Samson the Old-School Terrorist

Philistines are going to starve

When my daughter was little, I wanted to tell the story of Samson to my daughter orally, as it was originally told, instead of reading it out of a “Bible story” book. To get the story right, I opened the Bible and read about Samson. Turns out that his big claim to fame is massacring Philistines, most of them civilians. 

To the Hebrews, Samson was a folk hero, someone who killed their enemies by the thousands. He killed a lot of people, most of them civilians, whose crime was that they were Philistines. Today we expect more than that from a hero. 

Here’s how Samson’s first heroic act goes. He marries a Philistine, and then he challenges thirty Philistines with a riddle, betting them “thirty sheets and thirty change of garments” that they can't solve it. When they solve his unsolvable riddle, Samson knows that his wife has given them the answer. To settle the score, he collects the sheets and garments by killing 30 Philistines...

“And the Spirit of YHWH came upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil, and gave change of garments to those who had solved the riddle.”

Later, he torches fields, slaughters Philistines, and kills a thousand with the jawbone of an ass. He dallies with a harlot in Gaza, and then falls in love with Delilah, who betrays him. He’s captured and blinded, but eventually he pulls the Philistines’ temple down around him, killing three thousand more people on his way out.

“So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.”

I never told the Samson story to my little daughter. By modern standards, this guy isn’t a hero. He’s a terrorist.

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