SAMSON (sAm'son), shim-shone', little sun, The name of the celebrated champion, deliverer, and judge of Israel, equally remarkable for his supernatural bodily prowess, his moral infirmi ties, and his tragical end. He was the son of Manoah, of the tribe of Dan, and born A. M. 2848, of a mother whose name is nowhere given in the Scriptures. The circumstances under which his birth was announced by a heavenly messenger gave distinct presage of an extraordinary char acter, whose endowments were to be of a na ture suited to the providential exigencies in which he was raised up. The burden of the oracle to his mother, who had been long barren, was that the child with which she was pregnant was to be a son, who should be a Nazarite from his birth, upon whose head no razor was to come, and who was to prove a signal deliverer to his people. She was directed, accordingly, to con form her own regimen to the tenor of the Nazar ite law, and strictly abstain from wine and all in toxicating liquor, and from every species of im pure food. (See NAZARITE.) According to the 'prophecy going before upon him,' Samson was born in the following year, and his destination to great achievements began to evince itself at a very early age by the exhibitions of superhuman strength which came from time to time upon him. Those specimens of extraordinary prowess, of which the slaying of the lion at Timnath without weapons was one, were doubtless the result of that special influence of the Most High which is referred to in Judg. xiii :25.
As the position of the tribe of Dan, bordering upon the territory of the Philistines, exposed them especially to the predatory incursions of this people, it was plainly the design of heaven to raise up a deliverer in that region where he was most needed. The Philistines, therefore, became very naturally the objects of that retributive course of proceedings in which Samson was to be the prin cipal actor, and upon which he could only enter by seeking some occasion of exciting hostilities that would bring the two peoples into direct col lision.
(1) Marries a Philistine. Such an occasion was afforded by his nieeting with one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnath, whom he besought his parents to procure for him in mar riage, assigning as a reason that she 'pleased him well,' Hebrew, She is right in mine eyes, where the original for right is not an adjective, having the sense of beautiful, engaging, attractive, but a verb, conveying, indeed, the idea of right, but of right relative to an end, purpose, or object; in other words, of fitness or adaptation (see Gousset's Lexicon, under Samson, and comp. 2 Sam. xvii : ; t Kings ix :12 ; Num. xxviii :27). This affords, we believe, the true clue to Samson's meaning, when he says, 'She is right in mine eyes;' i. e. adapted to the end which I have in view ; she may be used; she is available, for a purpose entirely ulterior to the immediate connection which I propose. That he entertained a genuine affection for the woman, notwithstanding the policy by which he was prompted, we may doubtless admit ; but that he intended. at the same time, to make this alliance subservient to the great purpose of delivering his country from oppression, and that in this he was acting under the secret control of Providence. would seem to be clear from the words immedi ately following, when, in reference to the objec tion of his parents to such a union, it is said, that they 'knew not that it was of the Lord that he sought an occasion against the Philistines.' It is here worthy of note that the Hebrew, instead of 'against the Philistines', has 'of or from the Phil istines,' clearly implying that the occasion sought should be one that originat•d on the side of the Philistines. This occasion he sought under the immediate prompting of the Most High, who saw tit, in this indirect manner, to bring about the accomplishment of his designs of retribution on his enemies. His leading purpose in this seems to have been to baffle the power of the whole Phil istine nation by the prowess of a single individual.