Desired: The Untold Story of Samson and Delilah (Lost Loves of the Bible) (6 page)

Mother nodded to acknowledge his offer of thanks, the wonderful praise she was due, but he bowed his head and lifted his hands, as did Samson and his mother.

“Almighty God, who looks upon His people with favor, thank You for this meal.”

At that, he ate with vigor, as did Samson and his mother. My family and I were slower to reach for a plate or bowl. Had this man really just thanked his god for this meal, when it was plain that my mother and sister and I had prepared it? What had his god done? Where had his god been when I was oiling the table and trimming the wicks?

Mother sliced the roast into small slices to be eaten by hand. She served herself then passed the plate to Samson’s mother, who held up a hand.

“What animal is this?”

“Pig,” my mother replied. “Seasoned with vinegar and scallions. That is what gives it that beautiful dark crust.”

Samson’s mother looked pointedly at Samson and her husband, a sour purse sealing up her mouth. She turned back to my mother.

“Pigs are unclean. We do not eat them. It displeases our God.”

“Didn’t your god make them?” Astra asked. Her smile was too sweet. It hid something.

“Of course He did,” Samson’s mother replied.

“Then why did He make them taste so good?” Astra asked.

Samson laughed, but his mother stopped that with one look before training a cold, sharp gaze on my little sister. I curled my hands into fists once more. Rugs or not, no one was going to scold my little sister right in front of me, in my own home, even if she was trouble.

Samson rested a hot palm on my thigh.

Samson’s father stood up then and bowed to my mother and father. “We should go. It is harvest time, after all.”

Samson’s mother rose. “At harvest time, my people work. We do not entertain. Only fools would waste this season.” She glared at her son.

Mother stood very quickly—happy, no doubt, to see them gone. Astra and I stood as well. Samson’s mother made a move toward me.

I thought she wanted to say good-bye, but instead, she plunged her fingers into my ribs. I squealed in shock, jumping back, but she clucked her teeth at me and kept searching. She ran her fingers along each rib’s indentation, and then grabbed the sides of my hips, patting them firmly, as if testing them. Taking hold of them, she spun me around and dug her fingers along my spine next.

My mouth was open, and I looked at Astra in utter disbelief. Astra’s face mirrored what mine must have looked like. Her mouth hung open, and her eyes were wide. She looked frozen in shock and disbelief that a stranger could handle me like this, in my own home, right in front of Mother and Father.

I looked at Father for help, but he watched, with a strained look. I think he wanted to stop her, but he didn’t.

Samson’s mother released me, pushing me to the side to address her husband. “She needs a good flushing. If this comes to anything, remember that.”

With that, they left. Samson allowed his mother and father to pass through first, before turning and thanking us for our hospitality. I made a fist, hoping he noticed. He winked as he tilted his head in my direction, and was gone.

I had no idea what she meant by “flushing” me. I did not think it could be good.

MOTHER

When Samson was a child, he ate the brightest grapes first. It did not matter that they were bitter. He ate with his eyes, always.

I saw a lean wisp of a girl, her light green eyes sparkling like the Evening Star against the dark cascading night that was her hair. Though it pained me to admit it, she was beautiful, perhaps even more so because she had no sense of her own beauty. She still moved like a shy girl, with no awareness of her body, no awareness of her effect upon men. Her name was Amara, and she wore an amulet around her neck to ward off evil. A superstitious abomination.

When we left at last, Samson spoke not a word to me. Only after a long while on the way to our lodging house did I look at Samson, a searching look. Why had he done this to us? Why had he chosen a Philistine girl to marry? Had he seen her tonight, seen the careless evil of her people?

My stomach began to roil; blood rushed to my face. The strange blue mist, the mist that had signaled God’s power resting on my son—this mist had settled upon him, now, but Samson did not see it. He smiled to himself and paid no notice to my changing condition as he whistled a tune to himself. I had to duck quickly behind a home so my men would not see me.

I vomited up the little I had eaten.

In his face, I had seen it. He was in love with the enemy. And in that mist, I saw this, too: God was still with him.

I pleaded my case, to Samson and to God, using my native tongue—guilt. I sat in the ashes, tears staining my face. I had not applied my beauty lotion in two days. Samson rolled over, trying to sleep, so I moaned again, loudly.

He sat up, resting his forearms on his knees to watch me.

With one hand resting against my heart, I used the other to scoop ashes from the crockery beside me. I dumped the ashes on my head.

“I think I’ll see if anyone needs help with the plowing,” Samson said. Manoah did not rise up from his pallet. He wanted nothing to do with this battle.

“At this hour? Everyone just went to bed,” I protested.

“I’m not sleeping.” He stood and threw a heavier tunic on before leaving.

Manoah sat up after Samson had left. He cocked his head to one side, watching me.

“No use fighting him,” Manoah said. “Samson’s strength is too much, even for you.”

“She is a Philistine! This cannot be God’s will for our son!”

“Samson says God told him to do this.”

I grabbed my head with both hands to keep it from bursting like a melon. “This is all wrong.”

