Samson (Hastings' Dictionary)

i. The Dame. IL The narrativa. UL The sources. iv. The historical hack(rround. V. Historical importance. vi. Sijfnificance lor the history of rellcrion. vii. 8iirni8cance for the history of civilization, viii. Mytbolojfical traces. Literature. L The Name. — The pronunciation Samson is derived from the Vulgate, which follows the LXX Vo/i^iii', using a vowel older than the { of the Heb. |Wct;> H/nnuihun. The name is not to be derived from po, or cc», or a-v ' serve ' (cf.

Moore on Jg 13*), but is formed from a-:;' ' sun ' bj' means of the denominating ending ['i ; a diminutive sense = ' little sun' (cf. the Arab, name Shumnis in Niildeke, ZDMG xl. p. lOG) is less probable than a derivation with the sense ' sunny, ' sun's man ' (cf. Ges., Kautzsch, Gram.^ § 86f. g.) It is natural to think of the Danite city Betiisiieme.sh, which was not far from Samson's birthplace. The name SanLson is cimlincd in the OT to the judge (but cf. •e'v' Shim.

i/iai, Ezr 4"'- "•'^), and is found nowhere but in Jg 13-16, which have him for • Oonstantine Porphyr. (I"- p. 41, Bonn ed.), Eustathlus, and Strabo (pp. 'UO, 457) say ttiat £«^u».' meant 'hill'; and the name waa comiuoo in tbe Greek world. 378 SAilSON SAMSON their subject (the Syr. and LXX Luc. wrongly introduce him in 1 S 1'2")- The same thing is true of the name of his father Manoa^ (oi3?

' rest,' 'resting-place'), J" 13™- 16^'; but after the Captivity the inhabitants of Zor'ah, Samson's native towti, are called (1 Ch '2^^'^) Manahe- THITES ("Bnj;), a circumstance which luight imply that Manoah was the heros eponymos of a Danite clan, and was only afterwards assigned as father to the judge Samson (cf. the case of Jefhtuah in Jg U'). ii. The Narrative.— Ch. 13.

The barren wife of the Danite Manoali of Zor'ah haa a vision of the auj;el of Jahweh in tlie torni of a man, who pro- mises to her a son who from his mother's womb is to be a ' consecrated one ' to God (D'.iSx Tn, see Nazirite), and who is to make a commencement of freeing the people from the Philistine .yoke. Therefore his motiier is to abstain from all intoxicatiuf hquors and guard against everything that defiles; no razor is to come upon the head of the child.

At Manoah's prayer the angel appears a second time, and repeats his instruc- tions. Only after he ascen'is in the flame of the offering pre- sented to Jahweh and disappears, do Manoa^ and his wife recognize who had been their guest. The boy, when bom, is Darned Samson, and grows up under the blessing of Jahweh. Ch. 14. Arrived at manhood, Samson, not without opposition from his parents, makes choice of a Philistine girl at Timnah to be his wife.

On his way there he kills a lion, and on his return journey eats of the honey which he finds in the carcase. At the wedding feast he makes this the subject of a riddle for the young men, and, when his young wife coaxes him into telling her the solution and betra}^ it to them, ho leaves her in ill humour. Ch. 15. Having recovered himself, Samson will visit his wife in her parents' house, but finds that she has been given by her father to another.

In revenge he destroys the ripe harvest fields of the Philistines by foxes with burning brands. The Philis- tines retaliate by burning his wife and all her house, an act which Samson again avenges by slaughtering many of them (vv.1-8). Having made his escape to the territory 'of Judah, which, however, owned the Philistine suzerainty, he allows himself, on their menaces, to be handed over by the inhabitants bound, but bursts his bonds and slays a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.

The wearied Samson is re\'ived by Jahweh by means of a spring flowing from the jawbone (VT.9-19). Ch. 16. While Samson is visiting a harlot at Gaza he is betrayed, and his enemies think to seize him in the morning. But he catches up the folding-doors of the city gate, posts and all, and carries them to the top of a mountain by Hebron (w.i-^).

His paramour, Delilah, in the Vale of Sorek is bribed by the Philistines to deliver him over to them : three times he deceives her as to the source of his strength, and bursts the bonds wherewith she has bound him. At last he confesses that his strength lies in his God-consecrated hair, and after he has been shaved while asleep he falls defenceless into the hands of the Philistines. The latter put out his eyes and set him to slaves' work in the prison at Gaza (w.-*-^).

