The Bible as Mirror: Trump and Samson

The figure of Samson in the Hebrew Bible presents a portrait more influenced by lore than by careful reading of the text in the book of Judges. Two operas, based somewhat loosely on the biblical tale, make the point. In Handel’s “Samson,” (1743) the titular hero is presented as already blinded due to the treachery of his wife, Delilah. In the second act of three, she tries to convince Samson that she is sorry for what has happened to him, but he rejects her completely. Finally, as in the biblical account, Samson pulls down the temple of Dagon, killing both himself and many of the Philistine enemy. At the end of the opera, Samson is hailed as a hero for Israel and for God. In a later opera, Camille Saint-Saens’ “Samson and Delilah” (1877) pushed the religious theme even further. Samson is presented from first to last as heroic and deeply religious. Before his final destruction of Dagon’s temple, he sings a mighty prayer to God, asking for strength enough to destroy God’s enemies and offering himself as a martyr for the faith of Israel. The temple collapses on stage, partly as the result of the hero’s huge high B-flat that ends the piece! It is thrilling, of course, but has less to do with the Bible than with romantic religious ideas from both the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

The Bible presents a far more problematic Samson. He is a purely folkloric hero, endowed with massive strength but equally massive lust for women, coupled with massive stupidity. In short, Samson is rather more a lusty dumb brute than a religious hero. The folk tale of Judges 13-16 is forced into the straight jacket of that book’s later religious pattern: Israel is protected by YHWH, but then sins and is given over by that same YHWH to an enemy. Then YHWH raises up a hero to defeat the enemy, but soon Israel falls back into sin, and the entire grievous pattern occurs again. Samson plays the role of hero in this pattern, but there are several flaws that this “hero” too readily demonstrates. He is a demanding, child-like figure who first tells his parents that he desires a Philistine woman that he has seen in Timnah. Though they try to convince him otherwise (“Is there no woman among your own people?”), he persists that the Philistine is the only one for him, because “she pleases me.” In other words, I will have her, no matter what you or anyone else says.

At the marriage feast for Samson and the unnamed Philistine, he sets a riddle for the wedding guests, having to do with a lion he has just slaughtered and its carcass filled with bees. The guests wring the answer to the riddle out of Samson’s terrified wife, and proudly solve the riddle. The enraged Samson, who himself had revealed the answer to his wife, crudely announces to the guests, “If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would never have solved my riddle.” In other words, if you had not slept with my wife, you would not have known the right answer. The price of solving the riddle was thirty festival garments. To pay off his debt, Samson went out and murdered 30 innocent people, stole their garments, and handed them to the conniving wedding guests.

Later, Samson goes to visit his wife, but is not allowed to see her, because her father, believing that the brute had rejected her over the wedding bet, tries to offer her younger sister to him instead. Samson will have none of that, but catches 300 foxes, ties them tail to tail, sets fire to them, and turns them loose in the vineyards and olive groves of the Philistines, causing enormous damage to their crops. In response, the furious Philistines attempt to capture the man, but they fail in every attempt.

This leads to the infamous scene with the Philistine beauty, Delilah. Knowing that Samson has a decided weakness for Philistine women, the elders of the Philistines hire Delilah to lure Samson to his destruction. She does so with pleasure, playing on Samson’s animal-like stupidity to gain his deepest secret, namely the origin of his strength. Even after three obvious attempts to wheedle the secret from him, the fool finally tells all—it is his hair!—and he is overpowered by the Philistines, blinded, and set to work in the dungeons of the Philistine capital.

But the Philistines seem no smarter than their stupid victim, because hair, after all, does grow back, and over time Samson regains his strength. Thus strengthened again, when he is led out to be made fun of by his Philistine captors, he pushes the temple pillars apart, causing the building to fall in, killing the Philistines along with himself in the rubble. But why? Samson’s prayer before his final act of brute strength is instructive. In that prayer, he does not ask YHWH for strength to destroy Israel’s enemies, or for strength to praise the power of YHWH among the people. He prays, “YHWH God, strengthen me this once so that with this one act of revenge, I may pay back the Philistines for one of my two eyes” (Judges 16:28)! It is an astonishingly self-centered, narcissistic demand, having little or nothing to do with God at all. Revenge is the motive, pure and simple.

And that at last brings us to Donald Trump. Like Samson, Trump is enamored with women, and has used them nearly his entire life, thinking that his wealth and power can get him whatever he wants in that regard. “Get her, for she pleases me well” could be one of The Donald’s chief mottos. Like Samson, Trump demonstrates rank stupidity in the face of complex questions. Strength and power are all. If an issue is many sided, Trump just says, “Do it,” without weighing or noting any painful consequences of his actions. He can fire his FBI director, imagining that all will like the move, since he likes it. The uproar this action has caused surprised Trump, but hardly phased his ridiculous notion that all he does is perfect. And he is like Samson in that his every action primarily is self-serving. This very day, June 13, 2017, the news reporters were allowed to witness a cabinet meeting beginning where every single member of the cabinet in turn did not speak of their work as a cabinet member, but rather spent the bulk of their time fawningly praising the power and glory of their boss, who sat in near silence, glowing in the spate of praise falling from his minion’s lips. It was both astonishing and disgusting at the same time. It is all about Donald Trump all of the time. He has nothing on Samson for sheer self-grandeur and self-praise.

After now four months of this incredible freak show in Washington, we can only hope that the emboldened narcissistic child currently occupying the White House will not end by pulling down the pillars of government, or the entire world, out of some vindictive pique over a slight or a refusal to bow down far enough to a man who seems more and more like a dictator rather than a US president.

These “Bible as Mirror” columns have helped me deal with my own feelings of horror and outrage at what this appalling administration has done and proposes to do. In these 15 or so essays I have tried to indicate how our ancient Bible can offer us a guide to understand better this terrible man, because it has presented to us men just like him eons ago. This will be my last of these rants for now, though I will not promise that another figure might rise from my Bible reading who offers more insight for us. Suffice it to say that we need God now more than ever to strengthen us in order to combat this idiot who threatens so much of what so many of us hold dear. As an article in the New York Times made clear yesterday, the word “idiot” had a very specific meaning in the ancient world of the Greeks. It meant a person uniquely ill equipped for the job he/she was given to do. The original intention of the word had less to do with intelligence, or the lack thereof, but with the abilities needed to aid the common good, rather than only one’s own good. That is Donald Trump to a tee; an ill equipped man who cares little or nothing for the common good. God help us survive such a man! God be with us as we work hard to stave off the idiotic foolishness of this terrible man!