Samson et Dalila

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Few biblical women seem more scandalous than Delilah. A harlot and a temptress, she uses her beauty and her wiles to ensnare the mighty Samson. A great deceiver, she tricks her lover into revealing the secret source of his strength. For selling that secret to Samson’s Philistine enemies, she is thought of as a betrayer or even a mercenary. And in the pages of BR, she was even portrayed as a master spy.¹

It may be exciting to think of Delilah as some kind of Iron Age femme fatale, and Samson as the powerful hero she brings down. But as is so often the case when interpreting a biblical story or ascribing motives to its characters, there is surprisingly little in the Bible itself to go on. Much of our modern picture of Delilah and Samson, in fact, comes instead from later art, literature 014and music inspired by the tragic but terse account of Israel’s amorous twelfth judge.²

One of the most complex and intriguing modern adaptations is Camille Saint-Saëns’s opera Samson et Dalila, which removes certain ambiguities of the biblical text while complicating the compact story sketched in Judges 16. Like other reinterpretations of the tale, the opera depicts Delilah as alluring and exotic and evil, and Samson as the tragic hero. But the opera also recasts the biblical narrative as a story of rival religions and a conflict between faith and passion. A careful comparison of the operatic and biblical tales helps us see just how Samson and Delilah’s story was adapted throughout history. At the same time, it helps us better understand what the Bible is trying to tell us about this famous couple.

One of France’s greatest, yet most underrated, composers, Saint-Saëns began working on the Samson and Delilah story as an oratorio in 1867. He was inspired by a libretto (now lost) that Voltaire had written for another great composer, Jean Philippe Rameau. However, due to the lack of musical understanding and low tolerance for biblical subjects in 19th-century France, Saint-Saëns only scored Act Two before giving it up. Five years later he took up the subject again, this time as an opera with an original libretto written by Ferdinand Lemaire, a Creole poet from Martinique (and the husband of one of Saint-Saëns’s cousins).

In 1876, Saint-Saëns completed the project. Due to the musically conservative climate in France at this time, the first performance of his progressive opera did not take place there.³ The great pianist Franz Liszt had heard the piece, and used his influence to have it premiered in Weimar in December 1877. France saw no performances of the work until 1892, when it finally played at the Paris Opéra. Since then, Samson et Dalila has established itself in the common repertoire and as one of Saint-Saëns’s most beloved works.⁴

As with other musical adaptations of the Bible, the characters and situations in Saint-Saëns’s three-act opera have been expanded and changed dramatically from their compact biblical source.^a

In the Bible, Samson is a ladies’ man, a bumbling oaf and a brute. Samson’s story begins in Judges 14, when he spies an attractive Philistine woman and tells his parents, “Get her for me, because she pleases me” (Judges 14:3). His parents comply. The couple marries and Samson promises his wife’s townsfolk that he will shower them with gifts if they answer a riddle. The townsmen secretly urge the wife to ferret out the answer. She weeps and nags, and Samson gives in. But when he returns to her town and finds that the townsmen have “solved” the riddle, he accuses them of using his wife to trick/deceive him: “If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle” (Judges 14:18). He then kills 30 Philistines and leaves his wife, who meets a gruesome end in 15:6. After his famous escapade with a donkey’s jawbone in chapter 15, Samson visits a prostitute in Gaza (Judges 16:1). Three verses later, he falls “in love” with Delilah 015(Judges 16:4). We are not told why he is enamored with her.⁵

In some ways, it is difficult to understand why Samson is included among the biblical judges. It is true that the Samson cycle does not fit neatly with the other stories in Judges. In fact, his story was probably edited into that book at a late date. Even so, Samson is twice called a judge (Judges 15:20 and 16:31). Further, in the last scene, Samson brings down the pillars of the Philistine temple—thus sacrificing his own life in order to kill Israel’s Philistine oppressors. This act seems to be born primarily from personal vengeance and secondarily from religious faith (see 16:28), but it nevertheless establishes Samson’s place among the judges.