Manoah got up and dragged a crock of water over to me. Sitting down beside me, he took a sea sponge from the crock and began washing my face. He was slow, holding the sponge over the bowl, warming the water in his hands as errant drops splattered back below. The dripping sound was the only noise in our home, save for our own breaths. Beyond us, a lion roared in the night. I hoped Samson had stayed in the village. He was strong, but strength alone was no match for a lion’s wrath.

“Will you come to bed now?”

I took the sponge from his hands and wrung it out, setting it beside the crock. It needed a good airing in the sun tomorrow.

“When I took you from your mother’s home, could you have imagined any of this?” Manoah asked.

I chuckled. “No.”

“Then you cannot imagine what He may be doing now. Hold onto what is good, and trust God.”

A smile played on my lips, thinking of my belly in those long ago days, that improbable swelling at my age. How the other wives talked of it, and nothing else! At my age, with age spots on my face and hands, my knees sore and a back that was already bending forward, at that age God gave me a child. Syvah, my sister-in-law, the one who would later bear two sons herself, rejoiced with me. She had a full, soft face with a wide blunt nose and sparkling brown eyes. She was not beautiful, but her smile could make you forget that.

“A miracle!” Syvah and the women had said, holding their hands against my belly.

“More than a miracle!” I had told them. “A gift to all our tribes! He is sent for all of them. He will deliver our people from the Philistines.”

Manoah yawned. I lifted my ash-soiled tunic over my head. Manoah rose and took a clean one from next to my pallet and lowered it over my head. I accepted his help quietly. Then I went to our pallet and lay down. As I rested my head against his chest, he spoke.

“I leave for Timnah in the morning.” He was going to make arrangements to get the Philistine girl as a bride for our son.

“Why do you give in to him?”

“Do you remember when the strength first came upon him?”

Wise Manoah. There was one memory that always stayed with me.

It had been an early spring day, just before the wheat came ready for harvesting. The sun was not out. Several tribes had sent warriors to a nearby Danite camp for training. Danites were, of course, the fiercest tribe. We wanted nothing given to us; we preferred to fight for what we wanted. It was our nature.

This day, a mercenary from Egypt was in camp. He was a big man, by our standards, with dark thighs as wide and rippled as tree trunks. He wore a leather shirt that wrapped around his chest, crossing over each shoulder, and a short blue and white kilt tucked in at his waist. He had on more jewelry than all the Hebrew wives combined: a nose ring, bracelets, a necklace with odd dangling amulets, and fat gold rings on his wide fingers.

Our enemies hated the Egyptians, and for good reason. Long ago, the Philistines had left their ancient homeland across the sea and gone into the waters searching for a new home. When they landed in Egypt, it looked good to them, and they made claim.

The Egyptians beat them so badly, all that was left of the Philistines in Egypt was a memory, a little sneering joke. Our men were eager to see what the Egyptian could teach us. If the Egyptians had defeated the Philistines, we could learn their secrets.

We women watched the Egyptian man closely and covered our mouths with our hands as we spoke to one another. Syvah, so young and bold, spoke without covering her mouth. “He has no hair!” I smiled to see her bulging stomach. She was soon to deliver her second child. Her first, Liam, a boy not yet two years old, played near us.

“They shave themselves—everywhere!” another wife answered. We spoke at once, over each other and too fast, as we did when we had a rare moment to sit together.

“Oh!”

“He looks like a newborn!”

“If the wind picks up his kilt one more time, I will run for the hills. It’s too early in the morning to see that much of Egypt.”

We were in for a wonderful day of gossip and laughter and freedom from work. Syvah’s husband, Joash, sat with Manoah. They were brothers. Joash was the eldest. His hair was pure white, and his hands shook when he ate. Syvah married for the birthright, I suspected. He would die not four months after that day, passing quietly in his sleep.

Dark gray clouds, gaping holes in each, hung low in the sky, pink and yellow sun just now beaming to the earth. The men lined up, listening to the Egyptian talk about his weapon, his strategy, his military prowess. I yawned, tired from the walk. We had risen so early for this. I wanted to sleep, but how could I with this suffocating weight in my lap? Though a child, when Samson sat in my lap I was sure he would snap a bone.

The Egyptian called out. “Give me your best man. We will spar. You will see why Egypt has no equal.”

A Danite stood first. Of course.

They had swords of equal length. I would have thought they were evenly matched. But the Egyptian moved with a fierce speed—like lightning, brilliant and fast. He slashed open the Danite’s tunic, an unspeakably rude act. Tunics were expensive. Often a man could only afford one.

Murmurs and low curses rumbled back toward him in response, but he only threw his head back and laughed at us. Before I could stop Samson, he was out of my lap, striding toward the Egyptian with all of the arrogance of a ten-year-old boy who knew nothing of life and war.

Samson bowed to his Danite elder and motioned for the man to bend down and listen. The man did, much to the delight of the crowd. A strange light, a shimmering like the reflection off distant water, hovered over Samson. I glanced around. No one else seemed to notice.

