Victim, Victor, or Villain? The Unfinalizability of Delilah

Abstract

Abstract Delilah is one of the more enigmatic characters in the Hebrew Scriptures. She is marked by a series of ambiguities in the text that pose a host of unanswered questions. Is she a Philistine, an Israelite, or something else? What exactly does her name mean and what is the nature of her relationship to Samson? And why does she help the Philistines capture Israel’s notorious strongman? Despite all this ambiguity, much of her reception history is rigidly consistent. The dominant trend is the portrayal of Delilah as the reviled seductress who bedevils Samson. This interpretation was also promulgated among ancient readers of the story such as Josephus and Pseudo-Philo, who identify Delilah not only as a prostitute and a Philistine, but as the wife of Samson. These types of interpretive gap-filling serve as early exemplars of a long and nearly unwavering reception history in which Delilah is unequivocally the villain. If there is any other interpretive potential lying dormant in the text, then it is rarely actualized. Building upon the work of contemporary feminist and womanist scholars, I intend to subvert that trend by arguing that Delilah can and should be read in a variety ways due to the intentional ambiguity employed by the biblical author. Furthermore, by drawing upon the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, I will identify the “unfinalizability” of Delilah’s character and demonstrate how she simultaneously embodies the role of victim, victor, and villain.