| Yesterday I started reading something about the next haftara, and I ended up with this: The Catalan word for host is amfitrió. The word comes from a play by Molière where there are a group of guests at the house of a man named Amphitrion. There are two identical men who claim to be the host, and the question is, which one is the real Amphitrion? The play was very popular, and in some languages the name Amphitrion came to be used for any host. The play is based on a Greek myth involving a woman named Alcmene, who was beautiful, stately, and wise. Alcmene's eight brothers had been killed in a cattle-rustling incident, and she insisted that before she would sleep with her new husband, Amphitrion, he had to go avenge them. But while Amphitrion was off avenging, Zeus, king of the gods, disguised himself as Amphitrion and came down to earth. He (Zeus) gave Alcmene a blow-by-blow description of the glorious victory that the real Amphitrion had just won over the cattle rustlers, and then spent the night with her. Having connections with various celestial personages, he arranged for the night to last three times as long as usual. Then in the morning he took off, just before the real Amphitrion came home. He also slept with Alcmene, and then nine months later she had twins, one of whom was a regular mortal (named Iphicles) while the other was the great hero Heracles whom we usually call by his Latin name, Hercules. Heracles has something in common with Samson, whose origins are the subject of this week's haftara from the book of Judges (13:2 - 25). Samson's mother, whose name we never learn, is a barren woman like Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, and Hannah. She is out in the field, when she meets an angel, who tells her that she is pregnant, and is going to have a child. She goes home and gets her husband, and the angel speaks to the two of them together, giving instructions for what the woman and her child should do. The couple make an animal sacrifice, and the angel goes up to heaven in the smoke. In Genesis 6 there are a few verses that describe how angels came down to earth, slept with mortal women, and fathered great heroes. Evidently when those verses were written and when they were included in the Torah, this was not an objectionable idea. Several things in the story of Samson point to his being semi-divine: his sudden conception announced by an angel, the need to treat him as a nazir from birth, and his supernatural strength. The angel who announced his advent was probably also his father. Most likely, this was explicit in an earlier version of the story, but at some time between the composition of Genesis and Judges, talking of heavenly beings coming down to earth and fathering children had become unacceptable, and so direct reference to it was removed. Perhaps one other reason for glossing over Samson's divine origins is that his behavior is so far from holy. He fights our national enemies, the Philistines, but he does it on his own behalf, not on ours. And only in the last moments of his life, when all hope is lost, does he finally turn to God. He exemplifies the flawed leadership of the time of the Judges, a lawless period when it became clear that the people of Israel needed a king, and this led to the coming of the house of David. |
| Created on 31 May 2020 by Samuel Ethan Fox |