Samson, the Nazirite boy

Once Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute and went in to her. The Gazites were told, “Samson has come here!” So they encircled the place and lay in wait for him all night at the city gate. They kept quiet all night, thinking, “Let us wait until the light of the morning; then we will kill him.” But Samson lay only until midnight. Then at midnight he rose up, took hold of the doors of the city gate and the two posts, pulled them up, bar and all, put them on his shoulders, and carried them to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron. After this he fell in love with a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.

Here is a riddle,

yet I cannot answer it.

If God created all things

why are some of them forbidden?

 

I have found goodness in the unclean things:

pure water in a bone, honey in a carcass,

justice in the fiery tails of panicked jackals,

joy in the limbs of a foreign harlot,

 

and with the strength of my spirit

I‘ve carried the gates of her town

up this hill, before Hebron,

spread them open on hallowed ground,

an affront to the graves of Sarah and Abraham.

 

Now I will take your daughter Delilah

to the watery valley in which you raised her,

share my strength like heat through silver.

 

But first, another riddle,

and I cannot answer it.

If God is in all things

how can he be so distant?

 

Mother named me Samson – “Sun-man”;

so, I do not sense God in penitence

like my tired, old, fearful father,

pulling his goat to another altar,

 

it’s when I’m hot and heroic,

fiery in spirit, madly angelic

that I see God’s face.

 

If only this were a Philistine temple,

I would stretch out my arms,

look up at their icons of Baal and Dagon

and bury us all beneath all the sins,

the delightful recollections of the unclean things.

 

Time for one more riddle,

and I can answer it.

When my damp cold, religious father,

watched his sacrifice burn on an altar,

praying for I to absolve his failure,

where was God’s angel?

 

In the sad popping eyes of his shepherded goat?

It was in the flame, the flickering joy of a gladly burning,

gladly dying, blind, tormented, lonely, loveless flame!

 

2025