Judges 13


Judges 13 is the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Judges in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewish tradition the book was attributed to the prophet Samuel, but modern scholars view it as part of the Deuteronomistic History, which spans in the books of Deuteronomy to 2 Kings, attributed to nationalistic and devotedly Yahwistic writers during the time of the reformer Judean king Josiah in 7th century BCE. This chapter records the activities of the judge Samson, belonging to a section comprising Judges 13 to 16 and Judges 6:1 to 16:31.

Text

This chapter was originally written in the Hebrew language. It is divided into 25 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Hebrew are of the Masoretic Text tradition, which includes the Codex Cairensis, Aleppo Codex, and Codex Leningradensis.
Extant ancient manuscripts of a translation into Koine Greek known as the Septuagint include Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus.

Analysis

A linguistic study by Chisholm reveals that the central part in the Book of Judges can be divided into two panels based on the six refrains that state that the Israelites did evil in Yahweh's eyes:
Panel One
Panel Two
Furthermore from the linguistic evidence, the verbs used to describe the Lord's response to Israel's sin have chiastic patterns and can be grouped to fit the division above:
Panel One
Panel Two
Chapters 13–16 contains the "Samson Narrative" or "Samson Cycle", a highly structured poetic composition with an 'almost architectonic tightness' from a literary point-of-view. The entire section consists of 3 cantos and 10 subcantos and 30 canticles, as follows:
  • Canto I : the birth story of Samson
  • Canto II : the feats of Samson in Timnah and Judah
  • Canto III : Samson's exploits in the Valley of Sorek and the temple of Dagon.
The distribution of the 10 subcantos into 3 cantos is a regular 2 + 4 + 4, with the number of canticles per subcanto as follows:
  • Canto I: 3 + 3
  • Canto II: 3 + 3 + 3 + 5
  • Canto III: 2 + 2 + 3 + 3
The number of strophes per canticle in each canto is quite uniform with numerical patterns in Canto II showing a 'concentric symmetry':
  • Canto I: 4 + 4 + 4 | 4 + 4 + 4
  • Canto Ila: 4 + 3 + 3 | 4 + 4 + 4 | 3 + 3 + 4
  • Canto IIb: 4 + 4 + 3 + 4? + 4
  • Canto III: 4 + 4 | 4 + 4 | 4 + 4 + 4 | 3 + 3 + 4
The structure regularity within the whole section classifies this composition as a 'narrative poetry' or 'poetic narrative'.

Israel oppressed by the Philistines (13:1)

The oppression of the Israelites by the Philistines was briefly mentioned in Judges 10:7, is stated here again with the standing formula: "And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord".
  • "Forty years": as Samson judged Israel for 20 years during the 40-year oppression, he must have started his judgeship at around the age of 20 right after the incident of his marriage with a Philistine woman. The end of the 40 years of the Philistine oppression was the decisive victory under the command of Samuel, twenty years after the Philistines had sent back the Ark of the Covenant, which they had taken from the Israelites for seven months in their own territory. Therefore, the twenty years of Samson as a judge of Israel took place in this time frame, shortly following the death of Eli, until just before the final victory in Eben-Ezer

    Birth of Samson (13:2–25)

The birth narrative of Samson follows the pattern of heroes' birth in the Israelite tradition, starting with as a barren mother receiving an annunciation, a special theophany usually with women as the 'primary recipients', accompanied by specific instructions for the mother and son causing an expression of fear or awe. Samson's nazirite identity is in accordance to the description in the Priestly text of Numbers 6:1–21, but among the nazirite characteristics, the specific motif of hair is especially central to the Samson Narrative. Samson's mother was unnamed, although she was the one receiving the important message about the birth and especially about the hair, and appears to be calmer than her named husband who was fearful and unsure. As a confirmation of her importance in the narrative, she is the one who names the boy, Samson, following the tradition of naming the child in the Hebrew Bible.
The narrative in verses 3–24 has a structure that almost parallels with Judges 16 in terms of text arrangement:

Verse 25

  • "Mahaneh Dan": literally, "Camp of Dan".