Between up and down,
predator and prey
rough and sweet
strong and weak--
how not to be torn in two
And Samson went down to Timnah. The prophesized Samson has grown into maturity--and domination. No longer is the story about Manoach and his wife, or about the woman and her man: the former protagonists are now simply "his father and mother", Manoach as nameless as his wife.
With Samson's growth into manhood, the ambiguity introduced before his conception comes into full expression. The chapter is taught with the tensions between contradictions: Samson rises and goes down; he is physically strong and psychologically weak; he riddles about sweetness and terror. The striking image of the lion carcass dripping honey embodies these contradictory forces. The fact that the carcass is riven in two adds a dark undertone of doom. Samson skirts the edge of possibilities, walking through vineyards he is forbidden to drink from; marrying a woman he cannot really have. His inability to withstand his wife's nagging hints that these tensions cannot always be contained.
The opening movement toward Timnah returns us to Judah's journey toward Timnah in Genesis 28, where he too discovers duality. The two scenes are in dialogue: Judah's journey begins when he "goes down" from his brothers; he too discovers a woman, in language that is crude and sexual; both scenes contain a kid goat. The allusions to Judah's encounter with Tamar introduce the possibility that Samson's descent to the Philistines will also be redemptive: Judah's apparently illicit encounter with Tamar led to life after repeated death (and to the birth of Peretz, eventual forefather of the Davidic dynasty). Here too we are informed that Samson's "request was from God." Yet in contrast to Judah, who "goes up" to Timnah, Samson repeatedly "goes down," implying that the movement is more than spatial--and that perhaps these journies have different metaphoric trajectories. ]
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