Samson

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The judges of Israel
Book of Judges

1. Book of Samuel

Simson figure in the Martinikirche in Halberstadt

Simson or Samson ( Hebrew שִׁמְשׁוֹן Shimshōn ) is a figure from the Book of Judges of the Old Testament and hero of the Israelite tribe of Dan . As a chosen one of God ( Nazarite ) , he remained invincible for the Philistines as long as he left his head hair undressed due to his indomitable strength , whereby he often defeated the oppressors of Israel. Only when he revealed this secret to his wife Delila (Dalila), who passed it on to the Philistines because of bribery, was he captured, blinded and shorn. When his hair grew back, he regained his strength and brought a Philistine temple to collapse, dragging 3,000 Philistines with him to their death. ( Ri 13.1-16.31  EU )

Surname

The Hebrew name Shimshōn is etymologically usually from Hebrew שֶׁמֶשׁׁ shemesh "sun" derived. Because of the diminutive ending -ōn, Shimshōn would be understood as "little sun, sons". In the Septuagint the name is Σαμψων Sampsōn in ancient Greek , here the two text forms of the Greek book of judges do not differ (the older was created around 200 BC in Alexandria). In the Vulgate one reads Samson .

Martin Luther's Biblia Deudsch from 1545 reproduces the name with Simson . The Catholic tradition up to 1971 ( Loccumer guidelines ) as well as translations of the Bible in other languages ​​often use Samson and are thus based on the pronunciation tradition of the Vulgate.

Samson cycle in the Book of Judges

Samson's fight with the lion. Master Leonhard von Brixen , around 1472

Samson lived at a time when the Israelites were oppressed by the Philistines because they "did (...) what was displeasing to the Lord" ( Judg 13,1  EU ). The angel of the Lord prophesied the birth of a son to the wife of the Israelite Manoach of the tribe of Dan in Zora , who was barren. In accordance with the commandments of the Nazarites , she abstained from wine and other strong drinks; the hair of their promised child should never be shorn. Samson was brought up according to the rules of Nazarism.

When he grew up to be a youth, he left the mountains of his home and visited the cities of the Philistines. There Samson fell in love with the daughter of a Philistine from Timna . He overcame his parents' objections and was allowed to marry the woman. On the way to the courtship in Timna, Samson moves away from his parents' company. He meets a lion: "The spirit of the Lord came over Samson, and Samson tore the lion with his bare hands as if he were tearing a goat" ( Judgment 14.6  EU ). On the trip to the wedding he finds a beehive in the carcass; he takes some of the honey and shares it with his parents without revealing its origin.

During the seven-day feast there was a puzzle contest between Samson and the thirty Philistine bridal companions for a valuable prize in the form of thirty festive dresses and shirts. Samson's riddle allegorizes the secret of his lion fight: "From the eater comes food, from the strong comes sweet" ( Hebrew מֵהָאֹכֵל יָצָא מַאֲכָל וּמֵעַז יָצָא מָתוֹק mēhāˀokhēl yāṣāˀ maˁăkhāl ūmēˁaz yāṣāˀ mātōḳ ) ( Ri 14,14  EU ). For three days the Philistines present were unable to solve the riddle; they eventually threatened Samson's bride with death in order to find out the answer. After her urgent and tearful inquiries, he revealed the secret to her, which she in turn betrayed to her fellow tribesmen: “And on the seventh day the men of the city said to him before the sun went down: What is sweeter than honey and what is stronger than a lion ? But he replied to them: If you had not plowed with my cow, you would not have guessed my riddle '”( Judg 14:18  EU ). Since Samson was unable to redeem the festive dresses he had promised, he went to nearby Askalon and there killed thirty men and robbed their festive dresses.

Delilah shears Samson's hair (copper engraving)

Returning to Timna later, Samson found his wife by their father, according to a custom, married to the groom leader. Her father forbade him to see her and instead suggested that Samson marry her sister. Samson became angry and drove a horde of panicked foxes, whose tails were set on fire, through the fields of the Philistines, burning them down. When the Philistines realized that the cause of this destruction was the kidnapping of Samson's wife by her father, they burned down his house and residents. After a dispute with the Philistines, Samson withdrew to the shelter of the Etam rift .

