the womb
until the day he dies.’” [No
mention of not cutting his hair.]
8 Then Manoach prayed to Adonai, “Please, Adonai, let the man of God you sent come
again to us and teach us what we should do for the child who will be
born.” 9 God paid attention to what Manoach said,
and the angel of God came
again to the woman as
she sat in the field, but her husband Manoach wasn’t with her. 10 The
woman hurried and ran to tell her husband, “Here! That man, the one who came to
me the other day, he’s come again!” 11 Manoach got
up, followed his wife, went to the man and said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to the woman?”
He answered, “I am.” 12 Manoach asked, “Now, when
what you said comes true, what are the guidelines for raising the child? What
should be done for him?” 13 The angel of Adonai said to Manoach, “The
woman should take care to do everything I said to her. 14 She shouldn’t eat anything that
comes from a grapevine, she shouldn’t drink wine or other intoxicating liquor,
and she shouldn’t eat anything unclean. [No mention of not cutting his hair.] She should
do everything I ordered her to do.” [The man did not accept his wife’s report of the instructions! He was
not loyal to her.]
15 Manoach said to the angel of Adonai, “Please stay with us a bit
longer, so that we can cook a young goat for you.” 16 The
angel of Adonai said
to Manoach, “Even if I do stay, I won’t eat your food; and if you prepare a burnt offering, you must
offer it to Adonai.”
For Manoach did not know that he was the angel of Adonai. 17 Manoach
said to the angel of Adonai,
“Tell us your name, so that when your words come true we can honor you.” 18 The
angel of Adonai answered
him, “Why are you asking about my name? It is wonderful beyond understanding.” 19 Manoach took the kid and the grain
offering and offered them on the rock to Adonai. Then, with Manoach and his wife
looking on, the angel did something wonderful — 20 as
the flame went up toward the sky from the altar, the angel of Adonai went
up in the flame from the altar. When Manoach and his wife saw it, they
fell to the ground on their faces. 21 But the angel
of Adonai did not
appear again to Manoach or his wife. Then Manoach realized it had been the angel of Adonai. 22 Manoach said to his wife, “We will
surely die, because we have seen God!” 23 But
his wife said to him, “If Adonai had
wanted to kill us, he wouldn’t have accepted a burnt offering and a grain
offering from us, and he wouldn’t have shown us all this or told us such things
at this time.” [Giving
such good advice, Manoach’s wife deserves a name.]
24 The woman bore a son and called him Shimshon.
The child grew, and Adonai blessed
him. 25 The Spirit of Adonai began to stir him when
he was in the Camp of Dan, between Tzor‘ah and Eshta’ol.
14:1 Shimshon
went down to Timnah, and in Timnah he saw a woman who was one of the
P’lishtim. 2 He came up and told his father and
mother, “I saw a woman in Timnah, one of the P’lishtim. Now get her for me to
be my wife.” 3 His father and mother replied,
“Isn’t there any woman from the daughters of your kinsmen or among all my
people? Must you go to the uncircumcised
[Not committed to Jah’s covenant,
and thus not of the chosen nation.] P’lishtim to find a wife?” Shimshon
said to his father, “Get her for me. I like her.” 4 His
father and mother didn’t know that all this came from Adonai, who was seeking grounds for a quarrel with the P’lishtim. (At
that time the P’lishtim were ruling Isra’el.) [Phil Beaver chooses to not follow a God so weak as to
use sexual attraction to promote enmity between nations.]
5 Shimshon
went down with his father and mother to Timnah. When they came to the vineyards
of Timnah, a young lion roared at him. 6 The Spirit Spirit [OT “Spirit” becomes NT “Holy Spirit”?]
of Adonai came powerfully
upon Shimshon, and barehanded he tore the lion to pieces as easily as if it had
been a young goat. But he
didn’t tell his father or mother what he had done. 7 Then
he went down and talked with the woman and found he still liked her.
8 Awhile
later, as he was returning to claim his bride, he turned aside to look at the
carcass of the lion and saw that there was now a swarm of bees in the body of
the lion, and honey. 9 He
scraped the honey out into his hands and went on, eating as he went; and when
he came to his father and mother, he gave them some; and they ate too. But he didn’t tell them that he had
scraped the honey out of the body of the lion [its carcass].
10 His
father went down to the woman, and there Shimshon gave a banquet — this is what the young men used to
do. 11 When the P’lishtim saw him, they provided thirty companions to
be with him. 12 Shimshon said to them, “Let
me present you with a riddle.