Unlike the biblical Samson, Saint-Saëns’s male lead is no foolhardy ladies’ man, weakened by love. Instead, he is a prophet, a military champion and a priest with great depth and dignity. This is established clearly in Act One, Scene One, of the opera, when Samson speaks to the Hebrews with the voice of God and convinces them not to lose faith in Jehovah (a corrupt form of Yahweh, the name of the Israelite God): “Miserable Wretches, be quiet! Your lack of faith is a blasphemy! Let us implore on our knees the Lord who loves us! Place again in his hands the care of our glory, and then gird up our loins, sure of our victory! He is the God of battles! He is the God of hosts! He will arm you with invincible swords!”⁶

Scene Two of the opera frames the Samson and Delilah saga as a rivalry between competing religions. Abimelech, the satrap of Philistine Gaza, comes forth and questions the power of the Hebrew God compared with that of his own god, Dagon. Imbued with the power and voice of Jehovah, Samson slays Abimelech. Abimelech’s name is borrowed from the Philistine king Abimelech, who, according to Genesis 26:1, ruled in the days of Abraham.

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In Judges 13–16, the national conflict between the Israelites and the Philistines is played out in microcosm via the stories of Samson’s interactions with certain Philistines. Because of this local emphasis, the biblical narrative focuses not on grandiose claims of religious affiliation, but rather on more mundane topics, such as feasting, betrayal and the love of women. In contrast, Saint-Saëns has turned the story in Judges 16 into a more religiously oriented and complex tale. He does so by heightening the role of the Philistine high priest, by basing Delilah’s motivations on both personal vengeance and religious fervor, and by shaping Samson into a champion of God. Thus, the opera highlights the religious themes implicit in the biblical narrative in order to make a stronger religious statement about the importance of monotheistic faith versus the more materialistic idolatry of the Philistines.

It is not until Scene Six of Act One that we meet Delilah, as she and the Philistine maidens sing an ode to spring. In the midst of this enchanting song, we learn that Delilah and Samson had a previous relationship that had ended. She bemoans the loss of her lover, and tells Samson in no uncertain terms that her charms are more enticing than those of spring. An Old Hebrew tries to warn Samson against the “serpent’s poison” contained in the words of this foreign woman, and Samson himself prays to God to still his passion for Delilah. Samson never specifies what’s wrong with Delilah, although it seems she somehow limits his ability to fight or speak for God to his fullest ability! He prays to God, “Cover her charms whose beauty troubles my senses, vexes my spirit! And from her eyes put out the flame which robs me of my freedom.” From the very start, then, Delilah is no good.

This portrayal is a drastic change from the Bible, which never clearly characterizes Delilah as good or bad, beautiful or ugly. (Indeed the Bible doesn’t even tell us if she is a Philistine, although the context suggests she probably is.) In the two biblical verses that introduce Delilah, we learn simply that Samson fell in love with her, and that the lords of the Philistines subsequently came to her and said: “Coax him, and find out what makes his strength so great, and how we may overpower him, so that we may bind him in order to subdue him; and we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver” (Judges 15:5).

Although there is no explicit agreement between the parties, there does seem to be an implicit one; Delilah immediately embarks on a mission to discover the secret of Samson’s power.

Is this implicit agreement a legitimate source for Delilah’s bad reputation? Shouldn’t she be disparaged for agreeing to betray the man she loves—and who loves her?

Even these seemingly simple questions impose widespread assumptions on the biblical account and twist Delilah into something she is not. First, the Bible only tells us Samson loved Delilah; it never states that she loved him in return.⁷ Thus, Delilah’s feelings for Samson cannot be used as evidence of her deception or betrayal of Samson. Second, the text never tells us why Delilah agrees to the offer. Feminist Bible scholar Mieke Bal has suggested that Delilah might just as fairly be praised for this act: “In wartime, and it is such a time, no blame is attached to patriotism. Delilah just uses her specific 017potential for helping her tribe and makes enough money out of it to preserve her financial independence.”⁸ Or, as others have argued, Delilah, a single woman, may have needed the money.⁹ Thus, the biblical account should not lead us to assume that Delilah’s motivation was base.