The blinding of Samson (painting by Rembrandt van Rijn , Städelsches Kunstinstitut , Frankfurt a. M. )
Motif on the choir stalls in Montbenoît

A Philistine army broke up and demanded that the residents of Judas surrender Samson. Thereupon 3,000 men fetched Simson from Judah, whom they tied with two new ropes with his consent and delivered. At the handover, however, he tore the ropes and then killed 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey. Then Samson was Israel's judge for twenty years .

The Book of Judges Chapter 16 describes the fateful end of Samson. He went to Gaza and fell in love with Delilah by the Sorek Stream . The Philistines urged Delilah to find out the secret of Samson's strength. Eventually she found out that this established in his hair and she betrayed him. Samson had his hair shorn off and then he was captured by the Philistines, blinded and used as a blind man to grind grain, actually a typical work of female slaves, which was considered particularly dishonorable (cf. Is 47.2  EU ).

When 3000 Philistines once gathered in their great hall, they sent for Samson to amuse themselves with the helpless prisoner. Samson's end is described in the Bible as follows:

“ 27 But the house was full of men and women. All the princes of the Philistines were there too, and on the roof were about three thousand men and women who watched Samson play his jokes. 28 But Samson called on the Lord and said, Lord Lord, think of me and give me strength, God, one more time, that I may once again take revenge on the Philistines for both of my eyes. 29 And he took hold of the two central pillars on which the house rested, one with his right hand and the other with his left hand, and braced himself against them, 30 and said, I will die with the Philistines. And he bowed with all his might. Then the house fell on the princes and on all the people that were in it, so that there were more dead whom he killed by his death than those he had killed in his lifetime. "

- ( Ri 16,27ff  LUT )

Reception, interpretation and evaluation of the Simson myth

Samson is considered an ambivalent figure who has been judged very differently by different authors in Judaism and Christian theology . Some are more likely to highlight his great deeds, some more to highlight his sins. In the letter to Hebrews 11 : 32–34 EU , he is mentioned in the same group as great believers like David , Samuel and the prophets .

There are references to older models from the ancient oriental culture , for example “[...] cylinder seal pictures [n] of the 3rd millennium show a hero with lion skin, bow and club, who overcomes monsters, lions, dragons, birds of prey; he is identified either as Ninurta or Ningirsu , son of the storm god Enlil ”. Parallels to other mythical heroes such as Oedipus , Heracles and Achilles , but also to Siegfried, the dragon slayer of Nordic mythology, emerge.

The lion fight in the seal of the former University of Helmstedt

Samson's fight with the lion is a popular image in early Christian and medieval art for Christ conquering death in the form of the lion, and at the same time an allegory of fortitude (strength). The Paris stained glass window Samson's Fight with the Lion is on display today in the Musée national du Moyen Âge . The former University of Helmstedt shows this fight in its coat of arms.

The portrayal of Simson and Delilah first appeared in Northern European art as a moral doctrine; B. in the woodcut series of love follies by Hans Burgkmair . The subject, which was initially widespread in graphics and decorative art, was first discovered north of the Alps by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the first half of the 16th century . Ä. transferred to painting.

The depth psychology sees in Samson among other things the conflict about the mother complex in the context of the archetypal hero myth. The young student Erich Neumann typifies him in the context of an origin story of consciousness as a failing “freedom sun hero ”: “The chimshon consecrated to YHWH , with its instinctuality, lapses into the Dalila- Astarte : His fate is then fulfilled, it means: hair shearing, blinding and loss of the YHWH power ”. This corresponds to the "upper castration" as the loss of the spiritual masculinity of the masculine principle that develops in the conflict with the Great Mother (Dalila-Astarte). Samson's fate corresponds to the archetypal development of the hero on the stage of "killing the mother", the "fight with the dragon". His self-sacrifice heralds the victory of the patriarchal YHWH principle.

The Germanist Bernhard Greiner reconstructs the Simson reception as a “ primal scene of intercultural conflict” and a model of Jewish fate in 20th century literature, especially in Elias Canetti's work .