At the festival in honour of their god Daoo.v, the conquered foe is to be exhibited as a spectacle to the assembled people. But with the new growth of his hair the blind man feels his strength return, and after prajing to Jahweh he pulls down the pillars of the house in which the Philistines are assembled, so that they all perish alon^ with himself in the ruins. His body is buried by his relatives in the family sepulchre. His judgeship had lasted twenty year* (w.23.31). iii. The Sources.

— Of all the narratives in the Book of Judges, that about Samson is the only one that is not composed from the two ancient sources which supplied the material of the book — in all probability the Judrean source (J) and the Ephraimitic (K). The attempt to distinguish two sources throughout has only once been made, and that superlicially, by von Ortenberg, but cannot be regarded as successful. On the other hand, it has been rightly recognized by van Doominck (1879) and Stade (1884) that ch.

14 has undergone extensive revision, and Bohme (I8S5) has proved the same for ch. 13. In both chapters the aim of this revision is religious ; the whole personality of Samson is meant to be brought under the religious point of view more than is the case in the par- ticular narrativea. Bohme has .shown at the same time that ch. 13 bears marks of the source J, and thus the whole Samson history will have to be assigned to this source.

That E has no share in it is explained by the circumstance that for the Ephraimitic source the jud^e who ' began to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines' (13°) was not Samson but Samuel (1 S 7"^). Whether the Samson history, whose scene was the neighbour- hood of Judah, had only a local importance such as to prevent its being made use of by E, or whether that history Mas too repugnant to its theocratic character (cf. Eb.

Schrader, who calls E ' the theocratic narrator '), in any case Samuel takes the place of Samson completely in E (1 S 1-7; cf. esp. the birth story in 1 S 1 with Jg 13), whereas in J Samuel plays no part at all as judge and military commander. But if the Samson story is derived from only one source, yet, apart from the above-mentioned revision, it is not on that account a literary unity in all its parts.

On the contrary, the various anecdotes about Samson were originally related separately and only afterwards collected and arranged. Later than any of them, we may assume, is the story of his birth (ch. 13), just as is the case with almost all ancient heroes, even those of them who otherwise appear in the clearest light of history.

Samson Ls included by the Deuteronomistic re- daction, to which the Book of Judges owes its shape, amongst the 'great judges'; but thi-s, it appears, was not done without a considerable amount of weeding out. The concluding formula of the Deuteronomic redaction as to the duration of Samson's judgeship appears already at the end of ch. 15 (v.'-^), and is then repeated in 16"^ This should in all likelihood be explained on the ground that R"^ closed his history of Samson with ch.

15, and did not admit ch. 16 into his Book of Judges. The reason is easily discovered. Down to the close of ch. 15 Samson is the husband of one wife, and love to her along with love to his native land is the motive of all his actions. But in ch. 16 he appears as the slave of sensual passion, caught in the toUs of a succession of paramours, to the last of whom he even betrays the secret of the Divine strength that animated him.

If this itself must have appeared to the mind of R" quite unworthy of a God-called judge (cf. 2'- ''•), his fate also was an unfitting one, namely that he should end his life as prisoner and slave of the unbelievers. Hence R" excluded ch. 16 in the same way as ch. 9 (the story of Abimelech).

He was indiffer- ent to the circumstance that thus the account of Samson's death disappeared ; neither is there any mention of the death of Barak or of Deborah, and only a supplementary allusion to that of Ehud (4'). It was not tiU the last redaction of Judges that ch. 16 was once more united •with the preceding chapters, but the first concluding formula (15^) was still piously allowed to remain. How much of the minor alterations of the old text is to be attri- buted to this last red.

action, cannot be determined. iv. The Historical Background.— The tribe of Dan, to which Samson belongs, possessed not only one tribal territory, but two, — the one west of Jerusalem, situated between Benjamin and Judah ; the other in the extreme north, at the lower sources of the Jordan, bordering upon the territory of Naphtali. Samson comes from the southern territory ; his native town Zor'ah (nj^jy), one of the principal places belonging to the tribe (Jos 19*', Jg IS^-"-", cf.

also Neh ll*"), still bears the same name at the present dav. It lies on the northern slope of the fertile \VM'j es ■ Surar, through which the railway from Jaffa to Jem- salem now runs, opposite the ancient Beth- shemesh (cf. G. A. Smith, HGHL 218 f.) But the question is, whetlicr Samson lived (or is sup- posed to have lived) before or after the emigration of the 600 Danitcs who founded the northern set- tlement of the tribe.

