Wit and Humor of the Bible: A Literary Study. Marion D. Shutter
* * * Samson was evidently regarded as a droll fellow in his day.”
What a touch of human nature there is in the scene between Samson and his wife, when she asks for the solution of that wretched riddle! “Thou dost but hate me,” is her reproach, “and lovest me not; thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people, and hast not told it to me.” What! is there a domestic storm already brewing? There is something of a thunderclap in the angry retort of the husband: “Behold, I have not told it to my father and my mother,” (as if that would make any difference to her!) “and shall I tell it to thee?” Comparisons of this sort are but little noted for their conciliatory tendencies, and so we are fully prepared for what follows: “And she wept before him the seven days while the feast lasted.” Poor Samson is not proof against woman’s tears. He could rend the lion as a kid, and carry off the gates of Gaza as easily as a shepherd could bear a lamb upon his shoulders, but his superhuman strength is of no avail against “women’s weapons, water-drops.” We are not surprised to find that “it came to pass on the seventh day he told her.” Thus did conjugal quarrels end in the time of the Judges.
But if Samson was worsted in the encounter with his wife, he scored a victory against the Philistines who had frightened her into telling them the answer to the riddle. When they came with an air of insolent triumph and said: “What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?” he rather impolitely retorted—traces of gall and wormwood at his recent humiliation by his wife still rankling in his mind—“If ye had not ploughed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle.” But he paid the debt of honor he owed them, the wager he had lost. “He went down to Ashkelon, and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil and gave changes of raiment unto them which expounded the riddle.” Thersites would have said of him as he did of Achilles, “His wit was his sinew.” Samson had wonderful muscular power of repartee.
On another occasion Samson amused himself by telling monstrous lies about the secret of his strength: “If they bind me with seven green withes that were never dried, then shall I be weak and be as another man;” “if they bind me fast with new ropes;” “if thou weavest the seven locks of my head with the web;” and so on. As Prince Hal said of the stories of his boon companion, “These lies are like the father that begets them; gross as a mountain, open, palpable.” Delilah, wearied with these practical jokes, exclaims at last, “How canst thou say ‘I love thee,’ when thine heart is not with me? Thou hast mocked me these three times, and hast not told me wherein thy great strength lieth.” Then she began a course of teasing and entreaty that finally proved successful. “It came to pass when she pressed him daily with her words, so that his soul was vexed unto death, that he told her all his heart.” Samson was great physically, but so weak mentally and morally that he is continually reducing himself to an absurd spectacle. He could not resist Delilah’s persistent importunities, nor had he sufficient resolution to betake himself from the presence of temptation. He had, no doubt, laughed loud and long at the victims of his huge falsehoods, but he is finally harassed by a woman whose reproaches and entreaties are like “a continual dropping on a rainy day,” into telling the fatal truth. Upon the whole, as we look upon the portrait of Samson, we find it impossible to respect him. We can only smile at his folly. The one flash of genuine nobility comes at the last. “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.” After all, that heroic death more than half redeems the vacillating career it closes.
III.—Nabal.
There is quite a different character in the first book of Samuel. His name is Nabal. The word itself means “fool;” and the man’s wife, Abigail, volunteered the opinion that it was a very accurate description of her husband: “As his name is, so is he: Nabal is his name and folly is with him.” He is self-satisfied, hard-headed, irritable, obstinate. We are told that he was “churlish and evil in his doings.” He is blunt in speech, rude, and even boorish in manners. He stands out of the story like an old, gnarled tree. It would not be a matter of marvel if he suggested to Fielding the character of Squire Western. They have many points in common. The servants of Nabal are afraid of him: “He is such a son of Belial that a man cannot speak to him!” He is fond of wine, and sometimes falls asleep over his cups. When David asks a favor of him, he exclaims: “Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse? There be many servants now-a-days that break away, every man from his own master!” As much as to say, “The country is full of runaways and tramps, and how do I know but this David is one of them?” Then he goes on—“Shall I take my bread and my water, and my flesh that I have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men whom I know not whence they be?” Let this David look out for himself; it is all that I can do to provide for my own family and servants! How exactly in the Squire Western vein: “It’s well for un I could not get at un; I’d spoiled his caterwauling; I’d a taught un to meddle with meat for his master. He shan’t ever have a morsel of meat of mine, or a varden to buy it with!” Just the man, after he has stormed his life away, to die of apoplexy! And Nabal did die suddenly, a few days after he had been “very drunken.”
IV.—Jonah.
There are some elements of genuine humor in the story of Jonah. Whatever may be thought of the miraculous portions of the narrative, the character of the shirking and whimpering prophet is faithfully drawn. He first tries to escape the command of the Lord by fleeing to Tarshish, but finds that he who runs away from duty runs into danger. Thoroughly alarmed by the disastrous outcome of his attempt to get away from responsibility, he finally goes to Nineveh, but is not reconciled to his task. He did not go because he was anxious to serve the Ninevites, but because he wished to avert further danger from himself. He is in just the mood to complain of everything, to snatch at any straw of justification for his former conduct. Contrary to his expectations, and even, it must be confessed, to his secret wishes, the Ninevites were moved to repentance by his half-hearted preaching, with its undertone of grumbling, and God forgave them and turned away the threatened destruction of their city. But when the forty days expire, and the city does not fall, Jonah is angry, and he insists that he does well to be angry. He has been obliged to trudge through the streets of the city day after day shouting his predictions of doom, and now he is denied the poor satisfaction of seeing the bolts fall from heaven in vengeance. He has even gone so far as to prepare for himself a booth in a safe place, under whose shadow he might sit and enjoy the spectacle—“where he might see what would become of the city.” And now there is nothing to come of it all! “It displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was very angry.” Surely the Lord is not considerate of the feelings of his prophet. Jonah’s pent-up displeasure breaks forth: “I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying while I was yet in mine own country?” Did I not tell you so? Did I not say then and there how this whole affair would turn out? “Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish.” Why should I blister under the sun of Nineveh, when I might take mine ease in Tarshish? “For I knew that Thou art a gracious God, slow to anger and of great kindness and repentest thee of the evil,”—too good-natured to do this thing! And now that I have come, my prophecy has failed and my mission is a farce. These wretches are spared and the prophet of God is a laughing-stock! “I do well to be angry, even unto death!” He goes farther: “I beseech thee, take away my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.” It is better to die than to be made ridiculous. Nothing could reconcile Jonah, just then, to the thought of further existence. Like Mr. Mantilini, he was determined to become a “body.”
V.—Absalom.
We must not pass by that exquisite likeness of the demagogue in Second Samuel. “Absalom rose up early and stood beside the way of the gate; and it was so that when any man that had a controversy came to the king for judgment, then Absalom called unto him and said, Of what city art thou? and he said, Thy servant is one of the tribes of Israel. And Absalom said unto him, See, thy matters are good and right, but there is no one deputed of the king to hear thee.” Things are getting very loose in the government; the country is going to the dogs. The present administration has been so long in power, that it has grown careless of the interests of the people. Absalom said, moreover, “O that I were made Judge in the land; that any man which hath any suit or any cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice!” We need a change. Put our party in power and see whether the rights of the people will not be better regarded; see