Commentaria in Judices
20. AND WHEN THE FLAME OF THE ALTAR (drawn by the Angel from the rock, which was here in place of an altar, by the touch of the staff or rod which he held in his hand, to burn the holocaust) WENT UP TOWARDS HEAVEN, THE ANGEL OF THE LORD ASCENDED ALSO IN THE FLAME,—to show himself not a man or Prophet but an Angel, and therefore returning unhurt by the flame into heaven whence he had come, and to represent mystically Christ, who, immolating himself on the altar of the cross by the flame both of love and of grief, was to rise on the third day from death, and on the fortieth day to ascend gloriously into heaven. So St. Augustine. Again, because he himself in the sacrifice of the Eucharist, by the flame of charity, was to be immolated unceasingly and without blood and eaten under the species of bread and wine, but so that, the species being consumed in the stomach, he himself living and unhurt vanishes, and as it were ascends to heaven. Hence St. Andrew the Apostle to the tyrant Aegeas: “I,” he says, “daily immolate to the almighty God, who is one and true, not the flesh of bulls, nor the blood of goats, but the immaculate Lamb on the altar, whose flesh after all the people of believers have eaten, the Lamb who was sacrificed remains whole and living.”
22. WE SHALL SURELY DIE, BECAUSE WE HAVE SEEN GOD,—that is the Angel of the Lord, as has gone before; for the Angel represented the Lord, as an ambassador represents the prince by whom he is sent; they saw God, therefore, in the Angel, or certainly thought the Angel to be God, says St. Augustine. For the Hebrew Elohim signifies both Angel and God. Moreover, in that age the common feeling and fear of men (though empty and vain) was that whoever had seen God or an Angel would at once die, for the reasons which I recounted chap. vi.
24. AND SHE CALLED HIS NAME SAMSON.—“She called,” namely the mother in bearing, as is plain from the Hebrew, but inspired by God; for that this name was given to Samson by God St. Chrysostom teaches, homily 18 on John. Samson in Hebrew is the same as Sun of joy, shemes, that is sun, and sason, that is joy, gladness; or rather Samson, that is little sun, a sunlet, a sunling. For it is a diminutive name from Shemes, that is sun, as from ish, that is man, is formed the diminutive ishon, that is a little man, and from sabbat, sabbathon, that is a little sabbath, that is a small sabbath. She called her son, therefore, Samson, that is a little sun, that by this name as by an omen she might indicate what he would be, as if to say: God has made a new sun to rise on Israel, set in the darkness of mourning and grief on account of the servitude and oppression of the Philistines, namely Samson, who by his virtue and fortitude may dispel this darkness, and pour over and refresh us with the new light of liberty, gladness and happiness. Hence Samson was a type of Christ, who is the sun of justice, according to Zacharias: “The Orient from on high hath visited us, to enlighten them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,” Luke i. And Malach. iv, 2: “But unto you that fear my name the sun of justice shall arise, and health in his wings.” And “The people that sat in darkness have seen a great light; and to them that sat in the region of the shadow of death light is sprung up.” So St. Augustine, Bede, Arias, Serarius and others. Moreover Arias says: Samson is the same as a sun overthrowing, wasting and ravaging, namely the Philistines; for shamam is to overthrow, to ravage. Finally the Talmudists in Sota, chap. i, assert that Samson was named by God, since in Ps. lxxxiii, 12, he is called shemes and magen, that is sun and shield. For it is clear that Samson also in his generation and his time was a shield to Israel.
So Cyrus was the sun of Persia, as I showed on Isaias xli, 2. And it seemed to the mother of St. Columban that she bore a sun, when she was pregnant with him.
In Chaldee, however, Samson is the same as ministry or minister, namely of God, for accomplishing great and wonderful works: for shamash is to minister, says Pagninus.
AND THE LORD BLESSED HIM,—heaping upon him his goods and gifts, and especially endowing him with heroic fortitude of mind and body, that he might daily grow in it to rout the Philistines.