The Danite handed my son his sword. I jumped to my feet just as Samson whirled around, holding the sword up.

“Samson! No!”

Syvah grabbed my arm.

Samson bowed politely at the Egyptian, who looked highly amused.

“A Hebrew girl! She’s lovely!” he exclaimed. A few of our boys snickered. I gritted my teeth at the stupid joke about his hair. All our men had long hair, down to their shoulders. Of course, Samson’s now reached his waist, but they had no right to embarrass him.

“Are you a Hebrew?” Samson asked, with the tender voice of youth.

The Egyptian spat at Samson’s feet. “No.”

Samson swung the sword with a strength and power that no man was capable of. In an instant, the sword rested against the Egyptian’s groin, in a very delicate, particular manner.

Samson glared at the man. “Do you want to become one?”

The crowd roared. The Egyptian sweated profusely as Samson made him apologize and promise to pay for a new tunic out of his fee.

When Samson lowered the sword and walked away, we had all forgotten the Egyptian. We had a new hero. We yelled his name; the men slapped one another on the back. Samson’s young cousin toddled over to stand with the men, who were in awe of their clansman.

The Egyptian, though, he was not happy. He must have been an honest man, because he did take money out of his belt bag and hand it to the Danite, before lifting his sword and lunging at Samson’s back.

My scream was still in my mouth as the Egyptian’s head rolled to my feet a second later. Samson had turned and cut him down in a blinding flash. Only then did I release the scream, hearing it echo across the plains. Birds cried back in fright, flying up through the heavens.

Not a soul moved or said anything else. Samson cleaned the sword by scooping up handfuls of the pale, dry earth and rubbing it across the blade until the blood was gone. When he handed it back to the Danite, the man shook his head.

“You have earned it, my son.”

“I do not like the feel of a sword in my hand.”

I thought, on that day, he meant he would not use his strength for war. I thought he would deliver the people in some glorious new bloodless way.

But there is no deliverance without blood. This is what an old woman knows.

So now, I settled in beside Manoah and waited for sleep. My only prayer was that God, in His mercy, would stop Samson from making this mistake. If He loved my son, He would. God’s will could not include a Philistine wife for my son.

I had so much to learn about God, and my son.

The Day of Atonement had passed. Samson, Manoah, and I had suffered together, denying ourselves food and water from sundown to sundown. We had each repented of our sins.

At sundown I folded my arms and looked at Samson. “Well?”

He shrugged. “What?”

That was how we began the week of the Feast of Tabernacles. We had no bond. We had a truce. Our people were celebrating, though the harvest had been lean. Still, they danced and sang, late into the night, every night for seven days. On the morning of the eighth day, Manoah had departed for Timnah.

I pleaded with Samson to run after him, to stop him.

He pressed his hands to his forehead. “Stop nagging me!”

“I’ll stop nagging you when I stop loving you. They go together.”

My neighbors, the people of the village, even Syvah, young enough that her waist still curved, were bloated and sleepy from the feasting. Only I looked thinner.

“Are you well?” some asked. I wiped tears away, nodding in the direction of my son. He turned away and made new conversation, wherever he was.

But by the end of that day, two evenings after the feast’s end, I sat on a high rock as the sun set, watching Samson in the fields. Manoah had not yet returned. Samson and his cousins amused themselves with the other young men from the village, the same way they had every year since Samson’s strength was discovered. Syvah’s sons, Kaleb and Liam, hitched up two oxen to a plough, then they hitched Samson to one that sat in a trench parallel to the oxen team. With a loud cry, Kaleb signaled the start of the race. Liam drove the oxen hard, lashing them with his voice and his whip. Samson lowered his head and grimaced, charging forward.

I could not help myself. I yelled out his name, urging him to victory. My son was not going to lose to a couple of oxen.

Beyond him, the sun was setting, washed in pale orange. Clouds floated on the horizon, soaked in yellow. Samson won, and there was time for one more race before the sun washed away. Samson reversed direction, and Kaleb and Liam turned the oxen team. I could hear much yelling and laughter from my perch.

Other mothers watched too, though they kept their distance. I pressed my lips together. No matter.

In the morning, we would begin plowing the fields. We had to sow seed after that, each of us. Next winter’s bread started tomorrow. But after the plowing and the sowing, came the rest. Our labors would be done until the spring. The air around me had turned cooler, another reminder that the year had flown by.

I watched my son, muscles straining under the yoke, dust blowing back behind him as he tore up the earth. Though this was the season of celebration, my joy in the harvest was bittersweet, as every year is when you have a child at home. The turning of the seasons reminded me that time was passing. My son was no longer a child, but if I closed my eyes I could still believe that I might again cradle him as a child in my arms. He was young and soft in my mind, a tender boy who hid behind my legs and cried when I refused to cut his hair.

The children’s laughter made me open my eyes again, but Samson was not among the laughing children. He was sitting by himself, watching the children run, witnessing their delight at being set loose to play at last in the fields with no worries of damaged grain. Samson turned to me and smiled. I nodded back, grateful he was no closer. When he looked away, I wiped the tears from my eyes.