49 Fun Facts About Samson

In which book of the Bible is the story of Samson told?

Judges. The book's judges were crisis leaders rather than courtroom figures, and Samson never leads an army, fighting only his own private feuds.

What is the Hebrew name Samson usually taken to mean?

Man of the sun. The name is probably built on shemesh, Hebrew for sun, which once led scholars to read Samson as a sun myth, a theory now largely set aside.

What was the name of Samson's father, an Israelite from Zorah?

Manoah. Having missed the angel's first visit to his wife, he prayed for the messenger to return and teach them how to raise the boy.

From which tribe of Israel was Samson descended?

Dan. Part of the tribe later left its allotted land west of Jerusalem for the far north, where it took the city of Laish and renamed it after itself.

Samson was dedicated from birth under which special vow?

Nazirite. The angel put Samson's mother under its rules too: while she carried him she was to drink no wine and eat nothing unclean.

Numbers 6 sets three rules for the vow Samson was born under: no wine, no haircuts and no contact with what?

Corpses. Numbers 6 bars anyone under the vow from going near a dead body, even a parent's, so a family funeral was off limits.

How did the angel who foretold Samson's birth depart from his parents?

In the altar flame. Asked his name, the angel said it was beyond understanding, then rose with the fire of their sacrifice, and Samson's father feared they would die for having seen God.

From which Philistine town did Samson choose his first wife?

Timnah. His parents begged him to marry among his own people, but the story says the match was God's way of picking a quarrel with the Philistines.

What animal did Samson tear apart with his bare hands on his way to court his future wife?

A lion. The story says the Spirit of the Lord rushed on him and he tore it apart as easily as a young goat, with nothing in his hands, then told no one.

What did Samson later find in the carcass of the beast he had killed?

Bees and honey. He ate some, shared it with his parents without saying where it came from, and later turned the secret into a riddle for his wedding guests.

What did Samson and his wedding guests stake on whether they could solve his riddle?

Sets of fine clothes. The loser owed thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothing, and when the guests won by leaning on his bride, Samson paid with what he stripped from thirty men he killed.

How does Samson's wedding riddle begin?

'Out of the eater came something to eat' goes on 'and out of the strong came something sweet'; the guests only cracked it by threatening his bride until she coaxed the answer out of him.

To which Philistine city did Samson go to kill thirty men after losing his riddle bet?

Ashkelon. He went down to the coast in a rage to settle his debt; the port, Ascalon to the Romans, later gave its name to the scallion and the shallot.

Which animals did Samson tie tail to tail with torches to burn the Philistines' crops?

Foxes. He caught three hundred, tied them in pairs with a torch between each pair of tails and loosed them in the standing grain, in revenge for his bride being given to another man.

What did the Philistines do to Samson's wife and father-in-law in retribution for the torched crops?

Burned them to death. It was the very fate the wedding guests had threatened her with to get the riddle's answer, so betraying Samson saved her only for a while.

Who bound Samson with two new ropes and handed him over to the Philistines?

Men of Judah. Three thousand came to his hideout, afraid of Philistine reprisals, and he let them tie him up only after they swore not to kill him themselves.

With what weapon did Samson kill a thousand Philistines?

The jawbone of an ass. He snatched up a fresh one where he stood, and the story says the spot was afterwards named Ramath Lehi, the hill of the jawbone.

What did Samson tear off and carry to a hill facing Hebron after visiting Gaza?

The city gate. His enemies lay in wait there all night, meaning to kill him at dawn, so he got up at midnight and walked off with the doors, posts and bar on his shoulders.

In which valley did Samson fall in love with Delilah?

Sorek. The name means 'choice vine', fitting ground for the undoing of a man whose birth vow banned wine.

What did the Philistine lords each promise Delilah for the secret of Samson's strength?

Pieces of silver. Each lord promised her eleven hundred, and they came back with the money in hand once she had finally worn the truth out of him.

What was Samson's first false answer about how he could be bound?

Fresh bowstrings. Delilah tied him with seven of them while Philistines hid in the next room, and he snapped them like a thread singed by fire.

What was Samson's third false answer, before he confessed the truth to Delilah?

Weaving his hair into a loom. Delilah wove his seven locks into the web as he slept and pinned it tight, and he woke and tore away pin, loom and all.

In most English Bibles, who shaves off Samson's hair as he sleeps in Delilah's lap?

A man she called in. The Hebrew verb can also be read as 'she shaved', so some scholars think Delilah did it herself, but most English Bibles have her summon a man to cut the seven locks.

What labour did the Philistines force on the blinded Samson in prison at Gaza?

Grinding grain. They put out his eyes, shackled him in bronze and set him to the prison mill, and while he worked there his shaved hair quietly began to grow back.

The temple Samson pulled down was dedicated to which Philistine god?

Dagon. The Philistine lords had gathered to thank the god for handing Samson over, and their mistake was sending for the blind prisoner to entertain them.

Where were some three thousand Philistines watching from when Samson brought the temple down?

On the roof. About three thousand men and women had climbed up to watch him perform, so when he pushed out the two middle pillars the house came down on the lords below and the crowd above alike.

