But Samson's Hair Began to Grow Again

But Samson’s Hair Began to Grow Again
JUDGES 16:22-31

The first time I went to Israel, I took part in an exciting archaeological dig. Just next to a tennis club in the big modern city of Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean, where people started playing at 6:00 a.m. because it would be too hot to play by lunchtime, is another tell, Tel Qasile. Like the tell of Jericho but on a much smaller scale, the tell is an artificial hill accidentally constructed out of the remains of a succession of cities built one on top of another (the name Tel Aviv, “Hill of Spring,” thus suggests a combination of the old and the new). As with Jericho, we sought to discover the history of the city by digging down (with a trowel, not an earthmover) through the layers of the tell as through the layers of a cake, mapping carefully where we found anything but mud. We started doing this, too, at 6:00 a.m. because it would be too hot to dig by lunchtime. Tel Aviv is in the area originally allocated to the clan called Dan; that is the name of the local bus company. In Samson’s day it was therefore part of the area occupied by the Philistines, and Tel Qasile was a Philistine city. One of the great excitements of the year I dug there was the discovery of its sanctuary. It was not a large or impressive building, but an exciting feature of it was the discovery that its roof was supported by two central pillars (the pillars themselves would be wooden and would have rotted; what we actually found were their stone bases). A big guy could stand and brace himself against them. If he were able to bring them down, he would bring the temple down. I could stand in the middle of this sanctuary and imagine the climax of the Samson story...