what he did to the Philistines

Today we read from Judges 15:1-16:31 in the One Year Bible. We have gotten to the stories about Samson, which is always a favorite. Today Samson gets tricked by the wily Philistines, and he says, "This time I cannot be blamed for everything I am going to do to you Philistines," and ties torches to some foxes to destroy their harvest.

An interesting thing I learned in my Viking lit class is that the Philistines MIGHT not have been quite as big as we think they were. The people of the middle east, it turns out, were actually pretty short. So when they saw the Philistines (and some historians think the Philistines might have been related to the Vikings, who did travel all over the world by waterways), they thought they were huge, like giants, even though by today's standards they might have been just a little taller than average. But, you say, we know how many cubits they were! The Bible gives us measurements for Goliath, and we know he was so many cubits tall! Yes, but cubits were based on the length of a man's arm from his elbow to the end of his middle finger. If he was a small man, that length might have been shorter than we might think today.

I noticed another interesting correlation between today's reading and Viking lit. Samson is very similar to the heroes in Viking literature: a very strong and independent man who fights off man foes but is tricked by a female. This theme runs through Viking literature from beginning to end, and it makes one wonder if one tradition might have borrowed from the other. Not to say that Samson wasn't a real man who really did face the Philistines. But the details might have been influenced from one story to the other.

In any case, the take home lesson from Samson's story is to follow what God tells us and to resist temptation. Even in the hero story of Samson, he ends up blind and dead at the end because he gives in to his temptation.

God, thanks for teaching us to follow You.