The history of this expe- dition is given summarily in Jg 1" (to be supple- mented by Jos 19*' [LXA]), and in full detail in SAMSOX SMISOX 373 Jg 17. 18. Since the account of it in the last- mentioned two chapters is preceded by the story of Samson, one miylit be disposed at lirst to decide for the former of the above alternatives. But it must not be forgotten that chs. 17-'J1 are appen- dices to the Book of Judges, and that their present position tells us nothinj; about their order in time.

When tlie 600 Danites struck od' to tlie nortli, their tribe was still contending for its independ- ence, although with little prospect of being able to asaert it. The braver and more resolute mem- bers of the tribe having taken their departure, the remnant will have abandoned all further struggle and rested content that their foreign lords shomd leave tlieni in possession of the soil, prob- ably upon condition of paying tribute.

But this is the condition of things which we meet with in the story of Samson. Tlie Philistines have pene- trated far into the Shephelah, Timnah (theniudern Tibne only 4 or 5 miles S.W. of 5'or'a) 'belongs to them. Between them and the Danites there is no state of war, but unrestricted intercourse, con- nubinm and comiitcrcium — nay, tlie whole life of the Danites appears to gravitate towards the Philistine cities.

The power is entirely in the hands of the Philistines : when Samson gets into trouble witli them, his native town cannot shelter him. But even the territory of Judah, to which he flees, oilers no security, for it, too, is subject to the Philistines, as its inhabitants (Jg 15") expressly aihrm as a fact generally recognized. Samson's own demeanour is not at all that of an enthusiast for political inde[ieiidence and deliverer of his people from the Philistine yoke.

He belongs, on the contrary, to that class amongst his country- men who are disjiosed to modern and liberal ideas, and wlio have no scruple about entering into rehitions with tlie Pliilistines and even connecting themselves with them by marriage. This strange conduct is already excused and explained in Jg 14* as being in obedience to a Divine commis- sion, in order that Samson might find an oppor- tunity of damaging the Philistines.

But this verse does not belong to the oldest form of the narrative, and is actually contradicted l>y otlier passages. Samson himself ofl'ers to the Judahites (1.5") the excuse that he had not attacked the Philistines, but simply requited the wrong done to him by them. And in precisely the same fashion he always asserts liis innocence to himself and to his enemies (cf.

15'- ') : if they would only leave him in peace, thev should be safe from liim, so he thinks at least, fn the case of all his exploits, then, we have to do not with conscious attemi)ts to de- liver Israel, but only with the involuntary uprisinjj of a subject people against the alien and unloved oppres.sor, with little ' pin-pricks,' each of wliich is regarded as a heroic deed and greeted with malicious joy.

But ten hot-blooded and foolhardy Samsons would not have been able to loosen the chains of Israel's bondage. This was only accom- plished when the Philistines, who had ventured to attack the kernel of the Isr. territory, were, after some initial successes (1 S 4), completely beaten by the uprising of Mt. Ejiliraim (IS 13) and after- wards of all Israel under the leadership of Saul and David, and driven back within tiicir own narrow territory.

By means of these wars Samson's home became once more free, and a permanent pos- session of Israel. The Samson stories are probably intended, then, to be understood as belonging to the period which immediately preceded the Philis- tine war of 1 S 4, and are thus, apart from the appendices Jg 17-21, in the right place. That implies at the same time that the tradition, at lirst oral, emlxidying them must also go back to the same period. In a later age there was no possibility of their arising. V.

Historical Importance.— According to tha sclieme of the Book of Judges as its i)rogranime is set down by the Deuteronomic redactor in Jg 2"*-, Samson was 'raised up' by Jahweh to be 'judge' over all the children of Israel, in order to deliver them from the rule of the Philistines, to which Jahweh had given them over on account of their unfaithfulness (cf. 13').

We saw that in the case of Samsun there can be no mention of such deliver- ance, and just as little of an activity on behalf of, or any judgeship over, the whole of Israel. What we are told of him, at all events, claims nothing more than quite a local importance. We need not wonder, then, that li" left out eh. 16 (see above), but only that he allowed Samson to pass as a 'judge' at all.

But this may be explained as due to the example set in the pre-Deuteronomie Book of Judges, the work of R''^ (cf. Budde, Kurzcr Ildcom. xll'., XV f.) The rank of a divinely -sent judge could not be henceforward taken from Samson. His credentials rest especially on ch. 13, the Divine Eroniise and wonderful accoiiiiilishiiient of his irth.

