A STORM OVER BLOSSOMS
INTERLUDE 2
BLIND SAMSON
(Adapted from Judges 13-16)
Blind Samson can hear the
laughter of the crowd as he is led from prison. His hands are bound - the hands
that had torn apart a young lion; the hands that had caught and set alight
three hundred foxes; the hands that had killed thousands of men with the
jawbone of a donkey; the hands that had touched Delilah’s warm skin. He cannot
find it in himself to hate her for her many quiet betrayals: for sharing his
secret with her countrypeople, for holding his head in her lap while its seven
locks were shaved, for watching impassively while they gouged out his eyes. His
blood dries on his cheeks, and is a salty, metallic tang in his mouth. He is
too tired, too hopeless, too much of a failure to wish a personal revenge on
her.
Out of the crowd, when he
is seen, a single voice is raised in a cry: “Let Samson entertain us! Make him
entertain us before he is sacrificed to our god, to great Dagon, who has
delivered the ravager of our country into our hands.”
Others are joined to it,
clamouring for the same request to be granted, demanding that he entertain
them. He does not care. He will do what they wish. He will sing for them. He
will tell them riddles. He will dance for them like a slave-girl.
“Make him stand between
those pillars,” a person shouts from the crowd, “Make him stand where we all
can see him.”
A strong hand closes
around his wrist, and blind Samson feels himself being dragged up the steps of
a house. He stumbles, he trips, but he does not fall. He is spared that little
humiliation at least. With a final tug from his attendant, he is standing on
the top step in front of all the mocking Philistines, the laughing lords and
ladies, the priests sharpening their blades for the sacrifice. And peace passes
over him, like a cool river, and he knows what he needs to do. For the first
time, his path is clear. His life has been a failure, but his death can be
different.
His voice dry as dust, he
rasps to his attendant, “Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, so
that I may lean against them.”
He can almost feel the
attendant shrug, unable to see the harm in granting such a small request. One
hand and then the other is placed against cool, rounded stone.
Lifting his blind eyes to
heaven, Samson calls on the Lord whom he has never served as well as he should,
whom he betrayed in wine and honey: “Lord God, remember me and strengthen me
only this once, O God, so that with this one act of revenge I may pay back the
Philistines for my two eyes.”
His hands tighten around
the curved surface, now warmed by his skin. He leans his weight against them,
and pushes with all his strength.
In an anguished whisper, “Lord
God, let me die with the Philistines.”
He strains with all his
might, and feels the stone pillars begin to crumble beneath his hands. The
house begins to tremble, as the supporting pillars give way beneath his
pressure. Around him, he can hear people begin to scream warnings to the
hundreds inside and the thousands on the rooftop, but it is too late. It is all
too late. In a rush of stone and dust and people, the house collapses on
Samson.
He judged Israel for only
twenty years.
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Obviously, I’ve made very passing references to a
number of events in Samson’s biography, because I wanted to focus on the final
moment. If you’re curious about the details or if you simply want a fascinating
story to pass the time, I really do recommend reading Judges 13-16. The Bible
is full of these amazing, rich stories, and the tale of Samson is one of the
most powerful. As my own pastor says, we can get so caught up in meanings and
moral teachings that we forget what genuinely good storytelling is in the
Bible. Not the former aspects are unimportant, of course!
As to the Dagon part, I would never presume to
include anything in a retelling of a Biblical story that was not there
originally. Judges 16:23 reads:
Now the lords of the
Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon, and to
rejoice; for they said, “Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hand.”