For many weeks now I have wanted to tell you this story of my life, but
I was not sure you were ready to hear it. At last, you have drawn it out
of me. Not that I have been unwilling; only that I have been afraid, for
even I can not be sure what we shall discover in this telling.
There was a time I felt that I should surely die before I shared with any
man that which I have carried here in my breast. You have given me courage
to, at last, with fear and trembling, tear down the walls that have restrained
me from entering the darkest rooms of my soul. Let there be light!
If only there were some future for me.... Nevertheless, my day is gone.
In my prime, cut off. Ha! So it hardly matters what you think of me or what
I have to say. Believe me, I do not know what to think myself.
Do you believe all that happens is planned, that it happens by design? Or
is everything but chance and circumstance? Look at me here in this hole
of a dungeon grinding corn, round and round and round and round, in meaningless
cycles and endless wasted days; a beast of burden. A blind beast
of burden no less! Is this pathetic state in which I find myself nothing
more than chance and circumstance? I cannot accept it.
Think about it, my young friend. Has not God made of me an object lesson
to the world? Look at me. Are not my sightless eyes simply a reflection
of the blindness that clouded my heart? So, too, my weakness is appropriate,
for it reflects my status as a man cut off from God. And my imprisonment
- does this not also reflect something of my soul? For years I have been
a prisoner to sin so that now, what was once hidden is revealed to all.
This is not foolishness; these are perfect metaphors. Nothing can be more
plain: my life, an object lesson!
Even as I grind out the corn, as the wheels are in spin, so my mind wheels
about in restless gyrations, seeking to understand this one pivotal development
in my life: how I was once wholly God's, committed even from birth, a Nazarite,
and in the end I had made myself wholly hers.
It was not, incidentally, by some fluke, by some mistaken course. You may
not believe it, for it seems improbable to you, but I believed -- even now
I can hardly imagine it though I experienced it myself -- I believed wholly
and truly that this was of God. God's hand was with me; God's signature
was upon my acts.
But then, how should I be responsible for my sins if it is God who inspired
them? By such reasoning is not God, then, the author of my sins? Why, must
I be the one who suffers?
Yet when I think upon all these things, there is something inside me that
refuses to find fault with God. Or rather, whenever I have come to the conclusion
that God must be blamed, I can not accept it; I will not endorse
it, so that I have no rest for my weary mind and I must sift once more the
details of my life.
It was like this: I began in God's orbit, my life proscribed by His laws,
my heart enveloped by His mercy, my thoughts directed by an inward longing
for God, to honor God, to live for God. Over time I drifted, ever so slowly,
imperceptibly, but decisively, and eventually a new power rose in my heart.
I found myself in the orbit of a new sun.
How strange that day when I woke to discover this new center for my life.
How long it had been since my first waking thought was that of praise to
the Almighty. Now, it was Delilah who infused me with energy and enthusiasm,
Delilah who motivated and empowered me, who gave my actions meaning and
purpose, who gave my every waking thought a fixed reference point, a focus
for all my desires.
Ah, Delilah! Dark hair framing a dark face, dark eyes blazing, wide mouth
curling up at the corners in a faint smile.
Ah, Delilah! How you charmed me! Such power you had over my soul!
I am not like other men. Nor have I ever been from my youth. It is a
strange thing to be raised a Nazarite, dedicated to God from before one's
birth, one's destiny predetermined, as if one has no say in it, as if I
had no further obligation than to be a spectator of my own unfolding life.
If only it had been that easy!
I don't mean to say I had no choices to make. But the important decisions,
these had all been set before me as self-evident and indisputable. My father,
by invoking the name of Yahweh, made it a sin to even question, and for
many years I accepted my father's commands as the will of God, plain and
simple.
Eventually, as a very young man, I began to voice doubts, timidly at first,
then with greater boldness, and I discovered how fragile my father's faith
had really been, in spite of his great reputation.
There was a time when I believed that Life was the process through which
we discover who we really are. As we live and make choices, we reveal --
make visible to both God and man -- the immaterial urges and longings which
have been forming in our hearts. In this way, I found my life to be a great
adventure.
I have since learned that it's much more than that for I now see that one's
actions today not only reveal what we are, but create what we shall become.
Yes, Life is the arena in which we create today what we shall be tomorrow.
To my shame I realized this only too late.
Manoah, my father, was an excellent person; all that could be wished,
some will say. In point of fact, I have sometimes suspected that I was his
son in name only. That's what I have been told. Some have even suggested
that one of the gods begat me. Outsiders say this kind of thing, Babylonians,
Phoenicians, Egyptians and the like, and their explanation makes sense really
when one considers my supernatural exploits and feats of strength. But then,
we live in an era when men believe anything. Or nothing. Each one follows
his own designs and who can say what is the truth? We have each had our
own experiences and feel it our right to have others accept whatever strange
ideas we concoct, no matter how bizarre. I know that for some, the stranger
the better.
But it was his very excellence that went against me, grated me, and led
to much of my unhappiness later. I do not regret this. What can I say? He
felt himself a man with a mission. Yahweh had presented him a son, and that
son would deliver Israel from her enemies.
No one can deny that he was faithful to his task. Manoah's son performed
notably. Indeed, I purged the Holy Land of a host of tyrants, beat back
villains and barbarians, maintained order in the heartland, and forced the
hand of the Philistines time and again.
One must own that in those days the look of the country was hardly reassuring.
Between the scattered clans were huge stretches of uncultivated waste, crossed
only by unreliable tracks. There were dense forests, deserts and mountainous
ravines. At the most dangerous points robber gangs had taken up their positions;
these pillaged, killed, or at best held travelers for ransom, and there
were no armies to stop them. There were wild beasts as well and the ferocity
of the natural elements which so ravaged havoc that when some foolhardy
person came to grief, one could never be sure whether God's wrath had struck
him down or merely that of his fellow men. (*p-64)
It became evident to all that God had raised me up to fight Philistines,
and this should have been my chief claim to fame. But my achievements, bringing
freedom from fear in Israel and terrorizing Philistines will be forgotten.
What I am remembered for, what I will always be remembered for, are the
things for which I shall ever bear the stigma of shame. Strangely enough,
at one time, in the days of my foolishness when I was under her spell, it
was my whole heart's desire to be associated with her, to have wedded our
names, Samson and Delilah, in the same way our bodies had been intimately
united, and to make it forever. How ironic this... When our names are sung,
will people remember the shining brightness of a great love? Nay... Undoubtedly
it will be for her great betrayal. There is no one, there are none, who
will ever know how I loved her.
My father's chest swelled at my achievements. I had become the leader
he never became. That in itself is a story.
For years he had lived in shame over an incident that occurred while he
was himself quite young. He would never speak of it, but he lived with deep
regrets. He was often -- I've been told -- found walking alone, brooding,
unhappy, wearing the drawn face of pensive grief.
It so happened that a Philistine band had ransacked their village; my father
did nothing, though he was fully capable of fighting, he believed. Watching
through a crack in the wall, he saw two men killed and one of their daughters
carried away. "He could never forgive himself," my father's brother
once said to me.
True, my father believed in God. But having felt called to leadership, he
afterwards wrote himself off. The final proof of his failure was his wife's
barrenness.
For this reason he dismissed my mother's report when the Angel of the Lord
had visited our home.
It is a well known story. The stuff of which legends are made. From this
point onward it seems my whole life is a quiltwork of legends sewn together
by a thousand mouths seeking to own it as their own.
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