Dramatis Persona

Comparative commentary by David Jasper

Cite Share

The infamous biblical story of Samson and Delilah is limited to Judges 16:4–20. It is preceded by the brief episode with a prostitute suggestive of Samson’s weakness for women (this first Gazite woman contrasting with the business-like Delilah). The story is told with folkloric simplicity and repetitions, giving the barest materials for the rich traditions that have grown up around it.

Written biblical commentaries (as distinct from visual explorations of the episode) tend to focus more on Samson as the God-devoted Nazarite, for whom ‘the appeal of Philistine women [is his] fatal flaw’ (Niditch 2001: 187). The name Delilah (Hebrew dĕlîlâ) possibly relates to ‘loose hair’ or ‘flirtatiousness’, but also plays on the term for ‘night’ (layĕlâ).

In a tradition in art that goes back at least to the sculptural work of Nicola and Giovanni Pisano on the Perugia fountain (1278) and up to contemporary filmic depictions, the sparely-told biblical narrative of Judges 16 has given rise to interpretations of the story that are both violent and erotic. Many of these artistic responses have taken us far from the biblical text and its religious themes and allusions.

In the free development of the scriptural story, Samson and Delilah have given artists (almost exclusively male artists) opportunities to portray a muscular male physique and a beautiful, often half-naked woman (and patrons the opportunity to own such depictions). And this almost entirely male tradition of art has sexualized the narrative from the brief suggestion of verse 4, which records Samson’s falling in love with Delilah.

Such fascinations on the part of artists and patrons may, however, commit in varying degrees the sin of Samson himself, in making Delilah an object of fantasy, sexualized as lover or exotic vamp. As the narrative becomes eroticized, the politics and theology of Judges are forgotten, and art falls into the very trap that is set for Samson (which is to forget God—as a consequence of which ‘the LORD … left him’ (v.20)).

Our three paintings show three possible responses to the story told in Judges 16. All neglect both the traditional folk motifs and the political–theological concerns of the story, though each is richly creative.

Anthony van Dyck’s painting portrays a wholly fictional love story, a romanticized theme often found in baroque art and repeated up to Cecil B. de Mille’s classic film Samson and Delilah (1949) in which Delilah, following her heart, sacrifices herself in the temple with Samson (Exum 1996: 235).

Solomon Joseph Solomon’s text-book The Practice of Oil Painting and of Drawing (1914), and his freedom of interpretation of the text in his painting of the scene, suggest that he was probably more interested in the aesthetics of the human body than the biblical story. Nevertheless, Solomon’s Delilah seems at one level to illustrate surprisingly well the description of her in the almost contemporaneous The Woman’s Bible (1898) as manifesting ‘the treacherous, the sinister, the sensuous side of woman’ (Stanton 2003: 34). The Woman’s Bible as a whole sought to challenge dominant models of biblical patriarchy, so it is perhaps an ironic twist that Solomon’s louche sensationalism and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s work seem to find something in common in their treatment of Delilah. She becomes simultaneously the object of the male artist’s gaze and of a proto-feminist dismissal of her sensuality.

Of the three works, Rembrandt van Rijn’s is exceptional in its lack of interest in the erotic possibilities of the story. He also offers the closest reading of the text. There is a heightened focus on biblical detail as Rembrandt portrays the violence being perpetrated on Samson, while Delilah is a figure already moving into the background, leaving the scene to the men as they deal with the fallen hero. In Mieke Bal’s words, ‘wicked-by-nature woman is thus denied participation in the narrative events’ (1987: 51).

Rembrandt perhaps has a more developed awareness that Delilah’s action will not be the last word. In 16:1–3 Samson had slept with a prostitute in Gaza while the Gazites lay in wait for him, but even in his weakness for women he outsmarted them, taking the city by surprise at midnight. Here, in Judges 16:22, we are told that his hair begins to grow as soon as it is shaved. Delilah’s ruse works, but it works finally to the demise of the Philistines and their temple. And by this time she will have disappeared altogether from the biblical narrative.

 

References

Bal, Mieke. 1987. Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Live Stories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press)

———1990. ‘Dealing/With/Women: Daughters in the Book of Judges’, in The Book and the Text: The Bible and Literary Theory, ed. by Regina M. Schwartz (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 16–39

Niditch, Susan. 2001. ‘Judges’, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, ed. by John Barton and John Muddiman (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 176–91

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. [1898] 2003. The Woman’s Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective (Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications)

See full exhibition for Judges 16:1–22

Judges 16:1–22

Revised Standard Version

16 Samson went to Gaza, and there he saw a harlot, and he went in to her. 2The Gazites were told, “Samson has come here,” and they surrounded the place and lay in wait for him all night at the gate of the city. They kept quiet all night, saying, “Let us wait till the light of the morning; then we will kill him.” 3But Samson lay till midnight, and at midnight he arose and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two posts, and pulled them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that is before Hebron.

4 After this he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Deliʹlah. 5And the lords of the Philistines came to her and said to her, “Entice him, and see wherein his great strength lies, and by what means we may overpower him, that we may bind him to subdue him; and we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.” 6And Deliʹlah said to Samson, “Please tell me wherein your great strength lies, and how you might be bound, that one could subdue you.” 7And Samson said to her, “If they bind me with seven fresh bowstrings which have not been dried, then I shall become weak, and be like any other man.” 8Then the lords of the Philistines brought her seven fresh bowstrings which had not been dried, and she bound him with them. 9Now she had men lying in wait in an inner chamber. And she said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” But he snapped the bowstrings, as a string of tow snaps when it touches the fire. So the secret of his strength was not known.

10 And Deliʹlah said to Samson, “Behold, you have mocked me, and told me lies; please tell me how you might be bound.” 11And he said to her, “If they bind me with new ropes that have not been used, then I shall become weak, and be like any other man.” 12So Deliʹlah took new ropes and bound him with them, and said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And the men lying in wait were in an inner chamber. But he snapped the ropes off his arms like a thread.

13 And Deliʹlah said to Samson, “Until now you have mocked me, and told me lies; tell me how you might be bound.” And he said to her, “If you weave the seven locks of my head with the web and make it tight with the pin, then I shall become weak, and be like any other man.” 14So while he slept, Deliʹlah took the seven locks of his head and wove them into the web. And she made them tight with the pin, and said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” But he awoke from his sleep, and pulled away the pin, the loom, and the web.

15 And she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and you have not told me wherein your great strength lies.” 16And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day, and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. 17And he told her all his mind, and said to her, “A razor has never come upon my head; for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I be shaved, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man.”

18 When Deliʹlah saw that he had told her all his mind, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, “Come up this once, for he has told me all his mind.” Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her, and brought the money in their hands. 19She made him sleep upon her knees; and she called a man, and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him, and his strength left him. 20And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep, and said, “I will go out as at other times, and shake myself free.” And he did not know that the Lord had left him. 21And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with bronze fetters; and he ground at the mill in the prison. 22But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

More Exhibitions