by Jeffrey Meyers

Gaza on the Mediterranean sea has always been a contested land, and for centuries many different people have lived and fought there.  In the news during the current Israeli war against Hamas, Gaza recalls another historical enemy of the Jews, and reveals the surprising similarities between today’s war and the struggle that took place many centuries ago.  The story of Samson and his revenge against the Philistines in the Bible and in John Milton’s Samson Agonistes (1671) describe the precedent for Israel’s furious reaction to the Hamas terrorists.

Gaza is first mentioned in Genesis (10:19): “the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, unto Gaza.”  Israel conquered the land under Joshua (10:41 & 15:47), who “smote [the Philistines] from Kadesh-barnea even unto Gaza . . . with her towns and her villages, unto the river of Egypt.”  Israel ruled Gaza during the reign of King David in the 11th century BCE.  In 2 Kings (18:8), as the battles continued, the victorious Jews had divine intervention: “the Lord smote the Philistines, even unto Gaza, and the borders thereof, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city.”  In Amos (1:6-7) the Lord named three transgressions and prophesied: “I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they carried away captive the whole captivity, to deliver them up to Edom: But I will send a fire on the wall of Gaza, which shall devour the palaces.”   Zephaniah (2:4) confirmed this punitive prophecy against a Philistine clan: “For Gaza shall be forsaken.. . . Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea coast, the nation of the Cherithites!  The word of the Lord is against you.”

Judges (chapters 14-16) tells the tragic story of the powerful Jewish warrior-hero Samson.  He chose a wife among the uncircumcised Philistines and against the objections of his parents, who did not know the Lord had sought his choice as a way to defeat the enemy.  When his wife was taken from him by his father and given to his friend, Samson took revenge by burning their wheat, breaking his bonds and slaying a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass: they only lived who fled.  The Philistines recruited the stunning Delilah to seduce Samson, discover the secret of his great strength and enable them to capture him.  She had a man “shave off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him. . . . The Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass, and he did grind [wheat] in the prison house.”  As his hair grew back and his strength increased, he sought vengeance for his blindness.  He was led out of prison to be mocked during the crowd’s victory celebrations, took hold of the pillars on which the house stood “and he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein.  So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.”

The Bible illuminates the current Israeli war.  The Philistines in Gaza were the greatest enemies of the Jews.  After Hamas, like the Philistines, took hostages, the biblical and modern Jews destroyed their buildings by fire.  Hamas’ secretly smuggled arms and covert construction of underground tunnels suggest Delilah’s deceit of Samson.  The temporary ceasefire was like the hiatus, as Samson’s hair and strength grew back, between his blindness and revenge.  The Jews helplessly massacred on October 7, 2023 and the rape of the female hostages recall how Delilah blinded Samson.  The failure of the Israeli Intelligence agency and the slow response of the army to the massacre echo Samson’s lack of awareness.

Milton expands, dramatizes and elucidates the biblical story.  He makes it more personal and emotional, and describes Samson’s feelings when blind (like Milton himself) and degraded.  Stressing his vulnerability, he laments:

Why was the sight
To such a tender ball as th’eye confined?
So obvious and so easy to be quenched. . . .
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrevocably dark, total Eclipse.

He is ashamed and guilty, sorrowful and anguished about his disastrous submission to the sensual Dalila, when he “Gave up my fort of silence to a Woman.”

With blandished parleys, feminine assaults,
Tongue-batteries, she surceased not day nor night
To storm me over-watched, and wearied me out.
At times when men seek most repose and rest
I yielded, and unlocked her all my heart.

When she tries to soothe him and heal his wound, he’s still furious and threatens to dismember her:

Dalila: Here I should still enjoy thee day and night
Mine and Love’s prisoner, not the Philistine’s. . . .
Let me approach at least, and touch thy hand.

Samson: Not for thy life, lest fierce remembrance wake
My sudden rage to tear thee joint by joint.

Despite his bondage, Samson is compelled to redeem his failure by fulfilling his heroic, sacrificial and God-given destiny with brute strength: the only weapon the blind man still has.

Promise was that I
Should Israel from Philistinian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistinian yoke.

The Bible and Milton suggest that the Israeli war in Gaza is replaying the ancient battle.  Both works show the transformation of the Jews from victims to conquerors and the righteousness of their cause.

Jeffrey Meyers has just published James Salter: Pilot, Screenwriter, Novelist.  His Parallel Lives: From Freud and Mann to Arbus and Plath will appear on July 3, 2024, both books with Louisiana State University Press.