i:

Samson, Delilah, and Yahweh: Character and

Prejudice
. Peter Whelan
Outstanding Paper Award

The tale of Samson and Delilah is one that has

been reworked many times since the Deuteronomist
included it in his or her collection in the Book of
Judges. Each reworking-in drama, oratorio, opera
or film-both interprets and alters the totality of the
myth, influencing the way in which subsequent
informed readers respond to the biblical text in
Judges. Thus, for this reader, the character of Delilah
is forever pulled in the direction of Hedy Lamarr's
I interpretation of her in Cecile B. De Mille's 1949 film;
I-
.
and the moment at which Samson yields his secret
undergoes a similar movement toward the passionate
duet in Act 2 of Saint-Saens' opera of 1877. Some
Whelan
reworkings have more gravitational attraction than
othex:s,naturally, and one of the most massive is
Milton's tragedy, SamsonAgonistes,which has directly
or indirectly exerted a powerful influence over all
subsequent literary engagements with the biblical
tale.
History also influences readers. To offer perhaps
the best known example, since the Roman Empire
ceased to persecute Christians the Book of Revelations
has constantly been reinterpreted to accommodate
current events: the barbarian migrations, the
Napoleonic wars, communism, the nuclear bomb. . .
F. Michael Krouse has chronicled similar interpretive
shifts since early Christian commentators decided
that Samson prefigured Christ.i SamsonAgonisteshas
its political agenda, as Mary Ann Radzinowicz has
demonstrated,ii and, according to Seymour Hersch,
the modem state of Israel has named its nuclear
weapons strategy "The Samson Option," intended, as
a last resort, to destroy its enemies as well as itself. Hi
In this essay I shall try to show how our 21st-century
consciousness of the religious and political aspects of
terrorism might validate an against-the-gram reading
of Milton and offer a contemporary insight into the
myth of Judges 13-16.
2 Whelan 3
Bible stories are often stark in their lack of detail,
and the Jewish midrashic tradition has long invested
its collective creative imagination in filling in the
gaps. Creators of midrash asked and answered daring
questions invited by the silences of the texts: Did
Jephthah really kill his daughter? Would Abraham
really have killed Isaac, or was he perhaps calling
God's bluff? Most traditional midrashim are very
brief, but our culture is still generating such
interesting extended midrashim as Anita Diamant's
novel The Red Tent (1997), which explores the
circumstances surrounding the rape of Dinah in
Genesis 34. Earlier in the 20thcenttiry, Israeli Ze' ev
Jabotinsky (1927)and Scottish author Eric Linklater
(1962),wrote novelistic versions of the Samson saga.
The Greek tradition addressed similar questions:
Did Agamemnon's daughter Iphigeneia really die,
sacrificed by her father for a fair wind, or was she
perhaps rescued by the goddess and installed as her
priestess in a temple on some distant shore? Euripides
explores the theme in Iphigeneiain Aulis and Iphigeneia
in Tauris. Milton, therefore, in choosing to translate a
Hebrew story into Greek tragic form, engages with
both traditions in an interpretive endeavor common
to both. In SamsonAgonistesMilton creates midrash
on a tale from the collection known as the
 Whelan
Deuteronomic History, which recounts the story of
the Hebrews from Moses through Joshua to the fall of
the Hebrew monarchies (Lang 52). In the Greek tragic
form he is obliged to create dramatic situations not
mentioned in the Bible story, and to make these work
he must develop the principal characters way beyond
the adumbrations of the Bible.
Central to SamsonAgoni$tesis the non-Biblical
scene in which Samson and Delilah meet on the last
day of his life, long after his betrayal. Milton creates a
blind, embittered Samson who shrinks from Delilah
as from a cobra, a Samson who is so far gone in
misery and remorse that he doesn't want-even for
an instant--the hope of life and rest in the home that
Delilah offers him. He clings to his dungeon as the
outward manifestation of his inner state of being:
"My self, my Sepulcher, a moving Grave" (line 102).
When he claims that she wants him only to torment
him we are offered not a statement of fact but a
rationalization of his horror and loathing, primarily
self-horror and self-loathing, in which misogyny is a
strong component, for he accuses himself of
effeminacy. He is like Milton's Satan and Marlowe's
Mephistophilis, who carry hell about with them, and
like Dante's sinners who instinctively seek the
4 Whelan 5
torment which in the grand cosmic order is most
fitting for them.
But Samson's conception of Delilah is not
necessarily Milton's, and in this work Milton is an
artist, not a pamphleteer. Moreover, readers may
draw conclusions unbiased by either Samson or
Milton. When, introduced as his wife, Delilah weeps
and protests her" conjugal affection" (line 739), we
cannot uncritically share Samson's certainty of her
bad faith. Samson calls her "Hyrena" and "poysnous
bosom snake," and though his reaction is certainly
understandable it is not entirely rational. True to his
