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May 28, 2004/Sivan 8 5764, Vol. 56, No. 36
Samson narrative has familiar theme
Torah study
NEIL GILLMAN
Naso Numbers 4:20-7:89
The haftarah for this Shabbat, the story of the birth of Samson (Judges 13:2-25), is the very first haftarah I recited, decades ago in my childhood synagogue. It has a special place in my heart. And when I read it today, there is so much more there than I ever imagined, particularly the many echoes of familiar biblical themes in this touching folk-tale.
An angelic messenger appears to a barren woman and informs her that she will bear a child who is to be a nazirite and who will save Israel from the Philistines. She calls her husband, who witnesses a second appearance of the angel, and the message is repeated. The husband invites the angel to share a meal, but the angel refuses and disappears in the flames of a sacrifice.
The child is named Samson. The subsequent chapters in the Book of Judges (14-16) deal with Samson's battles against the Philistines and his tragic end.
The husband, Manoach, is almost incidental to the narrative. He seems clueless, skeptical that the appearance is really an angel and ready to defer to his wife who alone understands the full import of the event. This role reversal is striking for a biblical narrative, but of course it is the woman who would understand the pain of barrenness.
The two central characters are the wife and the angel, who is also referred to as a "man of God" and simply as a "man," and who speaks twice, both times to the woman. Both the woman and the angel are nameless. When Manoach asks the angel for his name, he is told, "You must not ask for my name; it is unknowable," or more literally, "baffling."
This exchange recalls Jacob's wrestling with an angel/man/or maybe even God, for again the person is referred to in each of these three ways in Bereshit, where Jacob asks for the man's name and is told, "You must not ask my name" (32:30).
It also recalls the visitation scene to Abraham. Here it is God who appears to Abraham (Bereshit 18:1), but Abraham sees "three men," who later become "angels" (19:1). Here too, the angels announce the birth of a child to a barren wife, but this time the message is given to the father. In this week's haftarah, the wife is addressed.
This notion of God who appears to human beings as a man (or men) or as an angel (or angels), the fluidity of God's manifestations to human beings, is a classical biblical theme. The theme of the barren wife whose child is destined to play a central or even redemptive role in Israelite history is also familiar. Recall Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Hannah.
Hannah too was barren (I Samuel 1). After she beseeched God for a child, Eli the High Priest at the shrine at Shiloh interceded on her behalf and she gave birth to Samuel. Hannah had promised that if God would grant her a child, she would dedicate him to the Lord "and no razor shall ever touch his head" (1:11), part of the same nazirite ritual to which Samson is subject.
The theme of the barren woman echoes another familiar theme. In Torah, the natural first-born child never inherits the covenantal promise: It is Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph and Judah over Reuben, Ephraim over Menasheh, Moshe over Aaron. This is the Bible's way of highlighting God's role in Israelite history: God always supersedes nature.
This interweaving of themes throughout the biblical narrative testifies to the internal coherence of the biblical tradition. Despite the multiple variables, duplications and even contradictory versions of the same material, the Torah is really one book.
Rabbi Neil Gillman is professor of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
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