Samson, born of a miracle, destined to save his people from the Phillistines, grows up to be a superhero and will end up as a tragic legend. But before he gets there he will stumble through some of the most peculiar adventures in the entire Bible - most of them related to women, wine and wars. Is this story a warning tale for Jewish men, advising them to stay away from Gentile women? Is it leftover from ancient local lore about giants and their super strength? Scholars ponder, and Martin Buber, for instance, famously declared that the Samson saga is “entirely different in species" from all other Biblical texts.
In today’s chapter Samson shows up as in many guises - he’s a man in love with a foreign woman, a troublesome son, a party joker, and a ferocious killer.
And at the heart of this chapter is the riddle that in many ways defines his identity. It is also the only riddle in the Bible.
The story starts, as so many do, with love. Samson sees a woman from Timna, down the road but on the other side of the tracks. We don’t know her name - yes, another nameless biblical woman - but she is identified as a beautiful Phillstine - the people who now occupy Israel, with superior weapons made of iron, and advanced culture imported from the Aegean islands. Samson defies his parents' plea for him to choose one of their own as a bride and drags them along to meet the woman he wants to marry.
On their way there a curious incident occurs - a young lion attacks him but Samson kills it with his bare hands, leaving the carcass in the vineyard. Somehow, his parents are on a different path - and he doesn’t tell anybody about it, not even them. It becomes his secret. (The scene has had many depictions, such as this snippet from the 1949 Hollywood hit Samson and Delilah.)
Some time later he heads back to Timna for a second date - intending to marry this girl, when he takes a detour to see if the lion’s corpse is still there. This was, after all, his first - if secret - superpower moment of triumph. He finds the lion’s decomposing body full of honey: Bees have built a beehive inside its ribs. Samson licks the honey, brings some to his parents, and then proceeds to Timna to marry the girl.
At the wedding feast, held with thirty of his Philistine buddies, he asks them the famous riddle, offering a dare - if they solve it he will procure expensive outfits for the whole group. But if they don’t solve it - they’ll have to pay up:
וַיֹּ֣אמֶר לָהֶ֗ם מֵהָֽאֹכֵל֙ יָצָ֣א מַאֲכָ֔ל וּמֵעַ֖ז יָצָ֣א מָת֑וֹק וְלֹ֥א יָכְל֛וּ לְהַגִּ֥יד הַחִידָ֖ה שְׁלֹ֥שֶׁת יָמִֽים׃
So he asked them:
“Out of the eater came something to eat,
Out of the strong came something sweet.”
For three days they could not answer the riddle.
What’s this riddle all about? Spoiler ahead:
David Grossman, in his book Lion's Honey, understands that in order to crack the riddle and its purpose in this narrative we have to go back to the moment in which Samson discovers the lion-beehive, before he brings it back to his parents:
“He looks at the lion and the honey pooling inside it. Certainly he is strongly affected: after all, this image will figure in the riddle he will soon pose at his wedding party. He sees the extraordinary scene that he himself created: it was he who killed the lion. Because of him the bees built their hive there and made the sweet honey that now fills his mouth … and as his senses blend one into the other, is it not probable that he becomes spontaneously excited over something that is a powerful sight, oddly beautiful, utterly unique, and that also radiates a sense of deep, hidden, symbolic meaning? ..How to define such a moment? We cautiously add that this is also the moment at which Samson, the consummate strongman, suddenly discovers the way in which an artist looks at the world. And if it seems peculiar, at this stage of the story, to describe Samson as an artist, it is from this moment onward, from his encounter with the lion’s honey, that he will display a clear tendency to mould reality – whatever reality he may come in contact with – and stamp it with his own unique signature, and, one might add, his style. ..The riddle makes concrete what he never knew how to put into words, what he always yearned to explain to his parents: that they should understand that he – despite the destiny that was decreed in the womb, which cut him off from them and appropriated his life for some hidden divine purpose, and notwithstanding his huge muscles and incomparable strength – he still very much needs their understanding, their love, their repeated approval.
‘Here, look,’ he is saying in effect to them, as they suckle his fingers, ‘look what I have inside, under all these muscles, muscles like a lion’s, and under this mane I am forbidden to cut; and under this mission, too, which has been imposed upon me, this regal fate to which I have been sentenced. Look inside me. Just once, look deep inside me, and you will finally see that “out of the strong came something sweet”.”
Grossman’s moving analysis of why this riddle is part of this narrative takes us deeper into the meaning of Samson - the hero of Israel whose path is full of transgression and exploits that blur the boundaries between behaviors that are loved and loathed, in ways similar to his obsession with women who are not of his tribe. Two more will show up in this story - this first anonymous wife will meet a tragic end.
But not yet - first, at the feast, the riddle ripples, and for the next days his friends try to crack it. They can’t of course, as it is so personal and based on his own concealed history. So they convince his wife to seduce the secret out of him, which, finally, she is able to do. He gets made, leaves her, and goes back to his parents home, maybe with some honey in hand.
The riddle becomes for Samson, and for us, the readers, a symbol of his life. But it doesn’t stop there - how does Samson, the sweet craving boy inside the wild lion represent the nation of Israel?
The story, sweet, bitter, riddled with questions, continues in the next chapters.
TODAY! Judith meets Judges! How does the lesser known heroine of Hanukkah echo the bloody tales of this book? Find out at our next free and open zoom conversation on December 15th 1-2pm ET. Join Rabbi Amichai to explore further what the Book of Judges has to teach us today about leadership and loyalty, faith and fanatics, history and myth - just in time for the winter holiday season.
Bring your questions from previous chapters!
Link here:
https://labshul.org/event/929-below-the-bible-belt-monthly-wrap-up-with-rabbi-amichai-4/
Below the Bible Belt: 929 chapters, 42 months, daily reflections: Join Rabbi Amichai’s 3+ years interactive online quest to question, queer + re-read between the lines of the entire Hebrew Bible, with daily reflections, weekly videos and monthly learning sessions. January 2022-July 2025
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