For Saint-Saëns, however, there is no doubt: Delilah herself tells us she wants to get revenge on Samson and appease her gods.

The bulk of the interaction between Samson and Delilah takes place in Act Two of the opera. The setting is the Valley of Sorek, outside Delilah’s home, where Delilah awaits the arrival of Samson. In the first scene, Delilah delivers a soliloquy revealing her motivations. In the next scene, the high priest of Dagon discusses a plan of action with Delilah. He instructs Delilah, “Sell me your slave Samson!” In return, he adds, Delilah “can choose from among all my wealth.”

Note that it is a religious leader (the high priest), and not a political leader (a lord of the Philistines), who approaches Delilah. This alteration is significant 018because, as I note above, it contributes to the thematic thrust of the opera, in which Saint-Saëns emphasizes the religious conflict submerged in the biblical story.

Delilah then reveals her true feelings for Samson to the high priest. She hates him: “What matters your gold to Delilah? And what could a whole treasure if I was not dreaming of vengeance … For, as much as you, I loathe him!” We then learn that Delilah has already tried to discover the secret of Samson’s strength three times before and failed. However, after her ode to spring in the first act she is convinced that he has now “surrendered to [her] power” and that he is coming to meet her “to tighten the bond between [them].” Following this, she and the high priest exclaim together: “Death to the Hebrew leader!”

By having Delilah mention in passing her three previous attempts to discover Samson’s secret, the opera diminishes the drama of this part of the biblical account, where each attempt is described in real time. In the Bible, Delilah first tries to discover Samson’s secret by asking him flat out: “Explain to me … how could you be bound, 019so as to subdue you?” (Judges 16:6). He gives her false instructions: “If they bind me with seven fresh bowstrings that are not dried out, then I shall become weak, and be like anyone else” (Judges 16:8). Delilah follows his directions and, as enemy assassins burst in to slay him, she cries out, “The Philistines are upon you Samson!” (Judges 16:9). But of course, the mighty Samson breaks free. Delilah then repeats her question two more times (Judges 16:10, 13); each time her paramour lies to her. Each time he breaks free from the fetters in which Delilah has bound him. After the third try, Delilah complains bitterly, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me?” (Judges 16:15).

The biblical Delilah doesn’t give up, but she is not as confident as her operatic counterpart, who is convinced Samson will reveal his secret because he loves her.

In Act Two, Scene Three, the secret is revealed. This scene is (very loosely!) the equivalent of Judges 16:15–22. It begins with Delilah trying once again to reveal Samson’s secret; it ends with Samson shaven and shackled.

In the Bible, we are told that Delilah “harassed him with her words all the days and urged him, and his soul was vexed to death” (Judges 16:15). At last, worn down, Samson reveals his secret: He’s a Nazirite, consecrated to God from birth and bound by vow to leave his hair unshorn. Delilah immediately recognizes what this means. She summons the lords of the Philistines, who bring her the payment in silver. It’s the climax of the story and the downfall of Samson: “She let him fall asleep on her lap; and she called a man, and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. He began to weaken, and his strength left him” (Judges 16:19). The Philistines descend on Samson, gouge out his eyes and bring him to Gaza in chains.

In the opera, Act Two, Scene Three, Samson grudgingly acknowledges his love for Delilah but claims he must submit to the will of his God and “break the sweet bond of our love.” Delilah now deploys her most potent weapon: She begins to cry. Samson cannot resist her tears and loudly declares that he loves her. The two then exchange several verses of amorous exclamations until Delilah reminds Samson that he has lied to her before, when he misled her as to the secret of his power. He responds that his love means he has forgotten his God, which should be sufficient proof, whereupon Delilah replies that she is jealous of his God because of the vow he and Samson share. She begs him to allay her distrust by revealing the nature of his sacred bond with God. Throughout the scene, distant thunder and lightning have been growing closer, and Samson takes this to be the voice of God telling him to remember his vow. When he tells this to Delilah, she plays her last card and rejects him, saying, “Coward! Loveless heart, I despise you. Farewell!” She turns and enters her house, leaving Samson with his hands in the air. He then hesitatingly follows her in, whereupon Philistine soldiers approach the house. Offstage, Samson has evidently revealed his secret to Delilah, for she calls the soldiers into her house, and we hear Samson scream, “Treachery!” as the curtain closes on Act Two.

