Then Samson called to the LORD and said, "O Lord GOD, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be avenged upon the Philistines for one of my two eyes." And Samson grasped the two middle pillars upon which the house rested, and he leaned his weight upon them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other. And Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines." Then he bowed with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people that were in it. So the dead whom he slew at his death were more than those whom he had slain during his life.
A suicide bomber of a kind? Or a glorious martyr?
Augustine for his part writes that it was an exception ordered by God:
When God orders, and shows without ambiguity that he orders. no one will bring an accusation against obedience. Who will lay a charge against a loyal compliance?
A convenient case of the 'teleological suspension of the ethical', a la Abraham and Isaac?
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Or perhaps as one commentator has it, it is still part of the 'canaanisation of Israel'. At that point, nothing that Samson does is held up as glorious or ethical - but rather God accompishing his purposes despite the selfish (note: he is praying for his own vengeance, not the Lord's) orientation of Samson.
AB (Ruth's husband) probably has a better reading - he taught on it earlier this year...
Well Hebrews gives Samson a great rap!
I am a bit wary of the teleological suspension of the ethical. Probably at least partly because I didn't really understand parts of Fear and Trembling. However, my understanding is that ethical in Kirkegaard's context means more along the lines of conventional morality etc.
The key thing I loved about his exposition of Abraham and Isaac is that Abraham trusts precisely that he will not have to kill Isaac ("the Lord will provide") or that Isaac won't remain dead. In other words, he still trusts in God's promises that through the child of the promise all nations will be blessed. So is that the same as Samson??
In a rather woolly fashion I am inclined to explain some of the OT in terms of progressive revelation. That is probably full of holes though.
Well: it must be said that in Judges, the Philistines are identified as a grossly idolatrous and anti-Yhwh mob. Which is to say, killing Philistines (which Samson seems very good at) is partly a divine judgment. But here he adds self-murder, too... Seemingly here is a suicide condoned!
Is God opposed to one sacrificing his life for the Good?
No... but, a suicide?
Not obvious to me that either "suicide" or "suicide bombing" are useful categories for understanding the Samson-brings-down-the-temple story.
In war stories the idea of "taking as many of them with you as possible" is familiar, and we don't usually reach for suicide as a term to describe it: I think this is a matter of context which we tend to accept, even if we don't have a fully worked-out theory of it.
As for suicide bombing, I suppose the characteristic of being directed at non-combatants (or at people who are not at that point engaged in combat) is met. But aren't our problems with it as much to do with it being a weapon used by non-state groups: that it breaks the state's monopoly on violence? This isn't a distinction that can usefully be applied to the period of the judges ...
kamikaze then?
I think perhaps you are right: we look at the kamikazes with a kind of admiring dread, but not with the same sort of horror as the london train bombers...
Certainly also Samson wasn't acting for an ideology so much as for a nation, too...
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