Esther and Samson

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I grew up thinking of Samson as nothing more than a Hebrew Hercules and Esther as just another pretty young queen. Later in life, I recognized there was something more to these two characters: By transcending the limits of their own personalities and circumstances, both underwent an amazing spiritual transformation. Each moved from psychological immaturity and self-absorption to accepting responsibility for the larger good—even at the risk of death. Esther and Samson were not mere celebrities, as I had long suspected, but true biblical heroes.

Celebrities are primarily concerned with visibility, with their own well-being and with fame. We live in a culture awash in the idolization of celebrity. Good looks, athletic prowess, even a public scandal, will transform an individual into a darling of the media, Madison Avenue and political leaders. But celebrities come and go; their shelf life is fleeting.

A hero, on the other hand, risks life or well-being for a greater cause or to save another person. The hero’s unusual and courageous act will inspire others to follow in his or her footsteps. It is in this context that I find Esther’s and Samson’s stories so poignant and moving.

Esther was an orphan, part of the exiled Jewish community living in Persia in the fifth century B.C.E. Adopted by her uncle Mordecai, she matured into a beauty who caught the eye of King Ahasuerus’s courtiers during a beauty pageant. “Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus, in his royal palace…and the king loved Esther more than all the other women” (Esther 2:16–17). However, “Esther did not reveal her kindred or her people, as Mordecai had instructed her” (Esther 2:20). Thus Esther, the beautiful virgin, had little say over her life: She depended entirely 022on her uncle Mordecai and obeyed his commands. Esther survived by pleasing and appeasing those on whom she depended.

In the king’s house, Esther is placed under the auspices of Hegai, “guardian of the women.” We read that Esther “asked for nothing but what Hegai, the king’s eunuch, guardian of the women, advised” (Esther 2:15). Also “that she pleased him [Hegai] and won his favor…and he treated her and her maids with special kindness in the harem” (Esther 2:9).

Esther became the favorite of the king and a celebrity both in the court and among the community of Jewish exiles. But her status and fame depended solely on her ability to please and amuse the king, who could summarily banish her or worse, at any time, out of boredom, anger or caprice. She lacked an identity of her own, for Mordecai had told her not to reveal her Jewishness.

These are the circumstances of Esther’s life when an event occurs that has the potential to transform her. Esther has the opportunity to take a great risk, one that she knows might bear a heavy price—her life. She accepts the challenge in order to save her people.

Mordecai informs Esther that Haman, the king’s minister, has masterminded a plan “to destroy, massacre and exterminate all the Jews, young and old, children and women, on a single day” (Esther 3:13). Without realizing that it is the Jews that Haman plans to attack, the king agrees, telling Haman: “The people are yours to do with as you see fit” (Esther 3:11). As a result, “There was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting, weeping, and wailing, and everybody lay in sackcloth and ashes” (Esther 4:3).

The give-and-take that follows between Esther and Mordecai is reminiscent of conversations that must have taken place within the Jewish community in Germany in the 1930s. A “spiritual urgency,” as Robert Alter calls it, has crept into their lives. Uncle Mordecai charges Esther “to go to the king and to appeal to him and to plead with him for her people” (Esther 4:8). Esther replies, “If any person, man or woman, enters the king’s presence in the inner court without having been summoned, there is but one law for him—that he be put to death” (Esther 4:11).

Mordecai’s response is harsh, swift and passionate: “Do not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the king’s palace. On the contrary, if you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter, while you and your father’s house will perish” (Esther 4:13–14). He then adds an opaque, deeply religious query, “Who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis” (Esther 4:14).

Esther is by now fully conscious of the enormous risk she is about to undertake. Her response to Mordecai is heart wrenching: “Go, assemble all the Jews who live in Shushan, and fast in my behalf; do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maidens will observe the same fast. Then I shall go to the king, though it is contrary to the law; if I perish, I perish!” (Esther 4:16).

Esther has now evolved from a passive object, always at the mercy of others, into a full-blown heroine, prepared to face death to save her people. In her early days, all decisions were made for Esther: She was orphaned, adopted and then placed in a king’s harem. Now, however, Esther plots, plans and strategizes to use her position in the harem to best effect. She will employ the only means available to countless mistresses, concubines and geishas like her—food and sex.