We shall have to regard tlie whole of this chapter as a later addition to the particular Samson narratives which were gathered from the mouth of the people and lie before us in chs. 14-16. As a literary composition, however, that chapter need not be more recent tlian these others. It is worthy of note that even it stUl conliues the historical importance of Samson within very narrow limits. All that is said of him in v.

° is that ' he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.' vi. Significance fob the History of Re- ligion.— The glaring contradiction between the Divine call of Samson and his far from exemplary manner of life caused much racking of the brains and much ollence to the older theologians.

A correct judgment of his personality is possible only when, on the one hand, we leave out of view the Christian standard of morality, and when, on the other, we take into account that Samson was originally not a religious but a popular hero. Still there remains even in the oldest strata of the narratives one religious trait, and it is this which has made it possible to represent him as under theocratic enlightenment.

Any endowment be- yond the ordinary human standard, or any con- duct quite opposed to wliat is otherwise recognized as the character of a person, is explained in anti- quity, and so also in the OT, as due to a super- human being, a spirit, having taken up its abode in the person. On this account all who are mentally deranged are supposed to be the dwellinj;- place of a spirit, by whom they are possessed. In this waj[ also the superhuman strength of Sam.

soii is explained ; and as the Philistines, the enemies of Israel, sutler through his deeds, the spirit whidi works through him is the spirit of Jahweh, the God of Israel. The last verse of ch. 13 notes the lirst occasion upon which the spirit of Jahweh moves him, without telling us how this working showed itself. In 14"- '" lo'* ' the spirit of Jahweh came upon him ' to enable him to perform the greatest feats of strength. It is noteworthy, how- ever, that this expression is wanting in H".

This appears to point to a dillerent way of viewing the matter, and, as this same way entirely domi- nates ch. 16, it may be regarded as the more original. According to Samson's own statement in 16", which is conlirmcd by vv.

**- ^, his strength is not a new thing every time, imiiarted at the moment of need through his being lijled with the Divine spirit, but is a constant possession, connected with the hair of his head, on which no razor comes, because from bis mother's womb he has been a consecrated one of Grod, a Nazirita C'lJ).

380 SxUlSOJJ SAJklSON The Nazirate ifl a relifrious institution of undoubtedly the hiphest anticiuity ; it is n:iinf(l as early as Am 2'if , along with prophecy, aa one of the speciaJ blcssinLTs which Jahweh haa bestowed upon His people.

At the same lime it persisted in Israel down to the days wtieu Israel's religion had undergone a great spiritualizing, for not only do we find it in Nu 6 in the legislation of the post-exilic period as a firmly e^itablished 8acre<l usage, but we meet with its practice in Jerusalem al the temple even in the lime of the Aposlle Paul (Ac 21*^' ).

but in the OT Samson is the only N'azirite we encounter; for the consecration of Samuel is of quite a different character, and l he words ' and tliere shall no razor come upon his head in I S l^ certainly' do not belong to the original text. From the story of Samson, now, we can gather that the essence of the Nazirite vow consisted simply m allowing the hair to grow.

At the expirj of the period fixed for the vow the hair was shorn by the Eriest and cast into thp sacriticial flame (Nu C><', Ac 2124^. ven Samson's lifelong Nazirate (Jg la^-'O can scarcely be understood as implying tliat he is to carrj- his hair with him down to the grave, but rather that he has it shorn from time to time, and each time consecrates the shorn hair to Jahweh.

But, aa the Nazirite bears the God-consecrated offering upon his head, he naturally requires to keep his body, which ministera nourishment also to the hair, pure from everj-thing that is repugnant to the Deity. The regulations on this sub- ject will undergo change and enlargement with the times; the prohibition of wine (including, no doubt, all intoxicat- ing liquors) belongs certainly to the oldest state of things, and is witnessed to already in Am 212.

An intoxicated man is possessed by another spirit which disputes God's authority. Samson, indeed, does not impress us as one who practised self-restraint in any direction ; his taking food from the carcase of the lion (Jg Us"".) ig directly opposed to the enactments of Nu 66S-, for the term 'dead body' there certainly includes a potiori the carcases of animals.

But from these contradictions between the Samson story and the Nazirate law we can only conclude that the story does not proceed throughout on the presupposition of his being under a Nazirite vow. The contra- dictions must have been early observed, and this explains why what was wanting in the case of Samson himself, namely abstinence from wine and from unclean food, is compensated for in 13" i by attributing this abstinence to his mother for the period of her pregnancy. According to ch.