art, Milton allows her a spirited self defense and a
sharp Parthian shot when she is finally rejected. She
appeals first to her own inquisitiveness and
talkativeness, which, she says, Samson should never
have confided in-natural, feminine weaknesses (line
783). "[W]eakness to resist Philistian gold," says
Samson. Then she says her love impelled her to
acquire power over him in order to keep him at home:
"I was assured by those /Who tempted me that
nothing was designed/Against thee but safe custody,
and hold." "Here I should enjoy thee day and
night/Mine and Love's prisoner, not the
Philistines,/Whole to myself, unhazarded abroad."
Samson flings this back at her: "love constrained
Whelan
6
thee[?]; call it furious rage!To satisfy thy lust[!]" (lines
836-37).iv
When that tack proves equally ineffectual she
pleads the forceful persuasions of the Philistines who
convinced her not with money but with an appeal to
her sense "of civil Duty/And of Religion" (lines 853-
54) that "to the public goodlPrivate respects must
yield . . . Vertue, as I thought, truth, duty so
enjoyning" (lines 868-70). If we wish to credit
Delilah's sincerity we are faced with a problem,
however. Samson replies: "I thought where all thy
circling wiles would end; in feigned religion, smooth
hypocrisie" (lines 871-72). Now while a secular critic
has no mandate to impugn the sincerity of Dagon-
worshipers as such, or to prefer the cult of Yahweh, it
should not escape our notice that in pleading her case
Delilah has advanced three unrelated excuses:
woman's "natural" curiosity, the desire to keep her
beloved warrior safe at home, and national and
religious duty. The fact is that they don't fit together,
and each new reason she adduces for her betrayal of
Samson weakens her case. Here, it would seem, are
indeed serpentine "circling wiles,"which might well
lead Samson to doubt her sincerity, and even to
suspect in her the desire to keep him only to enslave
and torment him. She makes a final appeal to
Whelan 7 ..
Samson's senses, offering, "though sight be lost. . .
many other solaces" (915). But Samson is out of reach
of her seductive charms: "This gaol I count the house
of Liberty!To thine whose doors my feet shall never
enter" (949-50).
Though the reader is left to conjecture the true
reason for Delilah's betrayal, it is not possible to align
ourselves unreservedly with Samson's condemnation
of her motives for wanting him to yield to her again.
Poor though her debate skills are, nothing in her
words allows us to be certain that her protestation of
"conjugal affection" (line 739) is insincere--not even
when she is finally angered by Samson's snarling
sarcasm.V Indeed, her words at this point are harder
to dismiss. She may be hated among the Hebrews,
but
in my country where I most desire. . .
I shall be named among the famousest
Of Women, sung at solemn festivals
. . . who to save
Her country from a fierce destroyer, chose
Above the faith of wedlock-bands, my tomb
With odours visited and annual flowers.
Not less renowned than in Mount Ephraim,
Jael,who with inhospitable guile
Whelan
Smote Siserasleeping through the Temples
nailed. (lines 980-90)
She has a point. She reminds us that the teller of any
tale has a point of view, and that we cannot take the
Hebrew side as though it were the only tale it were
possible to tell of these events. And as for the
morality of her actions, from any other point of view
than the Judaeo-Christian, Jael is scarcely the moral
superior of Delilah. And with that thought, Delilah
exits in a huff.vi
The chorus and Samson help each other to
dismiss any disquieting sense of the justice of
Delilah's analogy. "She's gone," sneers the Chorus, "a
manifest Serpent by her stinglDiscovered in the end,
till now conceal' d." "So let her go," growls Samson,
"God sent her to debase me,IAnd aggravate my folly
who committed/To such a viper his most sacred
trust" (lines 996-1001).Thus with a turn of a metaphor
can a Parthian warrior's arrow become a snake's fang.
"God sent her." Samson may utter the phrase
lightly, but Milton does not, and the reader is
reminded of a character in this tale whose
participation has been shadowy though vital since its
beginning. Yahweh has a plan for Samson. In Judges
it was voiced by the angelic messenger to his father
Manoah's anonymous wife: "he shall begin to deliver
8 Whelan 9
Israel out of the hands of the Philistines" (KJV,
Judg.13:5). To this end Yahweh has intervened more
than once. Yahweh "blessed him" when he was
young (13:26), "the Spirit of Yahweh began to move
him at times" as he grew up "in the camp of Dan"
(13:26), and Yahweh prompted him to marry a
Timnath woman of, as his parents put it "the
uncircumcised Philistines" (14:3). The marriage was
clearly intended by Samson to be a casusbelli:"his
father and mother knew not that it was of Yahweh,
that he sought an occasion against the Philistines: for 11t>';'
,
at that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel"
(14:4). Milton has Samson explain as much to the ~.
j"-'"
Chorus: "they knew not/That what I motioned was of
God; I knew from intimate impulse" (lines 221-22).
