Samson depicted as Atlas with the earth on his shoulders. From Sefirat HaOmer (plus Mincha-Maariv) Siddur, Baruch Ben Shemaria (Amsterdam, 1795) Braginsky Collection, e-codices
Samson the Demigod?
Samson’s conception story may be read subversively as the result of a union between a divine being and a mortal woman, making Samson a demi-god with superhuman characteristics. At the same time, the text keeps open the more mundane possibility that his father is Manoah and his powers are simply a gift from God.
Published: June 14, 2019
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
“New Huqoq Mosaics,” Biblical Archaeological Society, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/biblical-archaeology-sites/new-huqoq-mosaics/
J. Alberto Soggin, Judges: A Commentary, Old Testament Library, trans. from Italian, John S. Bowden (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 1981), 231–232. The link is even clearer considering LXX Sampsōn, which reflects the vocalization šamšôn rather than šimšôn (cf. Gk. pascha vs. Aram. pischa). The euphonic “p” is irrelevant, merely a case of consonant epenthesis (also called excrescence), i.e., the addition of a consonant to ease pronunciation.
This claim has been most eloquently made in recent years by Yair Zakovitch in The Life of Samson (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1982).
Niditch 2008:141 (OTL)
See Marc Brettler, “Who Was Samson’s Real Father?”TheTorah.com (2017).
Incidentally, the conventions assumed by the author suggest that Nazirites were to refrain not only from corpse-impurity (as in Num 6), but also from other impurities that can be transmitted to food (e.g., from carcasses of certain animals, including lions and donkeys).
Yair Zakovich, חיי שמשון [The Life of Samson] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1983).
One would imagine that Manoah would be reassured if he were told that he, too, is to refrain from eating impure foods, or drinking alcoholic beverages, from this point until the birth of the young boy, either because Ms. Manoah is not yet pregnant, or because Manoah believed, as many did in antiquity, that the husband’s contribution to the formation of the embryo is accumulative, continuing, through sexual relations, throughout pregnancy.
See Abarbanel’s commentary on Judges, ad loc and Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 540.
This does not include the two 1cs verbs which are in the subordinate clauses.
Unlike Gen 6, which states unambiguously that demigods were born of unions between divine male creatures and female earthlings.
See, for example, Yairah Amit, “‘Manoah Promptly Followed His Wife’ (Judges 13:11): On the Place of the Woman in the Birth Narratives,” in A Feminist Companion to Judges, ed. Athalya Brenner-Idan (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 146–156 and J. Cheryl Exum, “Mother of Samson,” in Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament, ed. Carol Meyers et. al. (Grand Rapids: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 245–246.
Lest one think that this feminist reading of the Samson narrative is the product of modernity, the Babylonian Talmud (Berachot 61a) and the late medieval commentator Abravanel (Judg 13) make similar claims—that Manoah’s wife is worthy of divine revelation and is the one guiding Manoah.