25. AND THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD BEGAN TO BE WITH HIM IN THE place which afterwards, chap. xvi, verse 31, from the event was called the camp of Dan, and was situated between Saraa and Esthaol; for the Hebrews then had no camps, being oppressed by the Philistines. The Hebrew is, the spirit of God began lephaamo, that is, to move him by turns, to rouse and impel him, namely to dare and undertake arduous things. Hence afterwards, as often as Samson is narrated to undertake anything extraordinary, it is premised: “The Spirit of the Lord came upon Samson.” Hence St. Ambrose notes on that of Luke i, 17, that these two, namely spirit and virtue or fortitude, are always joined. For all fortitude, both in doing and undertaking arduous things and in suffering hard ones, is from the spirit, which the Holy Ghost breathes into us. He is therefore to be invoked by us assiduously. So John the Baptist is said to have had the spirit and power of Elias; and Gabriel said to the Blessed Virgin: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee,” Luke i; and Christ says to the Apostles, Acts i: “You shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you.” Where you see that power is always joined and attributed to the Holy Ghost. Wherefore the Septuagint in this place render: the spirit began to go forth with him, to accompany him, and as a tutor to lead him on, and to stimulate him to heroic acts. The Chaldee: The spirit of fortitude from the Lord abode to strengthen him. R. Radacius: “Prophecy began to come to him for the first time.” The same again thus: “The spirit of prophecy began to strike him, and as it were to make a tinkling to him, as though a little bell were before him.” Cajetan: “The spirit began to move him by some sensible sign, of what kind however is not written.” Arias: “The spirit of the Lord began to impel him, so that, perhaps mindful of happier times and weary of the present, with his mind divinely roused he began to think of the correction and restoration of Israelite affairs, and of the damage and overthrow of the enemies.”
Finally hear St. Ambrose, epistle 24 to Vigilius: “When the breasts of the Hebrews were so depressed by the long injury of prolonged subjection that no one of manly spirit dared to raise their minds to liberty, there arose for them Samson, predestined by divine oracle, a great man, not to be counted among many, but most excellent among few, and, which is beyond all controversy, in bodily strength easily the first of all; and to be regarded by us from the beginning with immense admiration, not for those distinguished marks of temperance which he gave, abstaining from wine even from boyhood, nor for those which he long kept with sacred care as a Nazarite with unshorn head; but from adolescence, an age softer in others, in him excellent and beyond the human measure, he wrought the stupendous deeds of perfect virtue, by which he soon opened the credit of the divine oracle, which so great a grace had not gone before him perfunctorily, that there should descend an Angel, by whom his birth beyond hope was announced to his parents, the future government and protection of his people. For they had now long been afflicted by the grievous rule of the Palestines.” And at the beginning of the book On the Holy Spirit: “Samson, begotten by divine promise, had the Spirit as a companion. For so we read: Because the Lord blessed him, and the Spirit of the Lord began to accompany him in the camp.” So Augustine, sermon 407 On the Time: “Where was that most powerful strength but in this which Scripture said: The Spirit of the Lord went with him. That strength belonged to the Spirit of the Lord. In Samson was the vessel. In the Spirit was the fullness. A vessel can be filled and emptied.”
Moreover Samson, says Eusebius in the Chronicle, did like or the same things as Hercules, indeed the Hercules of the Gentiles was none other than the Samson of the Hebrews, as our Gaspar Sanchez teaches on the Minor Prophets, p. 808, and the fables of the heroic deeds of Hercules were taken from the history of Samson, of which more chap. xvi, at the end.
BETWEEN SARAA AND ESTHAOL.—R. Asein, tractate Sotah, chap. i, asserts that these two are great mountains, which Samson tore up and ground with his hands like a mill; but these are ridiculous fictions of the Rabbi: for these are two border cities (not mountains), which divide the tribe of Dan from the tribe of Juda, and between them Samson was born and buried.
Moreover Saara in Hebrew is the same as leprosy. Esthaol the same as asked for, or fire, or of folly, says Pagninus in the Hebrew Names.