Yahweh had prompted him to seek a marriage in
order to start a quarrel. Thus the beginning, as it
were, of Samson's ministry, of the task for which
Yahweh had miraculously caused rum to be born, was
a marriage entered into at least as insincerely as
Delilah's.
!~:';
Even of his marriage with Delilah ("that specious
monster, [his] accomplished snare") Samson declares ;Ifi:~:'
he "thought it lawful from [his] former act,IAnd the
same end; still watching to oppress Israel's
-
Whelan 10
oppress ours" (lines 230-34). Not smooth hypocrisy,
perhaps, but hypocrisy nonetheless. .
It was Yahweh, too, whose spirit prompted
Samson to tear apart the lion he met on the way to
Timnath, (14:6) which resulted in the riddle, which
resulted in Samson's journey to Ashkelon to kill thirty
perfect strangers for the purpose of paying his lost
wager with their clothes. Then, when his father-in-
law assumes Samson no longer wants the bride who
betrayed his riddle he gives her away to his best man.
Samson uses this as an excuse to bum the Philistine
harvest--wheat, grapes and olives--saying to himself
"Now shall I be more blameless than the Philistines,
though I do them a displeasure" (15:3). This results in
the Philistines' burning his former wife and her father
for their involvement in the loss of the harvest-
which gives Samson another excuse to attack. This
time he is pretending (I don't believe the word is
inappropriate) to avenge the woman and her father:
"and he smote them hip and thigh with a great
slaughter" (15:8). And from this follows the massacre
of Jawbone Hill, where, as the Chorus recalls in a
masterpiece of dehumanizing metonymy, "a
thousand foreskins fell" (line 144). The whole
unsavory episode is full of bad faith on Samson's
Whelan 11
part-though there seems no doubt that he is doing
the will of Yahweh.
Here is a paradox that did not, I believe, escape
Milton'snotice. WhenMiltonsetsout in ParadiseLost
to "justifie the wayes of God to men" (line 26), he is
clearly aware that the justice of God's ways is not
always apparent. Samson raises the issue early in the
tragedy: "0 impotence of mind in body strong!" (line
50).
Immeasurable strength they might behold
In me, of wisdom nothing more than mean; !t'
"_'1
This with the other should, at least have
paird, r",
I
These two proportioned ill drove me
transverse. (lines 206-09)
The Chorus comes straight back with the standard
reproach: "Tax not divine disposa1." Though the
Chorus, too, later wonders why God manifests a
"hand so various,lOr I might say contrarious" (lines
1""
668-69) in his dealings with men in general and !~.
Samson in particular. The tale offers no explicit
answer to the Chorus's question, but it does offer an
implicit one: if Samson hadn't allowed the Timnath
woman to wheedle from him the answer to his riddle
the subsequent mayhem would not have taken place,
and it was, we must remember, to provoke these that
- - ----
 Whelan 12
Yahweh inspired Samson to marry a Philistine in the
first'place, contrary to custom and law and over the
protests of his parents. Apparently, it wouldn't suit
Yahweh's purpose to have Samson think more clearly
or be less susceptible to nagging.
"God sent her," and by implication, Yahweh next
sends Harapha, a fiction of Milton's, the father of
Goliath. Delilah has already angered Samson,
rousing him from his black depression sufficiently to
threaten to tear her limb from limb if she touches him.
Now Harapha makes him fighting mad, but it falls to
Harapha, as to Delilah, to make some of the points
that call for.justification. He accuses Samson of being
"A Murtherer, a Revolter, and a Robber," adding to
the misdeeds enumerated above that of breaking the
treaty by which the Israelites acknowledged the
Philistines as their rulers. Samson's reply is less than
entirely satisfactory: "Among the Daughters of the
Philistines/l chose a wife, which argued me no foe" -
we know that's specious; the marriage was entered
into in order to provoke strife. Samson continues at
some length. On the one hand he blames the
Philistines for the altercation, and claims that his
Ashkelon victims were therefore his "enemies"; and
on the other he insists that his was not a private
vendetta but a liberation campaign with "command
Whelan 13
from Heav'n" (line 1212),playing a "part from
Heav'n assigned" (line 1217).In short, he was on a
mission from God, and he offers to prove "whose
God is strongest" (line 1155) with his fists. Samson is
scarcely a better dialectician than Delilah.
He seems to have his fighting spirit back,
however, and though he shows neither sincerity nor
wisdom in his argument, he has recovered, or at least
reiterated, his belief in God's ultimate mercy and the
possibility .ofhis being forgiven his errors and
weaknesses. He is thus in a frame of mind to give
short shrift to his next visitor, a "public officer" who
has come to fetch him to provide entertainment at the
temple of Dagon. But by the same token he is open to
"Some rouzing motions. . . which disposeffo
something extraordinary [his] thoughts" (line 1382).
Neither Milton nor Samson says that this is another
prompting from Yahweh, but we are disposed to