16, Samson's strength resides in the unshorn hair of his head, a belief which in the case of the Nazirate is explained by the consecration in virtue of which Jahweh Him- self dwells in the hair consecrated to^im. Amos, too, appears to attribute special powers to the Nazirites (2ilf ), but what is the nature of these we are not told. But the notion that some mysterious power resides in the hair, apart even from such Bjiecial consecration, is extraordinarily widespread.

A large collection of facts directly connected with supposed active and passive bodily powers may be found in J. G. yrazer, The Golden Bmtgh ', iii. 390 f. The Sunda Isles of the present day con- tribute much material to this collection, but so also does Europe of the Middle Ages, especially in the matter of pro- cesses against witches. The reader may note also what is said in the same work (i. 370 ff., cf. also p.

31) about letting the hair grow, and about the dangers connected with the cuttmg of it. The fear of these rises to such a pitch that, for instance, the chief of the Namosi upon the Fiji Islands, every time he had hia hair cut, had to devour a man, in order to ward off the dangers which threatened him. We have therefore to do here with convictions diffused over the whole world, and which certainly go back to very early times.

Even in Israel they must have been much older than the religion of Jahweh, but they were brought within its scope in the fonu of the Nazirate. From the storj" of Samson and from Am S'^f- we may infer with some probability that Israel was conscious that the blessing of the Nazirate gave them an advantage over the Philistines and the Canaanites ; and if that is so, we must hold that the Nazirate was established in Israel prior to the conquest of Canaan. vii.

Significance for the History of Civili- zation,— The story of Samson is specially import- ant from this point of view. Above all, we see from it that the iaeal of the country hero was exactly the same iu Israel tlien as it is at the present day. The lion of a village must be first in success with the female sex, first in bodily strength, courage, and fondness for brawling, and first in mother wit. Samson displays the last-named quality in his riddle (cli.

14), in his ever -varied devices against the Philistines, and in the witty fashion in which he ever anew deceives Delilah. Veracity by no means belongs to the list of virtues of the country hero, and aa little does faithfulness in love. Excess, or at least enormous capacity in eating and in drinking strong liquors, is amongst the things that may almost be taken for granted. It is strange enough that this trait is not strikingly displayed in Samson.

Who knows whether from • How large a part was played by the hair-offering in the life of ancient peoples, e8]ieciallv of the Semites, may be leanied from W. E- Smith, RS^ 326-334, cf. also p. 462 fl. the store of legends that circulated regarding him there may not have been dropped this or that portion dealing with the subject in question?

Aa to the matter of his enormous bodilv strength, every village, or at least every shire, nas still its Samson, whose displays of strength, as recorded in popular stories, speedily go, witliout the calling in of any superhuuian causes, beyond what is possible for man. Many of our readers, especiall}^ tli<Kse who have been brought up in the countr}', will be able to substantiate what we have said.

Sucli conditions of life, which we can still detect everywhere, are the earliest soil oi the Samson stories ; everything else is only secondary. We have, further, in ch. 14 a graphic description of the wedding festivities in ancient Israel, the only one which has come down to us. We see from it that on such occasions the proceedings Avere essentially the same as in the modern East, and, in some important points, even the same as at our own Jewish weddings. There is a seven days' feast (v.'')

, above all with plenty of eating and drinking of wine (nrifP), in which the whole community takes part. The thirty companions (v."), with their head, who is probabl}- meant in 14^ and 15% are the conductors of the bride (cf. the sixty valiant men' of Solomon in Ca 3', and the friend of the bridegroom ' in Jn 3^). They would have to defray the expenses of the wedding, as ia still the custom in Syrian villages.

Samson and the young wife would, as is also the custom there, be called king' and queen' during the seven days (cf. Budde, Kurzer Hd'-om. xvii. p. xviif.), Samson's ritldle is only a small part of the amuse- ments of all kinds — songs, dances, games, stories — with which the seven days were filled up. Although, however, the practices at Samson's wedding are the same as are usual elsewhere, the same caimot be said of the character of the marriage itself.

From 15if- it is plain that the young wife did not go aher the marriage to Zor'ah to Samson's house, but remained in the house of her parents at Timnah. And even if this might appear to be explained on the ground that Samson, acconiing to H^^^, parted from her in anger instead of personally accompanj-ing her in stately procession to Zor'ah (cf.

l^-), there is not the slightest hint in 15if- that he purposed subsequently to take her home to Zoi'ah, but only that he meant to visit her in her pareiUf^ house. Nor doe§ the kid which he takes with him appear to be an extraordinary present for a special purpose, such aa to make up for his anger of 1411, but seems rather to belong to the visit as such. If all this be so, then we have to do with that peculiar ancient form of marriage to whith W. R.