Delilah’s actions in this scene—as told in the Bible and the opera—seem to offer the clearest evidence of her betrayal of Samson as well as her role in his capture and death. She shaves his hair; she hands him over to the Philistines. But, once again, if we just scratch the surface of the biblical story, we find that the clear evidence of Delilah’s betrayal is not so clear after all.

First, is Delilah really betraying Samson when she asks him how he could be bound? In the Bible, Samson clearly knows what she is doing; she tells him pointblank: “Explain to me what lies in your great strength and how you could be bound, so as to subdue you” (Judges 16:6). If anyone is being deceptive, it is Samson, who then toys with Delilah by giving her incorrect responses to her request. In contrast, it is difficult to imagine the Samson of the opera lying or deceiving anyone. In fact, Delilah recounts her thrice-failed attempts to the high priest in Act Two, Scene Two, and says, “Three times already, disguising my purpose, I have tried to discover the secret of his strength. I kindled this love, hoping that by its flame I should read the unknown hidden in the depths of his soul. But three times too, frustrating my hopes he has not been at all frank, has let me see nothing.” The fact that Delilah sought Samson’s secret prior to her encounter with the high priest enhances her thirst for personal vengeance. Also, her comments portray Samson not as a deceiver, as in the biblical narrative, but simply as careful and guarded. Thus, Saint-Saëns extols the character of Samson at the same time he heightens the ruthlessness of Delilah.¹⁰

Second, is Delilah really responsible for stealing Samson’s strength or might someone else be to blame? That is, is she the one who shaved his hair? The Hebrew Bible (or Masoretic Text) tells us, “She made (let) him sleep on her knees, then called to a man, shaved seven locks on his head, and then began to humiliate him. And his strength departed from him” (Judges 16:19). But why did Delilah need to call to a man? She has already successfully bound Samson twice and woven his hair together without any assistance.

Ancient translators tried to solve this problem by specifying that the man was a barber. In the Greek Septuagint prepared in Alexandria in the third to second century B.C.E. and in the Latin Vulgate of Jerome from the fourth century C.E., Delilah summons a barber who gives Samson his close shave. Modern translations such as the New Revised Standard Version reflect this understanding: “She called a man, and had him shave off the seven locks of his head” (Judges 16:19). Since we have 044contradictory accounts of who cut Samson’s hair, it seems we cannot in all fairness hold her culpable.

Act Three opens with Samson, now shorn and blind, turning a millstone in a Philistine dungeon. Samson admits his mistake to God and his people, and even asks God to take his life as an atoning sacrifice for Israel so they can be relieved from the suffering he has caused. As we shall see, this noble offer is made manifest in the finale of the opera.

In the Bible, too, Samson’s prison days are a turning point—not because he feels guilty about anything he has done, but because it is here that his hair, the source of his strength, begins to grow again.

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The final scene in both the Bible and the opera is set in the Philistine temple of Dagon. In the Bible, the Philistines summon Samson from his jail to entertain them during a religious festival in the temple. The blind Israelite asks his guards to prop him against the pillar temples. He then cries out, “Lord God, remember me and strengthen me only this once, O God, so that with this one act of revenge I may pay back the Philistines for my two eyes” (Judges 16:28). Samson then grasps the pillars, and leans into them with all his newly restored strength. The temple topples, killing everyone inside, including Samson. “So those he killed at his death were more than those he had killed during his life” (Judges 16:30).

In the opera, too, Samson’s last act is inspired by his desire for revenge. But he is not only interested in paying back the Philistines for taking his “two eyes.” He wants to avenge God, too. Frenzied “Oriental” music matches the erotic mood and movements of the worshiping Philistines. Delilah comes forward to taunt him in front of everyone: “Love served my purpose; to gratify my vengeance I tore from you your secret … Delilah avenges today her god, her people and her hatred.” The high priest tells Samson that if Jehovah gives him back his sight, he will worship the Israelite deity. He continues, “But, since he [Jehovah] cannot help you … I can afford to scoff at him, to show my hatred, by laughing at his wrath!” This blasphemy is too much for Samson; he offers to avenge the glory of the Lord.