believe that the "rouzing motions" are just such an
"intimate impulse" as set him on the warpath to
Timnath. The result is that, though the officer is
roughly dismissed at first, when he returns Samson
offers him the equivocal: "Masters commands come
with a power resistless!To such as owe them absolute
subjection" (lines 1404-05).The officer, as Samson
intends, takes him to be referring to the Philistine
Whelan 14
lords who have commanded his presence, while
Samson, surely, refers to Yahweh. The Chorus
affirms our interpretation: "Go, and the Holy One/Of
Israel be thy guide to what may serve his glory best, &
spread his name/Great among the HeathE7nround"
(lines 1427-29).
Manoah then returns to tell the Chorus of his
determination to ransom Samson and take him home
and care for him, thus fulfilling the genre's demand
for pathos, as we have perhaps ceased to pity the
surly, violent and devious Samson. He also reminds
us that Samson's hair has regrown: "God had not
permitted/His strength again to grow up with his
hair/... were not his purposefTo use him further in
some great service"(1495-1499). The sound of
Samson's great service crashes onto our ears in just
five lines. Manoah exclaims with unintentional irony:
"Mercy of Heav'n what hideous noise was that!" (line
1509). His appeal to Heaven's mercy gives way to the
Chorus's bloodthirsty fantasy of Samson "dealing
dole among his foes,/And over heaps of slaughter'd
walk[ing] his way" (lines 1529-30). The obligatory
messenger soon informs him how Samson died: in the
best Sophoclean tradition the messenger spares no
details: "Lords, Ladies, Captains, Councellors, or .
Priests,/Their choice nobility and flower, not only/Of
Whelan 15
this but each Philistian City round" (lines 1653-55)-
all are dead. The Chorus exults over Yahweh's sense
of irony:
Among them he a spirit of phrenzy sent,
Who hurt their minds,
And urged them on with mad desire
To call in hast for thir destroyer.
(lines 1675-78) . I
Manoah is cheered, too, with the thought that
Samsonhath quit himself
Like Samson, and heroically hath finish'd
A life Heroic, on his Enemies
Fully reveng'd and left them years of
mourning. (lines 1709-12)
The matter of Samson's suicide is swiftly raised
and dismissed: "0 lastly over-strong against I~
thyself!!A dreadful way thou took'st to thy revenge" "
(lines 1590-91),cries the father. The chorus has no
IE"
reservations:
It
Living or dying thou hast fulfill'd
The work for which thou wast foretold
To Israel,and now ly'st victorious
Among thy slain self-kill'd
Not willingly, but tangled in the fold
Of dire necessity, whose law in death
conjoin'd
Whelan
Thee with thy slaughter d foes in number
more
Than all thy life had slain before.
(lines 1660-68)
They have articulated the moral justification:
Samson's virtuous aim was to slay his pagan foes;
that he died in doing so is incidental.vii His death is
not therefore a sinful felo de se, but a kind of blame-
free collateral damage, to use the modem phrase. viii
They go on to eulogize Samson in terms that remind
us that he has been held to be a type of Christ, dying
in order that men may live. "His fiery virtue
rouz'd/From under ashes into sudden flame" (1690-
91). His rising out of the grave of his despairing self
is a resurrection like that of the Phoenix, "that self-
begotten bird," (line 1699), another Christ-symbol.
And what of Yahweh's role? The Chorus hints at
this, too, when they speak of Samson "tangl'd in the
fold/Of dire necessity." In the context of Greek
tragedy we recognize the Greek ananke,usually
translated necessity, defined by Empedocles (c. 493-c.
433 BCE) as "an ancient decree of the gods, eternal,
sealed fast with broad oaths."ix Thus necessity is a
synonym for what Milton, too, in The Christian
Doctrine called God's "decree."x It appears that
Strength's words in Prometheus Bound apply to the
16 Whelan 17 81
01
cosmos of Samson Agonistes: ultimately, "No one is
free but Zeus" (22).xiBut we may not see Samson as
Yahweh's puppet. Milton was a famous defender of
human free Will;xiithus, just as Prometheus is morally
free to defy Zeus, even while his body is being I
tortured, we must see that Samson, despite having '-1I
been miraculously created and strengthened by decree I
of Yahweh for the purpose of combating the
Philistines, is free on this day either to co-operate
with Yahweh's purpose or to seek comfort with
Delilah or with his father. This emphasis is very
much Milton's own. Milton's Samson, though of
limited moral and mental development, intuitively t
knows that his feats are" great acts which God had
done/Singly by me" (lines 243-44), but the
Deuteronomist gives Samson little credit for .
conscious cooperation with Yahweh, and none at all
after the Timnath fiasco. xiii
Both Milton and the Deuteronomist leave no
I
doubt that Samson has been created by Yahweh for
.the express purpose of indiscriminate slaughter-
indiscriminate in that his victims include non-
combatants, such as women and clergy, who happen [
to be in a place of worship, rather than, say, a military !
headquarters. xiv Enfolded in necessity (Yahweh's j
decree) he has unwittingly taken (like Oedipus) just I

