‘Eat honey, my son, for it is good’

Comparative commentary by Laura Popoviciu

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Eat honey, my son, for it is good (Proverbs 24:13)

Animated by an extraordinary strength, Peter Paul Rubens’s Samson rips the lion’s jaws open, asserting himself over the inanimate, cold carcass. On the contrary, Bill Woodrow’s swarm requires a cautious and delicate handling, and we may imagine the bees seductively warm to the touch.

Both acts are performed with bare hands: while Samson’s hands take away, the bronze fingers offer support.

A sense of expectation—as though for a long-awaited answer—attends both artworks as they give hints of what each receptacle contains. The contents of the bronze pot next to Woodrow’s swarm (into which the finger dips) can only be grasped once we draw near it. We become like Samson approaching the lion’s carcass. A mystery of transformation is about to begin; new life emerges in the form of bees and their sweet viscous honey. Just as Susan MacWilliam’s honey-coloured neon lights up like the sun against a dark background—bearing witness to human curiosity and the quest for proofs—the cave-like interior of the lion’s body yields up its golden secrets.

Samson’s name in Hebrew derives from shemesh which means ‘the sun’, and the place of his birth, Zorah, translates as ‘the place of wasps’. In his Poemata, Maffeo Barberini wrote an epigram dedicated to the sun and the bee that reads: ‘In coating with wax the lighted torches, the bee, like the Sun, dispels the shadows with light’ (Barberini 1634: 143).

The process of ‘coating with wax’ also played a central role in the making of Woodrow’s sculpture. First, the artist made a prototype of the swarm using plasticine. Then, he made a wax mould from the basic shape. Finally, he used the traditional lost-wax method to create the bronze sculpture: by pouring molten metal into the mould, the hot liquid displaced the wax by evaporating it.

The fingers and small pot (made separately and attached later) also depend on the use of wax, which coats the surfaces that are to be cast, fitting itself to their shapes. The little honeypot’s shape is reminiscent of that of the crucible used by the sculptor to pour the molten wax into the mould as a preliminary stage in the process of obtaining the bronze version. As it solidifies, the wax seals forever the gesture of the finger dipped into honey.

Some of the tensions as well as intersections which define the association of these artworks help to place Samson as a figure of contrasts, as someone who sits at the crossroads of cultures. He is an Israelite who mixes with the Philistines. He seeks to intensify such encounters by demanding a Philistine wife despite his parents’ advice against it. As a Nazirite, he is not to come into contact with a corpse nor with wine; yet we find him in the vineyards of Timnah and scooping honey out of the carcass of a lion. We find him at his wedding feast promising festal garments to the Philistines in exchange for a correct answer to his riddle.

When Samson presents the riddle, we can, certainly imagine him stating ‘AN ANSWER IS EXPECTED’, commanding the Philistines to come up with the solution in seven days. This answer arrives through deceptive means before the end of the last day. When the sun sets (a moment that is echoed whenever the light of MacWilliam’s neon work goes off), Samson’s wrath against the Philistines begins to show.

The three artworks chosen here to help explore the text of Judges 14 can be viewed as an allegorical feast of the senses: Samson follows his eyes to confront the lion, he smells, touches, and eats the honey, and finally—with burning ears—he hears the answer to his riddle.

Then—like the bees who must reconfigure and relocate—he makes his next move.

 

References

Carozza, Gianni, 2019. La parola è più dolce del miele. Le api e il miele nella Bibbia e nella tradizione Cristiana. (Padova: Edizioni Messagero)

Eynikel, Eric and Tobias Nicklas (eds). 2014. Samson: Hero or Fool? The Many Faces of Samson (Leiden: Brill)

Franke, John R. (ed.). Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1–2 Samuel, Ancient Christian Commentary on the Scripture, vol. 4, (Illinois: InterVarsity Press), pp. 147–50

See full exhibition for Judges 14

Judges 14

Revised Standard Version

14 Samson went down to Timnah, and at Timnah he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines. 2Then he came up, and told his father and mother, “I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah; now get her for me as my wife.” 3But his father and mother said to him, “Is there not a woman among the daughters of your kinsmen, or among all our people, that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?” But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me; for she pleases me well.”

4 His father and mother did not know that it was from the Lord; for he was seeking an occasion against the Philistines. At that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel.

5 Then Samson went down with his father and mother to Timnah, and he came to the vineyards of Timnah. And behold, a young lion roared against him; 6and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he tore the lion asunder as one tears a kid; and he had nothing in his hand. But he did not tell his father or his mother what he had done. 7Then he went down and talked with the woman; and she pleased Samson well. 8And after a while he returned to take her; and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion, and behold, there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey. 9He scraped it out into his hands, and went on, eating as he went; and he came to his father and mother, and gave some to them, and they ate. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the carcass of the lion.

10 And his father went down to the woman, and Samson made a feast there; for so the young men used to do. 11And when the people saw him, they brought thirty companions to be with him. 12And Samson said to them, “Let me now put a riddle to you; if you can tell me what it is, within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty festal garments; 13but if you cannot tell me what it is, then you shall give me thirty linen garments and thirty festal garments.” And they said to him, “Put your riddle, that we may hear it.” 14And he said to them,

“Out of the eater came something to eat.

Out of the strong came something sweet.”

And they could not in three days tell what the riddle was.

15 On the fourth day they said to Samson’s wife, “Entice your husband to tell us what the riddle is, lest we burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you invited us here to impoverish us?” 16And Samson’s wife wept before him, and said, “You only hate me, you do not love me; you have put a riddle to my countrymen, and you have not told me what it is.” And he said to her, “Behold, I have not told my father nor my mother, and shall I tell you?” 17She wept before him the seven days that their feast lasted; and on the seventh day he told her, because she pressed him hard. Then she told the riddle to her countrymen. 18And the men of the city said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down,

“What is sweeter than honey?

What is stronger than a lion?”

And he said to them,

“If you had not plowed with my heifer,

you would not have found out my riddle.”

19And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he went down to Ashʹkelon and killed thirty men of the town, and took their spoil and gave the festal garments to those who had told the riddle. In hot anger he went back to his father’s house. 20And Samson’s wife was given to his companion, who had been his best man.

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