Delilah: A Novel (44 page)

Orev looked at the king, and at the golden lions adorning the king’s throne, and then at the woman who sat, another adornment, at the king’s feet. Saffron linen so fine it seemed like sunlight stroked her supple body; a net of pearls trapped hair crimson as summer sunset, hot as the heart of fire. She slanted her painted eyes at him, regarded him with amused interest. Midnight eyes, like her mother’s; laughing eyes, like her father’s.
“Out of strength, sweetness; out of bitterness, laughter.”

For a moment the years dropped away like a faded veil.
“Are the two of
you mad? You’ll both be killed. That won’t help your dead, or the living, either.” His last desperate effort to hammer sense into either hero or priestess
.

Samson smiling, draping his arm heavy over Orev’s shoulders. “Who knows better than I how to move stone? And we have Yahweh’s own vow that I’ll succeed.”

“And the Lady’s. ‘The Son of the Sun will destroy a god.’ ” Delilah’s night-eyes glittering fever bright. “The Seer at En-dor saw it.”

So young, both of them, and so certain, and so wrong. And yet—it had happened just as the angel and the oracle both foretold. Or had there been an angel? Hadn’t that been just a village tale?
I am too old; I have lived too long. No one will remember me, but they will live forever young, the sun-hero and his night-love . . 
.

“Brother Harper?” The king spoke gently, as was proper to an elder song-master, yet with a hint of impatience. Courtly manners, but he was still a king speaking to a wandering harper, after all. The seagemmed woman sitting at the king’s feet laughed, softly, and flirted her long dark eyes at Orev.

Strength and sweetness both
. Orev smiled back, remembering what Delilah had named Samson’s daughter.
Zhurleen. Laughter
.

“I crave pardon, my lord king. I am old; my mind drifts. But my songs do not.” He set his fingers upon the harp-strings, and began.

“Once there was a man who loved a woman so greatly that he died for it.”
Yes, I am an old man, and this may be the last time I ever sing of them. So this one time I shall sing it as I wish, for the sake of truth, and for their laughing daughter
.

“Listen and heed, and I will sing you the Song of Samson and Delilah . . .”

The story of Samson and Delilah is endlessly intriguing to artists and authors. As a story, it’s got everything: sex, violence, love, and betrayal. It has been the subject of paintings, operas, novels, popular songs, and movies—and over the centuries, the story of these doomed lovers has acquired layers of significance not actually found in the Bible. The original story is in Judges 13–16, and Delilah herself appears only in Judges 16:4–20.

The Book of Judges covers the period before the Hebrew kings, a time when Canaan was ruled by the Philistines and the Hebrews were struggling to claim its land. Although the modern word
philistine
means “a crude, uncultured person,” the Philistines were actually cultured, artistic, and wealthy. They would have been quite happy to live in peace with the Hebrews, but the Hebrews considered Canaan a land promised to them by God and intended to have it. The time of Judges was one of growing conflict between the Hebrews and the Philistines, and Samson is one of the key figures in that conflict.

Samson, like Gilgamesh and Hercules, is a hero in the archaic, classical sense: a man of possibly supernatural origin and of superior strength, who acts as he is compelled to by forces beyond his control. The items and actions associated with Samson (among them the supernatural
elements of his birth, the incredible strength, the mighty rages, the lion-skin garment) make this clear. And he has a very odd name for a Hebrew, for Samson does indeed mean “Son of the Sun.”

According to Judges 13:5, Samson is to be raised as a Nazirite, one who has taken holy vows or, as in Samson’s case, had them taken for him by his mother before his birth, and “he will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines.” As a Nazirite, Samson is supposed to abstain from wine, women, unclean food, touching dead bodies, and cutting his hair. (Except for not cutting his hair, Samson violates these strictures pretty freely in the biblical account of his life.) Also according to the biblical account, Samson is amazingly attracted to Philistine women. His wife’s a Philistine (Judges 14–15), and after judging in Israel for twenty years, he goes off and spends the night with a Philistine prostitute in Gaza (Judges 16:1).

It’s easy to see why Samson is the Philistines’ worst nightmare. He’s a charismatic hero who takes their women, burns their fields, and slaughters their men—and he can unite the Hebrews against the Philistines. So the Philistines come up with a scheme to ensnare Samson, using as bait a woman with whom he’s fallen in love: Delilah.