Whelan
the path that would lead him to this day, this final act.
Viewed in this way he seems to foreshadow not so
much Christ as the suicide bombers of our own time.
The very word agon is a more than plausible Greek
equivalent of the Arabic jihad in its connotations both
of physical and spiritual warfare.xv Yahweh, then, is
the shadowy Osama who plots with unnerving . Of sin, or legal debt;
patience, placing his agent, endowing him with the
strength he will need, keeping his plan secret even
from the principal until the moment comes to send
his "martyr" to his death.
At his death the biblicalSamson prays not to do
God's will but to "be at once avenged of the
Philistines for my two eyes" (16:28)and to "die with
the Philistines" (16:30). His highest calling is to be a
mere unconscious tool, a weapon in a greater battle:
between Israelites and Philistines, certainly, but
principally between a jealous god and his rival.
Milton retains the jealous god. As Samson says, now
that he himself is defeated, "all the contest is
now/'Twixt God and Dagon" (line 462). But the agent
is now a willing tool with a growing apprehension of
his master's purpose.
Does this mean that in this sanguinary story the
least moral agent is Yahweh himself? Milton's
Chorus calls on us to suppress such thoughts:
Whelan 19
18
Just are the ways of God,
And justifiable to Men; ...
Who made our laws to b~d us, not himself,
And hath full right to exempt
Whom it so pleases him by choice
.From National obstrlction, without taint
For with his own Laws he can best dispence.
Down Reasons then, at least vain reasonings
down," (lines 293-322)
The Chorus is referring to the marriage at Timnath,
wrestling with the problem of God's prompting
Samson to marry a "fallacious Bride,/Unclean,
unchaste" (lines 320-21). It is curious to see them
straining at this gnat of a scruple before avidly
swallowing the bloody camel of the story's climax.
But reasonings are to critics what wrenches are to
plumbers; vain or not it is no use our turning up
without them. We must bravely face the implications
of the tale for our time-both Milton's version and the
i
Deuteronomist's. Nor do I believe that Milton failed i
to face them for his; it seems to me that he stands with II
the Chorus in effectively admitting that by human J
!
standards Yahweh's behavior is horrifying; that he
finds a disjuncture between the just and loving,
Whelan
20
though awesome God he worships and the jealous,
I'\lthless and manipulative terrorist mastermind the
story presents. Milton, however, as both a profound
thinker and a literalist reader of the Bible, was used to
living with contradictions.
Paradoxically for the modem reader, Samson
does achieve a spiritual triumph in resurrection from
the grave of his embittered self. Further, in
slaughtering the Philistine non-combatants and
himself, according to Milton's vision he heroically
(that is, of his own free will and with a clear vision of
the consequences) embraces Yahweh's will. In Greek
tragedy physical blindness is accompanied by
spiritual insight-to Oedipus and Teiresias swiftly, to
Samson more slowly--but what I believe Milton
wishes us to observe here is the operation of grace
working to "regenerate" Samson. In the chapter of
The Christian Doctrine entitled "Of Regeneration"
Milton writes,
The intent of supernatural renovationis not
only to restore man more completely than
before to the use of his natural faculties as
regards his power to form right judgment,
and to exercise free will; but to create afresh,
as it were, the inward man, and infuse from
above new and supernatural faculties into
Whelan 21
the minds of the renovated. This is called
regeneration."(1014) .
Samson, then, by means of a chain of free choices
made under circumstances largely created by
Yahweh, has freely, though unwittingly taken (like
Oedipus) just the path that .would lead him through
imprisonment both of body and mind to this day, this
final act-his almost simultaneous embracing and
accomplishment of Yahweh's purpose--made possible
by the reviving of his free will. ,
Aeschylus presents Prometheus as the clear-
sightedly heroic victim of a manifestly tyrannical
parvenu deity. xvi Samson, as I have shown, is also a
victim of Yahweh, but a willing one. In this he
resembles Jesus more than he does Prometheus, and
he has long been held to prefigure the Christian
Savior. But in his method and his mission he not only
differs radically from Christ, but bears a strong
resemblance to Bin Laden's operatives. Bin Laden's
men have given their lives in inflicting harm on non-
combatants. They have apparently done so willingly
not only for a cause they believed in, but in the spirit
of Samson's declaration that "Masters commands
come with a power resistless/To such as owe them
absolute subjection." Inspired by their master they
too have rejected "Bondage with ease" and chosen
- -- --- _. -.." >--*.
Whelan
"strenuous liberty" (line 271). Some of them have
apparently contracted bad-faith marriages with
American women along the way. xvii