Esther arranges a two-day “banquet of wine,” to which she invites the king. At the feast, the king is in a merry frame of mind and, presumably, quite inebriated. He addresses Esther with the famous line “What is your wish, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to half 023the kingdom, it shall be fulfilled” (Esther 7:2). She seizes the moment and petitions the king to save her people, pointing out Haman as the one who planned the massacre. Esther accomplishes what she set out to do: Her people will be saved, and Haman will be “impaled on the stake for scheming against the Jews” (Esther 8:7).

Esther is transformed into a biblical heroine because she is ready to move beyond the familiarity and safety of court life in support of a moral cause. The preservation of her exiled community takes precedence over the preservation of her own life. Had Esther remained the mere winner of a beauty pageant, she never would have inhabited our memories or captured our imagination.

Samson’s journey from celebrity to heroism follows a different course. He evolves in a way that is consistent with his character and his unique physical attributes.

It is not until the very last chapter of Samson’s short life that he breaks out of the narrow confines of his narcissism and becomes a true biblical hero. In a single harrowing moment, he gives, in Lincoln’s words, “the full measure of devotion,” redeeming himself as God’s choice to liberate his people from the Philistine yoke.

Samson was born to a previously barren couple of the tribe of Dan. Before his birth, an angel of the Lord appeared to his mother in a field and said, “You are barren and have borne no children; but you shall conceive and bear a son. Now be careful not to drink wine or any other intoxicant, or to eat anything unclean. For you are going to conceive and bear a son; let no razor touch his head, for the boy is to be a Nazirite to God from the womb on. He shall be the first to deliver Israel from the Philistines” (Judges 13:3–5).

Thus Samson had been chosen by God for a heroic role. He was destined not only to be a Nazarite—an Israelite who took a special vow of ritual purity—but also to rescue his people from the warlike Philistines. But did he have the right stuff? Would he ever be ready to dedicate his life to saving the Israelite tribes?

One can easily imagine Samson as an only son, growing up with the indulgent and consuming love of elderly, doting parents who had long yearned for a child. Their love is reminiscent of the kind of love Jacob felt for Joseph, “the son of his old age” (Genesis 37:3). Few limitations seem to have been set on these sons, who were so special to their parents.

The first conflict between Samson and his parents erupts around his choice of a wife. Like many 024an immature and self-absorbed teenager, he behaves impulsively and impatiently: “Once Samson went down to Timnah, and while in Timnah, he noticed a girl among the Philistine women. On his return, he told his father and mother, ‘I noticed one of the Philistine women in Timnah; please get her for me as a wife.’ His father and mother said to him, ‘Is there no one among the daughters of your own kinsmen and among all our people, that you must go and take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?’ But Samson answered his father, ‘Get me that one, for she is the one that pleases me’” (Judges 14:1–3).

Oddly, we are told that Samson “judged Israel for twenty years” (Judges 15:20). Yet we never see him acting as a leader of his people—or even with his own people. He seems to be a loner, alienated from his Danite peers. He spends time with Philistine youths, with whom he carries on a hate-love relationship. He either parties with them or carries out one-man ambushes against them. He cannot keep away from their coastal towns, which were perhaps livelier than those of Dan, which was among the poorest of the Israelite tribes. And he cannot keep away from their forbidden women.

All along, this overgrown juvenile with a thick, long mane of hair is acutely aware that he is “different.” In a telling episode, while he is walking with his mother and father, he comes across a roaming lion, and “the spirit of the Lord gripped him, and he tore him asunder with his bare hands as one might tear a kid asunder; but he did not tell his father and mother what he had done” (Judges 14:6). Samson has not yet grown into the role God has chosen for him and seems conflicted and self-conscious about the unique qualities he possesses.

In the last stage of Samson’s life his ambivalence, impulsiveness and fatal attraction to the enemy’s women come to a crescendo. Will he live up to the destiny chosen for him by God? Or will he remain a narcissistic celebrity, famous for his lone acts of daring, causing profound anxiety to his parents and tribe?

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“And it came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek whose name was Delilah” (Judges 16:4). Delilah’s feelings, however, are strictly mercenary. The Philistine lords strike a deal with her: “Coax him and find out what makes him so strong, and how we can overpower him, tie him up, and make him helpless; and we’ll each give you eleven hundred shekels of silver” (Judges 16:5). A taunting, teasing and humiliating cat-and-mouse game ensues between Samson and Delilah.