If you can solve it within the seven days of the banquet and tell me the
solution, I will give you thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of good
clothes. 13 But if you can’t solve it, you give me
thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of good clothes.” They answered, “Tell
us the riddle, we want to hear it.” 14 So he said
to them,
“Out of
the eater came food;
out of the strong came sweetness.”
Three
days passed, and they couldn’t solve the riddle. 15 On
the seventh day, they said to Shimshon’s wife, “Coax your husband into telling us the solution to the
riddle. Otherwise we’ll burn down your father’s house and you with it.
You two called us here to turn us into paupers, didn’t you?” 16 Shimshon’s
wife went to him in tears and said, “You don’t love me, you hate me! You told a
riddle to my fellow countrymen, and you haven’t told me the answer.” He said to
her, “Look, I haven’t even told it to my father and mother! Should I tell
you?” 17 But she had been crying throughout the
seven days of the banquet; so on the seventh day, because she had kept pressing
him, he told her the solution;
and she passed it on to her people. 18 Then,
before sundown on the seventh day, the men of the city said to him,
“What is
sweeter than honey?
and what is stronger than a lion?”
Shimshon
answered,
“If you hadn’t plowed with my young
cow,
you wouldn’t have solved my riddle now.”
19 Then the
Spirit of Adonai came
over him powerfully. He went down to Ashkelon, killed thirty of their men, took
their good clothes, and gave them to the men who had “solved” the riddle. He
was boiling with rage, so he went straight up to his father’s house, 20 and
his wife was given to the
companion who had been best man at the wedding. [A curse on his best man.] [Sampson’s rage over
his wife’s betrayal could have taught him never to reveal precious secrets with
his wife. Or, he could have learned monogamy for life after judiciously
choosing his mate. We’ll see more of the story.]
15:1 But
after a while, during the wheat-harvest season, Shimshon went to see his wife.
He brought a young goat for her and said to her father, “I want to go to my wife in her room.”
But he wouldn’t let him. 2 Her father said, “I
really thought you hated her altogether, so I gave her to your best man. But her younger sister — isn’t she even
prettier? Why not take her instead?” 3 Shimshon
said to them, “This time I’m
through with the P’lishtim! I’m going to do something terrible to them!” 4 So
Shimshon went and caught three hundred foxes. Then he took torches, tied pairs
of foxes to each other by their tails, and put a torch in the knot of every
pair of tails. 5 Then he set the torches on fire
and let the foxes loose in wheat fields of the P’lishtim. In this way he burned
up the harvested wheat along with the grain waiting to be harvested, and the
olive orchards as well. 6 The P’lishtim asked, “Who
did this?” They answered, “Shimshon the son-in-law of the man from Timnah,
because he took Shimshon’s wife and gave her to his best man.” Then the P’lishtim came up and
burned both her and her father to death. 7 Shimshon
said to them, “I will certainly have my revenge on you for doing such a thing;
but after I do, I’ll stop.” 8 Infuriated, he began killing them right and
left; it was a massacre. Then he went down and stayed in the cave at the
‘Eitam Rock.
9 The
P’lishtim went up, pitched camp in Y’hudah and attacked Lechi. 10 The
men of Y’hudah said, “Why are you attacking us?” They replied, “To arrest
Shimshon, that’s why — to treat him the way he treated us.” 11 Then
3,000 men from Y’hudah went down to the cave at the Eitam Rock and said to
Shimshon, “Don’t you know that the P’lishtim are our rulers? What are you doing
to us?” He answered, “I’ve only treated them the way they treated me.” 12 They
said to him, “We’ve come down to arrest you and hand you over to the
P’lishtim.” Shimshon replied, “Swear to me that you won’t fall on me
yourselves.” 13 They said to him, “No, but we will
tie you up and hand you over to them. However, we promise not to kill you.” So
they tied him up with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. 14 When
he got to Lechi, the P’lishtim came running and shouting at him; and the Spirit
of Adonai came on him
powerfully. The ropes on his
arms became as weak as burnt flax and fell from his arms. 15 He
found a fresh donkey jawbone, took it in his hand, and with it he struck down a
thousand men. 16 Shimshon said,
“With
the jawbone of a donkey I left heaps piled on heaps!
With the
jawbone of a donkey I killed a thousand men!”
17 After he
finished speaking he threw the jawbone away, and the place came to be called
Ramat-Lechi [jawbone heights].