Krouse remarks that Milton was" one of the
stalwart defenders of the literal truth of Scripture in
his age" (89). Fortunately, it is not incumbent on the
critic to pronounce on the historical truth or falsehood
of biblical narratives, still less on the nature of God,
but we areobliged, at some point of the critical
process, to strip a text of the layers of traditional
interpretation and confront its naked syntax-as
Milton himself averred. xviiiAnd we cannot, or at least
should not read this tale today, in either Milton's
version or the Deuteronomist's, without being
appalled by the silent Yahweh whose shadow lies so
menacingly on the text.
Milton's thinking, or rather, though I tremble to
suggest it, his refusal to think critically about Yahweh
appears in a number of passages in The Christian
Doctrine. In this work he combines the brave citation
of many of scripture's hardest and darkest sayings
with an absolute unwillingness to apply to them the
penetrating critical thought (reasonings!) and moral
clarity that he devotes to other aspects of his religion
and his society. In his chapter on God's Providence in
The Christian Doctrinehe writes: "God distinctly
22 Whelan 23
declares that it is himself who impels the sinner to sin,
who hardens his heart; who blinds his understanding,
and leads him into error; yet on account of the infinite
holiness of the Deity, it is not allowable to consider
him as in the smallest instance the author of sin"
(982). Such an assertion would scarcelypass muster
in federal court.
Moreover, the savage irony which so delights the
Chorus but for us reflects unpleasantly on Yahweh's
personality, Milton attributes to the deity as a normal
modusoperandi;Milton sees this kind of peripeteia as
frequently brought about by God. In TheChristian
Doctrinehe states, "Nor does God make that will evil
which before was good, but the will being already in
a state of perversion, he influences it in such a
manner, that out of its own wickedness it either
operates good for others, or punishment for itself,
though unknowingly, and with the intent of
producing a very different result" (982).
Milton further addresses the question of
deception in the.service of the Deity. While affirming
that "falsehood is not justifiable, even in the service of
God" (1068),he propounds a definition of falsehood
that he believes allows the following reservation:
"where we are not under an obligation to speak the
truth, there can be no reason why we should not,
Whelan
24
when occasion requires it, utter even what is false."
His examples of justified deceivers include Jael,
"although [Sisera] was less her personal enemy than
the enemy of God"; the assassin Ehud (Judg. 3: 19,
20), who in driving his sword into the obese belly of
King Eglon, with whom he had requested a private
audience, "acted under the command of God
himself." He also mentions the spoiling of the
Egyptians by the Israelites who "borrowed" their
neighbors' gold before leaving Egypt (Exod. 3), "for
by what obligation were they bound to keep faith
with the enemies of God. . . ?" To us, this is terrorist
rhetoric. Labeling one's enemy "the enemy of God"
and thereby absolving oneself of the requirement of
moral behavior towards that enemy, has led in our
time as throughout history to the worst excesses both
of terrorism and of counter-terrorism.
Milton did not, I believe, ignore the dark comers
of this sinister story, though the axioms of his faith
made it impossible for him to subject Yahweh to the
rigorous moral scrutiny that sheds so much light on
other aspects of the tale. Yet reflected light falls on
Yahweh, nonetheless, so that through Milton's
window a secular humanist critic perceives Samson
as the prototype of the suicide bomber, and Yahweh
the patient but inexorable Osama who launches him
Whelan 25
at the infidel. Ironically, a reflection which might
have saved Samson, the Philistines, the highjackers
and the victims of 9/11, not to mention thousands of
soldiers and civilians in Iraq, is hurled by Samson at
Delilah:
To please thy gods thou didst it; gods unable
To acquit themselves and prosecute their
foes
But by ungodly deeds, the contradiction
Of their own deity, Gods cannot be.
(lines 895-99)
Krouse, who argues that Milton "invited his
readers to think of Samson as a model of virtue, as a
hero, as a champion of God, as a saint, a martyr, and a
counterpart of Christ" (124),nevertheless sees
Samson's story in Judges as uniquely "fraught with
the hard vindictiveness of ancient Hebraism" (12). It
is surely to be expected, then, that Milton and his
readers should have to live with contradictions, real
or apparent. It must be acknowledged, however, that
the problems outlined here are not problems at all to
Milton's implied reader, who. shares Milton's faith
that the Bible is literally true, that God is infinitely
good, and that any contradictions generated by these
two propositions are apparent, not real, though not
necessarily amenable to human reason. The
 Whelan 27
Whelan 26

