SAMSON (Heb. Shimshon, compare Shemegt, sun), the son of Manoah, of the tribe of Dan, for 20 years " judge" over the south-western tribes of Israel—perhaps only of Dan. It would appear, however, as if this title had only been bestowed upon him £1,4 a kind of reward for his daring and extraordinary exploits against the neighboring'Phil iatines, who at his birth held a great part of Palestine tributary. There is in the whole account of his deeds no sign of any superior authority vested in him. His history bears altogether more the general character of a popular tale, or saga, than that of a real his torical account. His whole life is surrounded by a marvelous halo from his birth to his death. To his mother, long barren (cf. Gen. xviii. 10, 1 Sam. i. 2, etc., Luke i. 7, etc.), there appeared an angel, who promised her a son on the condition that he should become a Nazarite. He is born; his mother abstaining from all strong drink and unclean food before his birth. His hair. lel't to grow to its full length, in accordance with the Naza rite rides, endows hint with a supernatural strength, which apparently increases with each manifestation. His first L.at is his tearing a lion, when on his way to ask a Phil istine woman in marriage. Retarning the same road, to celebrate his wedding, he finds a swarm of bees in the lion's carcass. and forthwith propounds a riddle, which, through his wife's treachery, costs 30 Philistiubs their lives. We need not here recapitulate the many similar exploits composing his well-known career, which he ended by pulling down the house upon himself and his enemies the Philistines, so that "the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life." It has been matter of most contradictory speculations, how far his existence is to be taken as a reality, or, in other words, what substratum of historical truth there may be in this supposed circle of popular legends, artistically rounded off, in the four chap ters of Judges (xiii.–xvi.) which treat of him. To begin with, difficulties are raised respecting the time in which he is said to have lived. While sonic hold hint to lie a con temporary of Eli and Samuel, others see in Eli his successor; others again suppose an interregnum between him and Eli. Next comes the question how he, a Nazarite, could cat honey out of the lion's carcass—a fact, by the way, entirely ignored by Josephus. The miraculous deeds he performed have taxed the ingenuity of many commentators, and the text has been twisted and turned in all directions, to explain "rationally" his slaying those prodigious numbers single-handed; his carrying. the gates of Gaza, in one
night, a distance of about 50 m., the probable distance from liebron to Gaza, and some have indeed assumed that he did not carry them there all at once, but piecemeal. But the principal difficulty seemed to lie in the well that sprung out of the jaw-bone, and the early Jewish interpreters (Targum, Josephus) take the word Lehi to be the name of a place; a notion countenanced, so far, by Gesenius, as he allows that it might have been "derived etymologically from this myth." The close parallel between the deeds of Samson and those of Hercules has caused some to identify the two heroes; yet whose might be the priority, is matter of contest between the different schools of biblical criticism. It is not necessary to enlarge upon this point. It is well known how Hercules slays the Nemean lion,; another formidable lion at the mount of Cithicron; how he catches the stag of Diana and the Cretan bull; how he is kept prisoner in Egypt; how he comes to his death by the agency of a woman; not to mention the extraordinary circumstances of his birth, and the like. See IIERGU LES. This once popular notion, however, of seeing nothing more in Samson than tile Tyrian sun-god Hercules (Baal-Shemesh, "Lord of the Sun;' Baal-Chamon, "Lord of the Heat," etc.), and the attempt to explain the various "myths" accordingly, is not countenanced by most modern critics. However embellished and overladen with legends, they say, the account in the Book of.Judges may be, there is hardly any doubt as to the real existence of a man Samson, of extraordinary prowess, who turned his whole might and strength against the hereditary enemies of his people, whose land bordered on that of the tribe to which he belonged; who, with all his blemishes, was possessed by a noble, self-sacrificing patriotism, and never for one moment forgot the chief end and aim of his life, viz., to free his people from foreign yoke. Altogether, he is too human ever to have been an allegory or a parable, the moral of which would, indeed, hardly be per ceptiae, or to have, as some have conjectured, "been intended through his whole career to be a living mockery of the Philistine Hercules."