As the high priest and Delilah begin to make offerings to Dagon, and as the Philistines rejoice, Samson again asks God to let him avenge both himself and God. With a loud cry, he pushes the pillars down, and the temple comes crashing in on everyone. Thus the opera ends.

In the opera, Samson is very much the representative of God. He speaks for God and even sacrifices himself for God. The operatic Samson seems far more devout than his biblical predecessor, who hardly ever seems to think or talk about God, and who sacrifices himself (along with numerous Philistines) for personal vengeance. In both accounts, Samson, in deciding to love Delilah and reveal his divine secret to her, exhibits a fatal spiritual uncertainty. But in the opera alone, Samson recognizes his sins and then makes good. This is the turning point in the operatic drama. In the Bible, he just gets his hair back.

Yet, the biblical Samson does call out to God in his time of need, and the narrator seems to frame the end of Samson’s tale as an act of God (see Judges 16:23–24). Further, the mere inclusion of Samson’s story in the Book of Judges seems to impart a certain religious emphasis to what certainly seems a narrative focused more on wine and women than religious justice. The biblical story seems to emphasize that God can work even through someone like Samson, whereas in the opera Samson is more forceful in his religious convictions.

In the biblical text, as we saw above, Delilah’s motives are somewhat uncertain and her role in Samson’s downfall is ambiguous. She is not clearly evil, nor is she clearly good. And, since we hear no more of her after Samson’s capture, we don’t know whether his final revenge on the Philistines in the temple includes her. But Saint-Saëns, by ascribing to Delilah a vitriolic hatred of Samson as well as a political and religious motive, has in effect removed the vagueness of the biblical narrative and made Delilah into a bold, but treacherous, Philistine avenger, using an arsenal of tricks (including convincing lies and fake tears) to get payback for the mayhem Samson had previously wrought against her and her people. In the end, then, Saint-Saëns has turned the story in Judges 16 into a complex tale of competing loyalties and religious battles.

The biblical story does not seem to impart a specifically religious message at first glance. After all, Samson is not a paragon of virtue, and he seems more concerned with personal revenge than with protecting his people. However, when the story is read in the context of Judges, Samson’s conflicts with the Philistines take on a more nationalistic and religious character. Read this way, Samson can be seen as a judge in that his actions do protect his people and serve God’s purposes. This latent characterization of Samson in the Book of Judges becomes explicit in Saint-Saëns’s opera, where Samson is portrayed as maximally religious, except when it comes to Delilah. In both the biblical story and the opera, Samson seems unaware of why he craves Delilah, but only the opera details his inner conflict over his attraction as well as his sorrow at his betrayal of God. Thus, when he destroys the Temple, Samson does so as an act of contrition so that God’s anger will be removed from the Hebrews. In this way, Saint-Saëns explores the potentials and ambiguities in the biblical text to tell a more religious version of the story.

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Interpretations like Saint-Saëns’s can be seen as ciphers for attitudes and identities, and if we pay attention to these interpretations, as well as examine them critically, we will not only be honing our exegetical skills, we will also be more aware of the enduring impact biblical literature has had on our cultures. This awareness ideally should awaken us to the interpretive possibilities inherent in every text, and make us approach the biblical text with new questions and new observations.

Few biblical women seem more scandalous than Delilah. A harlot and a temptress, she uses her beauty and her wiles to ensnare the mighty Samson. A great deceiver, she tricks her lover into revealing the secret source of his strength. For selling that secret to Samson’s Philistine enemies, she is thought of as a betrayer or even a mercenary. And in the pages of BR, she was even portrayed as a master spy.1 It may be exciting to think of Delilah as some kind of Iron Age femme fatale, and Samson as the powerful hero she brings down. But […]