Samson (biblical figure) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia http://www.britannica.com/print/topic/520746?

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Samson
Samson, Hebrew Shimshon, Israelite hero portrayed in an epic narrative
in the Bible (Judges 13–16). He was a Nazirite and a legendary warrior
whose incredible exploits hint at the weight of Philistine pressure on Israel
during much of the early, tribal period of Israel in Canaan (1200–1000 BCE).
The Book of Judges ranks him with other divinely inspired warriors who
delivered the community to establish themselves as its judges.
The biblical narrative, only alluding to Samson’s “twenty years” activity as
a judge, presents a few episodes, principally concerned with the
beginning and the end of his activity. Before his birth his parents,
peasants of the tribe of Dan at Zorah, near Jerusalem, learned through a
theophany (manifestation of a divinity) that he was to be dedicated to the
life of a Nazirite—i.e., one set aside for God by a vow to abstain from
strong drink, from shaving or cutting the hair, and from contact with a
dead body.
Samson possessed extraordinary physical strength, and the moral of his
saga relates the disastrous loss of his power to the violation of his Nazirite
vow. Credited with remarkable exploits—e.g., the slaying of a lion and
moving the gates of Gaza—he first broke his religious promises by
feasting with a woman from the neighbouring town of Timnah, who was
also a Philistine, one of Israel’s mortal enemies. Other remarkable deeds
follow. For example, he decimated the Philistines in a private war. On
another occasion he repulsed their assault on him at Gaza, where he had
gone to visit a harlot. He finally fell victim to his foes through love of
Samson demolishing the temple of the god Dagon, 19th-century Delilah, a woman of the valley of Sorek, who beguiled him into revealing
chromolithograph.
the secret of his strength: his long Nazirite hair. As he slept, Delilah had
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his hair cut and betrayed him. He was captured, blinded, and enslaved by
the Philistines, but in the end he was granted his
revenge; through the return of his old strength, he
demolished the great Philistine temple of the god
Dagon, at Gaza, destroying his captors and himself
(Judges 16:4–30).
With his life revolving around his relations with Philistine
women, Samson is depicted in the Book of Judges as
being ruled by passion, which, although the cause of his
downfall, nevertheless provided the means (in his
frenzied force) with which he struggled for the
vindication of Israel’s God, Yahweh. His death in the
temple is presented not as suicidal but, according to the
general interpretation of biblical scholars, as a return to
the original mission (as “judge” and Nazirite) that he had
temporarily abandoned.
The cycle of the Samson stories is regarded by most
liberal critics, and even by some Jewish interpreters in
the Talmudic period (from the 1st century CE), as
legendary or epical. More conservative exegetes, while
admitting the unlikeliness of the events and the
folkloristic style of the text, nevertheless claim to
identify a core of historical truth in the saga, albeit
embellished by popular imagination and augmented in
rabbinical literature. Samson, accordingly, was taken by
Standing dish depicting Samson crushing the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass,
enamel on copper by Pierre Courteys, c. 1580; in the Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, the editor of Judges as illustrating his general thesis
Ohio. —that, when the Israelites were unfaithful to Yahweh,
Photograph by Jenny O’Donnell. Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio, Taft collection 1931.299 they were oppressed and, when they appealed to him,
they were liberated.

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