18 Then he
felt very thirsty, so he called on Adonai,
saying, “You accomplished this great rescue through your servant. But am I now
to die from thirst and fall
into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19 Then
God made a gash in the crater at Lechi, and water came out. When he had drunk,
his spirit came back; and he revived. This is why the place was called
‘Ein-HaKorei [the spring of him who called], and it is there in Lechi until
now. 20 He judged Isra’el in the period of the P’lishtim for twenty years.
[It seems he was
unmarried.]
16:1 Shimshon
went to ‘Azah Gaza,
where he saw a prostitute
and went in to spend the night with her. 2 The
people in ‘Azah were told that Shimshon had come, so they surrounded the place
where he was and also set an ambush
for him all night at the city gate. Their plan was to do nothing at night, but
to wait until morning and then
kill him. 3 However, Shimshon stayed in bed
until midnight; then he got up, took hold of the doors of the city gate and the
two posts as well, pulled them up, bar and all, hoisted them on his shoulders,
and carried them up to the top of the hill overlooking Hevron.
4 After
this, he fell in love [I’m surprised this is a
biblical phrase. Also, Samson and Delila is a case of him attracted to her without
her loving him.] with a woman who lived in the Sorek Valley, whose name
was D’lilah. 5 The
chiefs of the P’lishtim went up to her and said, “Coax him into telling you
where his great strength comes from and how we can overcome him, so that we can
tie him up and subdue him. If you do, each of us will give you 1,100 pieces of silver.” 6 D’lilah
said to Shimshon, “Please tell me what it is that makes you so strong, and how
someone could tie you up and subdue you.” 7 Shimshon
replied, “If they tie me up
with seven fresh bowstrings that have never been dried, I will become as
weak as any other man.” 8 The chiefs of the
P’lishtim brought up to her seven fresh bowstrings which had not been dried,
and she tied him up with them. 9 Now she had people
lying in wait in the inside room. So she said to him, “Shimshon! The P’lishtim
have come for you!” But he
snapped the bowstrings as easily as a piece of straw breaks when it touches
fire, and the source of his strength remained unknown.
10 D’lilah
said to Shimshon, “You’re making fun of me, telling me lies. Now, come on, tell
me what it takes to tie you up.” 11 “All it takes,”
he answered, “is to tie me up
with new ropes that haven’t been used. Then I’ll become weak and be like
anyone else.” 12 So D’lilah took new ropes, tied
him up, and said to him, “Shimshon! The P’lishtim have come for you!” (The
people lying in wait were in the inside room.) But he broke the ropes from off
his arms like a thread.
13 D’lilah
said to Shimshon, “Till now you’ve been making fun of me and telling me lies.
Tell me what it takes to tie you up.” He said, “If you weave the seven locks of my hair across thread on a
loom.” 14 So she fastened her cloth work in
the loom with a pin and wove his hair in, then said to him, “Shimshon! The
P’lishtim have come for you!” He awoke from his sleep and pulled away the loom
pin and the interwoven cloth. 15 She said to him,
“How can you say you love me when your heart isn’t with me? Three times you’ve
made fun of me, and you haven’t told me the source of your great strength.”
16 Every
day she kept nagging at him and pressing at him, till it bothered him to death [surprised this old saw came
from the Bible], 17 so that he finally told
her everything. He said to her, “No razor has ever touched my head, because I
have been a nazir of God since I was born. If someone shaves me, then my
strength will leave me; and I will be like any other man.” 18 When
D’lilah saw that he had really confided in her, she sent and summoned the
chiefs of the P’lishtim with the message, “Come up this one last time, because
he has finally told me the truth.” The chiefs of the P’lishtim went up to her
and brought the money
with them. 19 She had him go to sleep in her lap
and called for a man to shave off his seven locks of hair. Then she began
tormenting him, but his strength had gone away. 20 She
said, “Shimshon! The P’lishtim have come for you!” He awoke from his sleep and
said, “I’ll get out this time, just as I shook myself loose before.” But he
didn’t know that Adonai had left him. 21 So
the P’lishtim seized him, gouged
out his eyes and took him down to ‘Azah. There they bound him with two
bronze chains and put him to
work grinding grain at the mill in the prison. 22 However,
after the hair on his
head had been cut off, it
began growing back again.
23 The
chiefs of the P’lishtim assembled
to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagon]. As
they celebrated they sang,
“Our god
has handed over to us
our enemy Shimshon.”
