Samson's Last Laugh: The S/Shq Pun in Judges 16:25-27‪.‬

Scholars are well aware of the frequent use of puns in the Bible as well as the abundance of rhetorical features in the book of Judges. (1) However, a pun embedded within the Samson story remains underappreciated. In Judges 16, Samson goes to Gaza, where he meets a promiscuous woman, Delilah. The locals plot against Samson and convince Delilah to discover and reveal the source of his strength. After quite a bit of nagging, Delilah finally learns Samson's secret, disables his power, and hands him over to the Philistines. While what happens next is frightfully shocking to a modern audience, Samson's treatment at the hand of his captors was all too common in the ancient world. (2) The Philistines gouge out his eyes, and he is forced to grind grain while in captivity. An indeterminate amount of time passes (enough for Samson's hair to begin sprouting back), and then the Philistine leaders decide to bring Samson to a grand feast at which the participants are drunk ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). At this point, almost all translations, both ancient and modern, render the next section with a variation of the following (Judg 16:25-27):