humanist, however, perceives real contradictions in a
wo.rk that relies on the reader to believe that God is
infinitely good and shows him acting like a terrorist.
Notes
i Milton's Samson and the Christian Tradition, chapters 3-5.
Ix Empedocles205. Fragment369concernsthe fate of murderers: "Thereis an
utterance of Necessity, an ancient decree of the gods, eternal, sealed fast with
broad oaths. . . thrice ten thousand seasons shall he wander apart from the
blessed, being born meantime in all sorts of mortal forms, changing one bitter
path of life for another. For mighty Air pursues him Seaward, and Sea spews him
forth on the threshold of Earth, and Earth casts him into the rays of the
unwearying Sun, and Sun into the eddies of Air; one receives him from the other,
and all hate him."

U Toward Samson Agonistes, part m. "Samson Agonistes and Milton's Politics": . Chap. m "Of Divine Decrees," especially p. 930.
"The first three acts of Samson Agonistes describe in terms of Samson's failure, the xlWilliam Parker has carefully worked through the influence of Greek tragedy on
failure of the English people" (114). Samson Agonistes and Douglas Bush has suggested that the structure of Milton's
work is closely modeled on that of Prometheus Bound.

III The Samson Optiol1, Chapter 10.

IvHe does not know, as we do who have read Judges, that. the Philistines told
Delilah that they wanted "to bind him to afflict him" (KJV 16:5); though that
affliction was not specified. Judges nowhere states that De1iIah was Samson's
wife.
xUFor Milton on free will, see Paradise Lost m: 99-102; X: 43-47. Also "Of
Christian Doctrine" 923ff.
>dOAlluding to Marvell's poem, Radzinowicz remarks, "Milton's Samson, unlike
his biblical source, is no spiteful groper" (27On);he does not seek mere personal
revenge.