David Grossman's lion honey is in this tradition : Grossman interprets Simson as a prototype of a suicide bomber . Arata Takeda deepens this interpretation, which emerged in the course of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in connection with the military-theoretical discussion about terrorism as a strategy of asymmetrical warfare and in comparison with the early modern processing of the Samson myth in John Milton's dramatic poem Samson Agonistes .

Simson figures in today's time

The giant Simson from Unternberg im Lungau

There are twelve Samson figures in the inner-alpine region , ten in Salzburg's Lungau and two of them in Styria . Another of these giant figures appears at the Ducasse d'Ath city ​​festival in Ath , Belgium.

Since, according to the Old Testament, Samson is said to have killed a thousand Philistines with a donkey jawbone near Lehi, almost every Samson from Lungau carries such a jawbone with him. Many myths, legends and conjectures now entwine around the giant figure. The annual accounts of the Corporis Christi Brotherhood of Tamsweg from the period from 1720 to 1769, in which the remuneration for "food and drink" for the wearer is listed, can be used to prove these giant figures for this period.

In Villingen-Schwenningen in the Black Forest , many legends were formed about the Villinger Samson named Romäus, a huge Villingen mercenary who u. a. Stolen the city gates from the neighboring, rival city of Rottweil and carried them to Villingen up a mountain, just as Samson once stole the city gates in the city of Gaza and carried them up to Mount Hebron (Judges 16: 1-3).

Work overview of the reception

Samson Fountain in Ceske Budejovice
Giambologna: Samson kills a Philistine
Victoria and Albert Museum , London

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Simson  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Samson and Deliah  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Samson . In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen (eds.): The scientific biblical lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), 2007ff.
  2. ^ Judges 13:24 Septuagint
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Kraus, Martin Karrer (Ed.): Septuaginta German. The Greek Old Testament in German translation. German Bible Society, Stuttgart 2009, p. 243. 277.
  4. ↑ Judges 13:24 Vulgate
  5. ↑ Martin Luther: Die gantze Heilige Schrifft Deudsch , Wittenberg 1545. Ed. By Hans Volz , Munich 1972, Volume 1, p. 480.
  6. ^ Judges 24, 13 Allioli
  7. ^ Biblical text: Lutherbibel mit Apokrypha, revised 1984
  8. ↑ cf. W. Burkert: Greek religion of the archaic and classical epoch. 1977, p. 319 ff.
  9. ↑ Bruno Bushart : Treasures from the art collections of the city of Augsburg. Himmer, Augsburg 1967, p. 60.
  10. ^ Dieter Koepplin , Tilman Falk: Lukas Cranach. Paintings, drawings, prints. Volume 2. Birkhäuser, Basel et al. 1976, ISBN 3-7643-0708-0 , pp. 573-574, no. 471.
  11. ↑ cf. Erich Neumann : History of the origin of consciousness (= Fischer 42042). With a foreword by CG Jung . 4th edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-596-42042-3 , p. 132. The interpretation of E. Neumann is presented by Rolf Kaufmann in: The crisis of the efficient. The ancient Pharisee in the understanding of depth psychology ( Memento of May 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (see para. 155 there).
  12. ↑ According to Neumann, the hero myth consists of 1. The birth of the hero , 2. the killing of the mother and 3. the killing of the father . Cf. Erich Neumann: Original History of Consciousness (= Fischer 42042). With a foreword by CG Jung. 4th edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-596-42042-3 , pp. 111-157
  13. ↑ Cf. Philistines over you, Samson! In: Bernhard Greiner : The circumcision of the heart. Constellations of German-Jewish literature (= Makom. Series of publications by the Franz Rosenzweig Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Vol. 3). Fink, Paderborn 2004, ISBN 3-7705-4006-9 , pp. 269-292.
  14. ↑ Cf. Arata Takeda: Aesthetics of Self-Destruction. Suicide bombers in Western literature . Munich 2010, p. 31 and Pp. 113-179.
  15. ↑ Allmusic.Retrieved November 11, 2015.
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