And it came to pass afterward, that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah
. (Judges 16:4)

Although she’s usually referred to in popular culture as a Philistine, the Bible never identifies Delilah as such. We actually know nothing about Delilah beyond her name—a name whose meaning is generally given as “weak” or “languishing,” from the Hebrew root
dal
(weak or poor). But when I began the research for my story, it seemed far more likely to me that the root of her name was the proto-Semitic
lyl
or
lil
: night. Since names in the Bible are often used to convey meaning about those who possess them, and Samson is the Son of the Sun, it makes more internal sense for Delilah to be the Daughter of Night than the Weakling.

The Philistines see a chance to render Samson harmless to them, and offer Delilah eleven hundred pieces of silver from each of the Philistine lords if she’ll learn the secret of the Hebrew hero’s great strength and reveal it to them. The amount offered is huge, a veritable king’s ransom, and a hard-cash indication of how much the Philistines fear Samson. The stage is now set for Samson’s downfall. It’s clear he trusts Delilah, because three times she asks what will render him helpless, and three times he tells her a jesting lie, and three times she tries the method he told her—and it doesn’t work. Yet Samson seems totally unaware that Delilah could be up to no good.

So naturally, I asked myself
Why?

In popular culture, Delilah is considered the ultimate wily seductress-spy, using almost inhuman cleverness to learn the secret of Samson’s strength. But, as a number of analysts of the story have pointed out, Delilah doesn’t use any extraordinary covert means to learn the secret of Samson’s strength. No, after asking three times and getting three false answers, what she does is nag Samson until he tells her the true answer:

And she said unto him, How canst thou say, I love thee, when thine heart is not with me? thou hast mocked me these three times, and hast not told me wherein thy great strength lieth. And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death; That he told her all his heart
. (Judges 16:15–17)

Realizing Samson has finally told her the truth—that cutting his hair will make him an ordinary man—Delilah waits until he’s asleep and calls for a barber. With his hair shorn, Samson is easily taken captive by the Philistines, and Delilah disappears from the pages of the Bible.

Delilah is regarded as one of history’s great villainesses, the woman who destroyed the great hero Samson. But that’s the Hebrew point of view. To the Philistines, Delilah would have been a great heroine, saving them from Samson’s rages.

To a novelist, this conflict and contradiction is irresistible. And there are so many questions the story raises. How did Samson meet Delilah? He obviously loved her—but what were her feelings for him? Did she betray him in exchange for riches? Or did she have other reasons for her actions? What did she feel when her lover was blinded and imprisoned?

Did Delilah know her own heart?

Samson “told her all his heart.” An enemy revealing too much to a sultry spy? Or a man opening his heart to the woman whom he truly loves—and who loves him?

So there you have my Delilah’s dilemma, as the Sun’s Son and Night’s Daughter dance, forever joined in our minds . . .

As eternal enemies? As eternal lovers? Or . . . as both?

With grateful thanks to those who read and commented on the various and varied drafts of this book: William Ahlbach, Ellen Bushyhead, Ginny Collins, Dawn Cox, Pam Curry, Bonnie Edghill, Rosemary Edghill, Ginger Garrett, Haley Elizabeth Garwood, Roberta Gellis, Sarah Johnson, Nicole Jordan, Michael Kourtoulou, Cynthia Miller, Myra Morales, Michelle Moran, Patricia Myers, Tamara Myers, Laura Ottinger, Laura Pilkington, Diane and Dr. Maurice Rawlings, Niloufer Reifler, Marge Root, Virginia Saunders, Dora Schisler, Ron and Jenny Stone, Gloria Edghill Wenk. (My sister Bonnie and my friend Dora get bonus points for promptly pointing out that lions don’t purr. In case you care, the largest cat that purrs is the cheetah. And Diane—thanks for all the extra Philistines!)

As always, the St. Martin’s crew is wonderful, with special thanks to my editor, Nichole Argyres, and her assistant, Kylah McNeill. Ditto to my agent, Anna Ghosh, as well as to my copy editor, Susan M. S. Brown, and to Steve Balyeat, creator of gorgeous Web sites.

This list wouldn’t be complete without adding the outrageously great Cecil B. DeMille, whose 1949
Samson and Delilah
, in glorious Technicolor, is one of the all-time wonderful biblical epics, with some amazing costumes only equaled in magnificence and inaccuracy by
those worn by Lana Turner in the equally fabulous
The Prodigal
(1955).

An even greater debt is owed to my mother and father, who loved old movies almost as much as they loved books, and introduced me to both.