Commentaria in Judices
ON HIS SHOULDERS.—R. Simeon Hacchasid in Sota chap. x, fol. 10, thinks that Samson’s shoulders were so broad that one was sixty cubits distant from the other; wherefore he was a giant. But all refute both. For Samson’s strength was not lodged in the giant mass of his body, but in his hair.
4. AFTER THIS HE LOVED A WOMAN WHO DWELT IN THE VALLEY OF SOREC (where there were vines and most excellent grapes and wines), AND SHE WAS CALLED DALILA.
You ask, whether she was Samson’s wife, or a concubine and harlot? That she was his wife St. Chrysostom thinks, homily 17 from various places in Matthew: “This so great and such a man, in beauty, truth and holiness,” he says, “his wife, deceiving as an enemy, bound and delivered to the Philistines.” And afterwards: “Treacherously she crept into her husband’s inmost heart.” And St. Ephrem, sermon Against wicked women, tom. I: “A man of so great holiness, beauty and strength his own woman threw down, and like an enemy delivered bound into the hands of foreigners, and him whom neither lions nor foreigners could resist his own wife cast down.”
Abbot Joseph thinks the same in Cassian, Conference XVII, xx, and some Rabbis, and St. Prosper, book On Promises xxi, and Pererius on Gen. xxxi, disp. 4.
But others commonly think that Dalila was not Samson’s wife, but a concubine, both because she hid the Philistines who were to take Samson in her house without Samson’s knowledge: for if he had been her husband, the whole house would have lain open to him, nor could anyone have been hidden in it without his knowledge; and because if he had been Dalila’s husband, he would have taken her into his own house, and not turned aside to her house; and would have had kinsfolk, servants and maids, who would have discovered to him the wiles of Dalila, as also the Philistines hidden by her in the house.
Hence Josephus calls Dalila a harlot, as does St. Ambrose, epist. 70, St. Jerome, epist. 126 to Evagrius, Abulensis, Question VII, Serarius and others, who for the same reasons maintain that Dalila was a Philistine, not a Jewess.
Hence she is aptly called in Hebrew Dalila, that is poverty, thinness, weakness, exhaustion, says Pagninus in the Hebrew Names, because such a harlot usually is; and because she “weakened and enfeebled” the strength both of others and “of Samson,” says Elias in the Thisbite. Truly the Comic poet in the Truculentus: “Not every age,” he says, “is enough for a lover to learn thoroughly, while he is learning it, in how many ways he perishes, with how many examples he is mocked, and by how many entreaties he is entreated. So thou art disciplined in the houses of procurers. Before thou hast given one thing, she prepares to ask a hundred.” And truly in the same place Geta: “A harlot,” he says, “I think is like the sea, which swallows what you give and never overflows. A harlot by her blandishment brought my wretched master into poverty, deprived him of goods, light, honour.” See here how pernicious a woman is. What is stronger than Samson? What holier than David? What wiser than Solomon? And yet a woman ruined these men, as Eve ruined Adam and all his posterity. So St. Chrysostom, homily 17 from various places on Matthew, and St. Ephrem, sermon Against wicked women. Hear St. Jerome, epist. 22 to Eustochium: “Samson, stronger than a lion and harder than a rock, who alone and naked pursued a thousand armed men,” he says, “strong and mighty, strangled a lion; but could not strangle his own love; he loosed the bonds of enemies; but did not loose the knots of his own desires. He burned other men’s harvests; and himself set on fire by the spark of one woman, lost the harvest of his own virtue.”
Finally Dalila, betraying Samson by his hair, was a type of Judas betraying Christ by a kiss, as the Fathers teach.
5. WE WILL GIVE THEE EVERY ONE OF US ELEVEN HUNDRED PIECES OF SILVER.—A piece of silver, supply shekel, was a Brabant florin containing four Spanish reals, or four Roman julios; eleven hundred pieces of silver therefore make as many Brabant florins. Multiply these by five (for there were five Satrapies, and Satraps or Princes of the Philistines, namely Accaron, Ascalon, Azotus, Gaza and Geth), and you will have five thousand five hundred Brabant florins, for which Dalila sold Samson.