After Samson died in the ruins at Gaza, where did his family bury him?

In his father's tomb. His brothers and his father's household came down for the body and carried it home to the hills between Zorah and Eshtaol, closing his twenty years as Israel's leader.

Which figure of Greek myth do scholars often set beside Samson as a version of the same folk hero?

Heracles. Each hero is brought down through a woman, Delilah for one and Deianira for the other, and the Greek's story ends on a funeral pyre.

Jewish legend gives Samson shoulders sixty cubits broad and says he could rub together two of what?

Mountains. In the Talmud he uproots two of them and rubs one against the other, yet the same pages make this giant lame in both feet.

Which other Israelite deliverer does the New Testament's roll of heroes of faith set beside Samson?

Gideon. Hebrews 11 names him, Barak, Samson and Jephthah in one breath among those who triumphed 'through faith', for all Samson's brawls and broken vows.

Which poet wrote the closet drama Samson Agonistes?

John Milton. Himself blind when the drama appeared in 1671, he made the blinded, captive Samson his hero, and readers have long seen the poet's own plight in the part.

Samson Agonistes was first printed in 1671 in one volume with which longer work?

Paradise Regained. Its 1671 title page bills the tragedy as an extra, 'To which is added Samson Agonistes', and the author's own preface says it was never intended for the stage.

Which composer's oratorio Samson includes the soprano aria 'Let the bright Seraphim'?

Handel. The showpiece for soprano and solo trumpet reached a worldwide television audience in 1981, when Kiri Te Kanawa sang it at the wedding of Charles and Diana.

Which French composer wrote the opera Samson et Dalila?

Camille Saint-Saëns. Although the libretto is French, the opera was first staged not in France but at Weimar, in a German translation, in 1877.

Which composer, once music director at the Weimar court, got Samson et Dalila its premiere there in 1877?

Franz Liszt. Paris had turned the opera down, uneasy about Bible characters on the stage, so it was on his recommendation that it was first given at Weimar, sung in German.

Which pair starred in Cecil B. DeMille's 1949 film Samson and Delilah?

Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr. Lamarr, the film's Delilah, had spent the war co-inventing a frequency-hopping radio system for torpedoes, an idea later built into modern wireless links.

Which artist painted The Blinding of Samson in 1636?

Rembrandt. He painted Delilah herself hurrying out with the shears and the cut hair, glancing back while soldiers pin Samson to the ground.

Which sculptor's marble Samson Slaying a Philistine, c. 1562, entered the V&A in 1954?

Giambologna. Carved for a Medici fountain in Florence, it was sent to Spain as a diplomatic gift and passed to the future Charles I.

Israel's nuclear deterrence doctrine of last resort is nicknamed what after the biblical hero?

The Samson Option. The name recalls his death, pulling the building down on his captors and himself, and Seymour Hersh took it as the title of his 1991 book on Israel's arsenal.

What tiny object, dug up at Beth Shemesh in 2012, shows a man facing a large animal and recalls the Samson story?

A stone seal. Just 15 mm across and some 3,000 years old, it is no proof that Samson lived, its excavators said, but suggests a tale of a man fighting a beast was already told in his home region.

The Samson Fountain at Russia's Peterhof Palace celebrates Peter the Great's victory over which country?

Sweden. The battle of Poltava was won on St Sampson's day in 1709, and the beast whose jaws the hero wrenches open stands for the one on the Swedish coat of arms.

Some Christian commentators read Samson as a 'type' of whom, based on parallels between their lives?

Jesus. Both births are foretold by an angel, and medieval artists read Samson's bare-handed kill on the road as Christ overcoming Satan.

When the wedding guests solved his riddle, what did Samson say they had 'plowed with' to do it?

My heifer. It was a barbed way of saying they had got the answer out of his bride, who had wept at him for the whole week of the feast.

In his last prayer in the temple, Samson asked God for revenge on the Philistines for what?

His two eyes. He asked for strength 'only this once', and the story adds that he killed more people in dying than in all his life before.

What did the father of Samson's bride offer him instead of his wife, who had been given to a groomsman?

Her younger sister. The father explained that he had assumed Samson hated his bride after the riddle quarrel, and praised the sister as the more beautiful of the two.

Whom did the blind Samson ask for leave to feel the pillars that held up the Philistine temple?

The boy leading him. Samson said he only wanted to lean on the pillars the house rested on, a tired prisoner's request that cost everyone in the building their lives.

The woman who brought Samson down has a name usually traced to a Hebrew root meaning what?

Delicate. That is the usual gloss of Delilah's name, and the story is just as sparing about her heart: it says that Samson loved her, but never that she loved him.

Which earlier Israelite hero, like Samson, fought the Philistines alone, killing 600 with an ox-goad?

Shamgar. His feat gets a single verse, yet the Song of Deborah remembers his days as a time when travellers abandoned the main roads for back paths.

Which figure of the Gilgamesh epic, other than its hero, do some scholars read as the same folk hero as Samson?

Enkidu. In the epic he is a hairy wild man of the steppe until a temple woman is sent to tame him, after which the animals he ran with flee from him.