24 Upon
seeing him, the people praised their god:
“Our god
has handed over to us
our enemy, who destroyed our land
and killed so many of us.”
25 When
they were in high spirits they said, “Summon Shimshon to amuse us.” So they
called Shimshon out of the prison, and he amused them. When they put him
between the columns, 26 Shimshon said to the boy
holding him by the hand, “Let me feel the columns supporting the building, so
that I can lean on them.” 27 The building was full
of men and women; and all the chiefs of the P’lishtim were there; in addition
to them, there were about three thousand men and women on the roof, watching,
as Shimshon performed. 28 Shimshon
called to Adonai, “Adonai Elohim, [Lord, Sovereign Lord] just this once,
please, think of me, and please, give me strength, so that I can take revenge on the P’lishtim for at
least one of my two eyes.” 29 Shimshon got a
good hold on the two middle columns supporting the building and leaned on them,
on one with his right hand and on the other with his left. 30 Then,
crying, “Let me die with the P’lishtim!” he pushed with all his might; and the
building collapsed on the chiefs and on all the people inside. So he killed more at his death than he
had killed during his life.
31 His
brothers and all his father’s family came down, took him, brought him up and
buried him between Tzor‘ah and Eshta’ol, in the tomb of his father Manoach. He
had judged Isra’el twenty years. [Who was Manoach’s wife?]
[Perhaps the point of this
story is that Israel’s Lord, Adonai, is more powerful than the Philistines’
god, Dagon. Interestingly, one could infer from this story that knowing the
write word empowers a person to prevail. For example, if the writer had Sampson
praying to Dagon, Sampson would need to fail to affirm Adonai. I prefer
humility to The God, whatever it may be. In fact humility seems sufficient. For
conversation, I may and can express, “The God, whatever it may be”, to perceive
humility, because “The God” seems arrogant.]
[My opinion is that Genesis 1:26-28 informs humankind to flourish in goodness
rather than accommodate badness and allow evil:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our
likeness, so that
they may rule over
the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all
the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God
created mankind in his own image, in the image of
God he created them; male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, “Be
fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in
the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on
the ground.
This,
the conclusion of the first chapter of the Holy Bible informs Today that
humankind may and can rule on earth. Acceptance of this power, authority, and
responsibility is human being (verb). Human-beings pursue necessary-goodness to
actual-reality. The rest of the Bible discloses the chaos that ensues if most
individuals choose wanton behavior -- neglect the laws of physics and progeny; progeny
reaches psychology.
The
civic collective cannot rule if most fellow citizens practice/nourish badness
and allow evil. It’s a matter of personal choice: either pursue human being
(verb) or yield to evil.
Political
and religious philosopher Yeshua affirmed Genesis 1:26-28, e.g. in Matt 5:48
(be as perfect as goodness), 18:18 (don’t expect error-correction), and 19:4-6
(don’t divide/lessen goodness).
Today there are more than
8,000 religions and 45,000 Christian sects on earth. Today is time for individuals to accept the
power, the authority, and the responsibility to practice civic integrity.
“Ourselves” may either continue to leave reliable
responsibility to “our Posterity”, referring to the preamble to the US Constitution, or practice
necessary goodness.
Notes
re modern perspective:
1.
Since
monotheism is a human construct, I use “The God, whatever it may be”, to
express objection to any doctrinal God yet reserve humility.
a.
Blue highlight is to emphasize the pronoun
usages, our and we.
b.
Perhaps
the “we” infers an androgynous pair, like a married couple
c.
It
seems human choice may and can conform to the laws of physics and progeny
d.
Yet
human inspiration and motivation are driven by goodness
e.
When
goodness is uncertain, humility prevails.
2.
Scholars
understand that humankind in its present mutation is Homo sapiens (HS)
a.
Distinguished
by brains with synapses and neurons with speed and capacity to handle
exponential complexities
b. Indeed
the dominant species on earth and extensions
c. Yet HS challenged-to,
perhaps will-not, control earth as much as possible.
i.
Remarkably after 200,000 years, sexual-attraction
dominates society.
3. The rest
of the Holy Bible expresses the validity of Genesis 1:26-28: Humankind may and can rule on earth, hoping
to control it.
a. Genesis 1
predates the existence of Israel by at least 1500 years.
b. About
2000 years have passed since Yeshua lived.
c. War in
the Middle East threatens humankind’s opportunity.
d. It seems
time to pay more attention to primitive thought.]
