No King in Israel (36)

In 2017-18, archeologist and historical geographer Dr. Chris McKinny published articles arguing that modern Bible scholars ought to rethink the purported location of Lehi, an ancient Israelite town prominent in today’s reading from Judges.

For fifty years prior, many considered the ruined Arab village of Khirbet Beit Lei the probable location for Lehi on the basis of a specious similarity in names advanced by Israeli anthropologist Joseph Ginat in a Brigham Young University academic symposium. Absent any better suggestions, many accepted Ginat’s conclusions about the town’s location.

Towns Grouped Together

I mentioned earlier in this series that Samson’s deeds have a mythic quality, a lone man routing and killing innumerable evil oppressors. Thus, many think his exploits improbable, exaggerated or wrongly attributed.

However, the geography in the Samson chapters is entirely credible. With the exception of Ashkelon, where our hero deliberately went off-grid and killed thirty random men without arousing Philistine suspicions, all the locations in the narrative are relatively close together and quite predictable. For example, to go down to Timnath from Zorah you would follow the Valley of Sorek southwest, and to go from Timnath to Ashkelon, you’d follow it even further southwest. The logical route is through the valley rather than over the mountains, which are more difficult to traverse. In short, everywhere Samson went made perfect sense geographically, and Judges includes a fair bit of that sort of detail. Myths generally don’t.

From a geographic perspective, the only plausibility hitch in Samson’s life to date is Ginat’s proposed location for Lehi. Jeffrey Chadwick writes that Khirbet Beit Lei does not easily reconcile with the Judges account, being:

“… over 25 km (15 mi) south of the Sorek Valley and two Shfela valley systems away. One would have to travel south from the Sorek Valley over the Shfela hills of Judah, passing over the Elah Valley, and then over more hills passing the Guvrin Valley, in order to get to the region of Khirbet Beit Lei.”

Hmm. It seems unlikely Samson would go to such a place to hide, especially by such a complicated route. And it was.

II. Twelve Judges in Chronological Order (continued)

12. Samson (continued)

Judges 15:9-13 — Do Unto Others

“Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah and made a raid on Lehi. And the men of Judah said, ‘Why have you come up against us?’ They said, ‘We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he did to us.’ Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, ‘Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?’ And he said to them, ‘As they did to me, so have I done to them.’ And they said to him, ‘We have come down to bind you, that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines.’ And Samson said to them, ‘Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.’ They said to him, ‘No; we will only bind you and give you into their hands. We will surely not kill you.’ So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.”

Narrative as History

Chris McKinny was unusual in that he treated the Samson narrative as actual history, so he looked for Lehi in the most logical place: right where the text of Judges implies, not far from Etam, a little north of Bethlehem in the tribal allotment of Judah. He believes Lehi was in the Rephaim valley, east of the Sorek region, not far from Jerusalem, near a spring known as ‘Ain Hanniyeh. Linguistically and geographically, the new location is a much better fit than Ginat’s posited location, hilly with multiple springs. It’s in the same valley system as the Sorek, just further east, a natural route for Samson to travel and for the Philistine army to easily follow. Moreover, the modern day locations still resemble those in the Judges account of Samson’s battle.

McKinny’s Lehi location may or may not become the accepted scholarly standard for the next fifty years or longer. Either way, believers in the reliability of scripture’s historical narratives applaud his technique.

Back to Our Story

Samson had torched the Philistine food supply in the Sorek Valley. The Philistines responded by killing his estranged wife and family. Samson attacked them in return, then ran as far away from home as he could quickly and easily travel on foot, presumably to discourage the Philistines from stopping off in Zorah to take revenge on his family. Judges does not include the total dead in Samson’s assault, but the event provoked great numbers of armed Philistines to travel north to find him, sufficient to intimidate 3,000 men of Judah into doing their dirty work for them.

Tit for Tat

It’s hard to miss the fact that the Philistine reasoning was exactly the same as Samson’s: “They did bad stuff to me, so I’m going to do bad stuff to them.” I’m pretty sure that’s not what the Lord Jesus was teaching his followers in the Sermon on the Mount, but it reflects the primitive “tit for tat” morality of the Judges era, both in Israel and in the cities of the Philistines.

In any case, the men of Judah quickly reached agreement with Samson, who was evidently eager to start swinging. They brought him bound with ropes to the Philistines waiting for them at Lehi.

Judges 15:14-17 — Heaps Upon Heaps

“When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. Then the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, and with it he struck 1,000 men. And Samson said, ‘With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey have I struck down a thousand men.’ As soon as he had finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone out of his hand. And that place was called Ramath-lehi.”

Approximation, Not Hyperbole

This is the final time we read of the Spirit of the Lord rushing on Samson. The thousand dead is probably approximation rather than hyperbole. There is certainly all kinds of hyperbole in the Old Testament, but not commonly in the historical accounts. I very much doubt Samson, in his exhausted state, counted the corpses himself, but I’m sure a thousand was not wildly off the real number. The Philistines who fled and survived the massacre were in a better position to publish their total losses, as were the 3,000 men of Judah who brought Samson to the scene and witnessed both his escape from his bonds and the beginnings of the carnage he wrought with the jawbone. We do not read that any volunteered to help or stayed nearby. He seems to have been alone in the aftermath of the battle.

Hill of the Jawbone

Ramath-lehi means “hill of the jawbone”. The word rāmâ means “hill” and lᵊḥî is “jaw”. That strongly suggests the town nearby was named Lehi some time after Samson’s battle with the Philistines there, since the name is obviously commemorative. As is almost universally the case in OT historical accounts, place names reflect the usage at the time the written account was final-edited rather than the usage at the time the events transpired. In this case, that gap was several hundred years.

Judges 15:18-20 — This Great Salvation

“And he was very thirsty, and he called upon the Lord and said, ‘You have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant, and shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?’ And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it. And when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore the name of it was called En-hakkore; it is at Lehi to this day. And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.”

The Spring of Him Who Called

Samson may not have been driven by the purest spiritual motives in his conflicts with the Philistines, but he was certainly God-conscious and well aware he had received heavenly assistance in his fight. He asks the Lord for one more miracle, and God provides it. En-hakkore translates as “the spring of him who called”.

Samson is not by any means the first Hebrew to refer to Gentiles as “uncircumcised”, though the insult later becomes much more common. His parents did the same in the previous chapter, and the earliest reference to uncircumcision as “a disgrace” comes all the way back in Genesis. The strong sense of being a distinct people in relationship to YHWH characterized Israel even during its most depraved moments.

The fact that the spring remains at Lehi “to this day”, as the writer of Judges comments, strongly suggests the most recent Hebrew versions of Judges date from many years after the fact; it would hardly be worth observing otherwise.

An Interlude

The comment that Samson “judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years” repeats at the end of chapter 16. The higher critics suggest such an apparent terminus in the narrative marks a change of writer, or accounts from different sources grafted together. More likely, I suspect this simply indicates a significant interval occurred between these events and those of the next chapter, which must necessarily have taken place in the final weeks and months of Samson’s life.

So then, much about Samson’s years as the only Nazirite judge of Israel goes untold. We know his deliverance of Israel was incomplete, but there may have been many exciting conflicts with the Philistines between the Lehi episode and his fatal dalliance with Delilah.