7. IF I SHOULD BE BOUND WITH SEVEN CORDS OF SINEWS,—that is, with cords made and twisted of the sinews of oxen, bulls, or other animals. For the Hebrew yether signifies both sinew and cord. Pagninus here renders rods; Arias, withes; Josephus, vine shoots; the Septuagint, Chaldee and others, cords. Samson lies, to deceive Dalila and put her off from him, lest he reveal to her the secret of his strength.
9. AND HE BROKE THE BANDS, AS IF A MAN SHOULD BREAK A THREAD OF TOW TWISTED WITH SPITTLE,—that is, from the refuse of tow, which is wont to be cleaned out and thrown away, that is a most vile and weakest thread; for refuse is everything that is shaken off and cast away, not only from nuts but from other things also, says Nonius. Abulensis and Lyranus for putamine read sputamine, that is spittle, namely a spitted thread: for those who spin and twist cords often spit on the tow, that they may the more easily draw and twist it.
16. HIS SOUL FAINTED AWAY, AND WAS WEARIED EVEN UNTO DEATH,—that is, he was reduced to the greatest anguish and straits of mind, so that he almost preferred death to that most intense struggle and importunity with his Dalila; so the demon and the flesh conquer many by the continuance and length of temptation, who at first resisted it most strongly: for gradually by this duration the mind languishes with the strength and is enervated, and at last allows itself to be conquered, yields and succumbs, unless the help of God, assiduously implored, be present, and give constancy to man.
17. IF MY HEAD BE SHAVEN, MY STRENGTH WILL DEPART FROM ME.—Hence it is plain that this wonderful strength, surpassing the powers of nature, was a quality supernaturally bestowed on Samson, but with a pact connected with the hair; namely if he persevered in being a Nazarite and did not cut his hair, but continually nourished it. Hence because he by his own fault, by disclosing to his enemy and betrayer Dalila the cause of his strength, lost his hair by a stealthy shaving, therefore God withdrew this strength from him; he would not have withdrawn it if he had lost it without fault, by baldness, or other disease, or fire, or other accident, or violence inflicted, as Abulensis rightly observes, and the Author of On the Wonders of Holy Scripture in St. Augustine, book II, chap. vi: “The observance of the Lord’s commandment,” he says, “preserved the gift of strength.” This gift, then, was a quality not transient but permanent as long as he remained a Nazarite and crowned with his hair, not that the hair caused this strength, nor that this strength consisted in the hair (for it was lodged in the arms, sinews and the whole body, and more in the mind); but that the preservation of the hair was the condition and sign of the Nazariteship, and the keeping of the divine pact, and therefore the moral cause of this strength by God’s ordinance. When it is said, therefore, as Samson undertakes some heroic work: “The Spirit of the Lord came upon him,” it does not signify that this strength was not permanent in him, and given at each act; but it indicates a new instinct of God, and that new spirits to contrive this or that were sent into him by God. For spirit denotes inspiration, instinct, courage and impulse to dare something.
So St. Paulinus, epist. 4 to Severus, and St. Ambrose, book II On the Holy Spirit, in the preface, whom hear: “It is not so that we should think so great a power in bodily hairs. There are indeed hairs of religion and faith: the hairs of the Nazarite in the law, perfected in the sparing of wine, and consecrated by abstinence; by which she, in type of the Church, who had poured oil on the Lord’s feet, wiped the steps of the heavenly word. For then she knew Christ also according to the flesh. These are the hairs of which it is said: Thy hair is as flocks of goats; sprouting from that head of which it was said: The head of the man is Christ. And elsewhere: His head is gold of Caphas, and his locks as branches of palm trees, black as a raven.”