v Radzinowicz (212-13) believes that the lines, "Such pardon therefore as I give
my folly/rake to thy wicked deed" (825-26) signify that Samson in some xlv Krouse cites Augustine who justifies, or denies the right to question, Samson's
measure forgives both Delilah and himself. But it seems to me that he forgives suicide and his murders as they were "actions done 'divinitus iussae' and in
neither, and that his reply is merely sarcastic. obedience to God's will" (Krouse 37; Augustine De Tempore Barbarico, Pat. Lat.
XL, 39f.). Again, a luxury denied to the secular critic. Krouse cites other church
vi Krouse believes that her angry retort to Samson shows that "all her previous fathers who believed that Samson had sinned (38).
remarks were fraudulent" (128). I disagree; she has been rejected and wants to
leave with her head high. . xv Krouse discusses the meaning of agonand agonistesat length in chap. VI,
section 4 (108 ff.). He notes the connotations of struggle both physical and
vIIMilton's prefatory" Argument" states plainly that Samson killed himse1f "by spiritual/mental that make it appropriate to Samson. He remarks that
accident" (405). "Augustine [in DeAgone Christiano]described Christian life as a holy war, or
contest, against evil" (117). The Arabic words jihad and mujahid (one engaged in
vIIIThat the morality or otherwise of Samson's suicide was a live issue in the 17'" jihad) are the close equivalents of agonand agonistes respectively.
century is documented by Krouse (75). John Donne weighed in on the issue in
Biathanatos (1644), opining that Samson had "the same reason to kill himselfe, xviHephaestus to Prometheus: "Power newly won is always harsh" (21).
which hee had to kill [Philistines), and the same authoritie, and the same
priviledge, and safeguard from sinne," dying "with the same zeal as Christ." xvIIThough not specifically for the purpose of causing strife between Muslims and
(Qtd. in Krouse). Christians or Arabs and (non-Arab) Americans. An article by Tim Whitmire was
Whelan Whelan 29
28

-. SamsonAgonlstes. The Student's Milton. 404-439.

posted on the CharlotteObserverwebsite for June 6, 2002, which included the
det~il that an alleged Hezbollah terrorist conspirator Chawki Hammoud, had
contracted "marriage to an American woman, designed to win him permanent
U.S. residence." There are many other such allegations on websites that are less
trustworthy. Such marriages, real or otherwise, are part of terrorism folklore in
the USA.
Parker, William Riley. Milton's Debt to Greek '('ragedy In Samson Agonistes.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1937.
Radzinowicz, Mary Ann. Toward Samson Agonistes. Princeton: PUP, 1978.
Saint-Saens, Camille. Samson et Dalila (1877). Libretto Ferdinand Lemaire. Dir.
Nicholas Joel. Conductor and introd. Julius Rudel. Perf. Placido Domingo,
Shirley Verrett. San Francisco Opera (1981). DVD. West Long Branch, NJ:
Kultur, 1981.

xvIII
Radzinowicz (158) emphasizes this point, though Milton would no doubt
have rejected any interpretation not made in the light of faith. See Radzinowicz
280.

Works Cited

Aeschylus. Prometheus Bound. Philip Vellacott, trans. PrometheusBound and Other

Plays. London: Penguin Books, 1961.
Bush, Douglas. Mythology and theRenaissanceTradition in English Poetry. Rev. ed.
New York: Norton, 1963.
DeMille, Cecile B., Dir. Samson and Delilah. Perf. Vietor Mature, Hedy Lamarr,
George Sanders. Screenplay Jesse L. Lasky, Jr., Frederic M. Frank from
original treatments by Harold Lamb, Vladimir Jabotinsky. Paramount,
1949.
Diamant, Anita. The Red Tent. New York: St. Martin's Press,1997.
Empedocles. "Empedocles Fragments and Commentary." Arthur Fairbanks, ed.
and trans. TheFirst Philosophers of Greece.London:K.Paul,Trench.
Trubner, 1898. 157-234.
Hersch. Seymour M. TheSamson Option.New York:RandomHouse, 1991.
Jabotinsky, Ze'ev (Vladimir). Samson.(1930).New York: Judaea Publishing
Company, 1986.
Krouse, F. Michael. Milton's Samson and the Christian Tradition. Princeton:PUP,
1949.
Lang, Bernhard. The Hebrew God: Portrait of an Ancient Deity. New Haven: YaleUP,
2002.
Linklater, Eric. Husband of Delilah. (1962). New York: Harcourt,Brace & World,
1963).
Milton, John. The ChristianDoctrine.Trans. Bishop Sumner. The Student's Milton. Ed.
Frank Allen Patterson. New York: Appleton CenturyCrofts, 1933. 919-
1076.
--. Paradise Lost. The Student's Milton. 159-363.