Smith {Kinnhip and Mnrriane in early Arabia, pp. 70-76) gave the name mdika marriage, it answers to the ancient social institution of the matriarchate, under which the wife remains with her relations, the husband visits her there, the children belong to the tribe and the family of the mother. One-sided dissolution of such a marriage and the con- tracting of another (cf. Jg 152) by the woman is also witnessed to amongst the Arabs {I.e. p. 65).'

If Samson's marriage is to be understood in this way, this does not of course imply that at the time when these stories took their rise all marriages in Israel were of the mdVca tj'pe. But we learn again from the ancient Arabic materials collected by W. R. Smith, that, even when the later fomi of marriage had come to prevail, such mdXka marriages were still contracted when the ordinary inarfiage was not possible, as, for instance, between member* of hostile tribes {I.e. p. 71 f.)

This may be the explanation in the case before us, where a man belonging to the territorj' ol Israel, which was subject to the Philistines, seeks in marriage a girl of the ruling people. We should perhaps adopt a similar fnterp relation when it is said that Gideon hod a concubine in Shechem (Jg 83i), which still belonged to the Canaanites; and when Abimelech, her son, speaks of himself as a Shecheniite and not as an Israelite (9^).

If any one thinks it worth while, he may, upon the ground of this ancient social custom, view more mildly even Samson's relation to DeUlah in 16*^- It is sur- E rising indeed that at such a marriage the festivities described 1 ch. IS should be the same as at the marriages which constitute the man the possessor (Vt'3) of the woman ; but it may well be that difTerent points of view have here become confused. viii.

Mythological Traces, — Samson's extra- ordinary strength, which he displays in a number of feats, led even in olden times to a comparison of him witli Hercules, and recently such comparisons have gone the length of vain attempts to count up exactly twelve exploits A Samson. After it came sa:*iuel SAMUEL 381 to be reco^ized or believed that the Hercules legend is a solar mj-th, many in our own centurj' pioceeded to take the story of Samson also as a sun-myth, and to interpret it so in detail.

The derivation of the name prep from tbc' tells indeed rather against than in favour of this view, for it is not the way with a nature-myth to borrow or even to derive the name of its hero from the cosmical object which it describes. The derivation from Bcth-shemcsh is a much more natural one. But such mythical explanations are not capable of being refuted in detail, because the elements with which they operate are so .

simple that any one so disposed may lind them in any history, and for the most part in opposite ways. At all events, the strength of Samson requires no such explanation ; on the contrarj', it is explicable, as we saw, by con- siderations drawn, on the one hand, from the history of civilization, and on the other from religion.

And it is equally certain that none of the narrators of the story is conscious that he is handing on a myth ; the features of the contem- porary history and civilization are very clearly marked. This does not prevent the supposition that mj'thical traits may have found their way into these popular narratives. Undoubtedly a topo- logical [(iunlvel, Genesis, p. xv, incorrectly gives this the name 'geological'] motive for a legend appears at work in 15", where the name ' Height of the .

Jawbone ' is to be expl.ained. It is quite re- markable, too, that the fire-brand foxes (15'') recur in Ovid {Fasti, iv. 67911'.) in the Roman cultus, and are explained (ii. 701 ff.) by the act of a mis- chievous boy which exactly resembles the act of Sanuson. But, in t/iis instance at all events, we have not to do with a solar myth ; the reader may be reminded how in Poitou ' the spirit of the corn appears to be conceived in the shape of a fox ' iKrazer, I.e. ii. 283; cf.

the whole chapter entitled 'The corn-spirit'). The attempt to give a con- tinuoui mythological interpretation of the story of Samson is tlierefore to be abandoned, althougli there are various points in it besides the above which may profitably be examined from this point of view. LiTRR^Ti-RK.— The Comm. on Jnilgpn, esp. those of Moore, in Intrrnnl. Cril. O'ln. ISn.l ; nudde in hnrzer lldcom. 1897; Nowa<-k in Itdkmntn. 190(1; and the authoriLius cited iti these.

The older iileratiire will be found LQ Winer's cxi-ellent art. ■ Simaoii ' in his AH .03, 1848. K. BUDDE.