Samson is hopelessly in love with Delilah but never really trusts her. Over and over she begs him to relinquish the secret of his God-given gift. “Finally, after she had nagged him and pressed him constantly, he was wearied to death and he confided everything to her. He said to her, ‘No razor has ever touched my head, for I have been a Nazarite to God since I was in my mother’s womb. If my hair were cut, my strength would leave me and I should become as weak as an ordinary man’” (Judges 16:16–17). By telling his secret, Samson has, in effect, sold his birthright in exchange for fleeting pleasure.

As he lies sleeping in Delilah’s lap, his locks are shaven, and his extraordinary strength melts away. We read that “the Lord had departed from him” (Judges 16:20). Samson had been given a special gift, and he abused it. While he is in this weakened state, the Philistines pounce on him, gouge out his eyes, shackle him in bronze fetters and make him a slave in their prison.

Samson has few options. One is to beg God for mercy to save his life. Another is to take his own life. A third is to endure imprisonment and, presumably, eventual death at the hands of his captors. He then 047would die having failed to play his assigned role “to deliver Israel from the Philistines.” Samson’s very last option is to choose how he will die. By deciding to sacrifice his life for the greater good, Samson gives meaning to his life and death and leaves a legacy of freedom and heroism to the Israelite tribes.

In celebration of Samson’s capture, the Philistines offer a sacrifice at a temple dedicated to their god Dagon. They summon Samson from the prison to come dance amidst the howling and jeering crowd of 3,000 men and women. At this grim moment, Samson accepts the consequences of his life of impulsiveness and high-risk behavior, and with one act of courage, he reverses his past. Rather than acting impulsively, Samson now carefully plans his next step. Samson turns to the lad that has led him by hand from the prison and says, “Let go of me and let me feel the pillars that the temple rests upon, that I may lean on them” (Judges 16:26). Aware that he can no longer rely on his physical strength, a blind Samson calls out to God for spiritual support: “O Lord God! Please remember me, and give me strength just this once, O God, to take revenge of the Philistines, if only for one of my two eyes” (Judges 16:28). What great faith he must have had that God would answer his prayer “this once.”

Samson wants to avenge the loss of his ability to carry out God’s mandate to prevail over Israel’s enemy. He knows that his strength—which he regains as his hair grows back—is useless if he cannot see. His humiliation is symbolic of his people’s humiliation. But in these final moments he transcends the limits of his personality and emerges as the hero, the liberator of his people. With a last piercing cry to God—“Let me die with the Philistines!”—he pulls with all his might. “The temple came crashing down on the lords and on all the people in it. Those who were slain by him as he died outnumbered those who had been slain by him when he lived” (Judges 16:30).

As a celebrity famous for his physical prowess he would not have figured in the biblical narrative. But with his last conscious act, Samson is transformed into a hero who captures our imagination to this very day.

Esther and Samson’s personal journeys remind us, as Robert Alter writes, that “the Biblical tale, through the most rigorous economy of means, leads us again and again to ponder complexities of motive and ambiguities of character, because these are essential aspects of its vision of man, created by God, enjoying or suffering the consequences of human freedom.”¹

God’s presence is clearly manifested in the angel’s message to Samson’s mother: “You shall conceive and bear a son…he shall be the first to deliver Israel from the Philistines.” In Esther’s story, God’s presence is alluded to only when Mordecai muses “Who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis.”

Why were these two young people chosen? How was it known that they would, in the last analysis, live up to the task at hand?

Rabbi Akiva (c. 45–135 C.E.) sums it all up in the laconic phrase “All is foreseen, yet man is given free choice.”

I grew up thinking of Samson as nothing more than a Hebrew Hercules and Esther as just another pretty young queen. Later in life, I recognized there was something more to these two characters: By transcending the limits of their own personalities and circumstances, both underwent an amazing spiritual transformation. Each moved from psychological immaturity and self-absorption to accepting responsibility for the larger good—even at the risk of death. Esther and Samson were not mere celebrities, as I had long suspected, but true biblical heroes. Celebrities are primarily concerned with visibility, with their own well-being and with fame. We […]