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Samson at Zorah

Judges 13–16

A strong man battles the enemy without and within

See page 317 for visitor information.

Where Are We?

We are standing on top of Tel Bet Shemesh, which looks out on the scene of the Samson stories. The ancient city, an area comprising seven acres on the hilltop, sat at the crossroads of three cultures: Philistine, Canaanite, and Israelite. Named for the Canaanite sun god, it was home to the Israelites when the ark of the covenant, captured by the Philistines in battle, was returned to them (check out the full story in 1 Samuel 6). Archaeological excavations from the period of Judges indicate a large village with Canaanite-style architecture and pottery. The animal bones found here suggest the inhabitants did not eat pork, a food eschewed by both Canaanites and Israelites. Neighborly relations seem to have been cordial.

During the tenth–eighth centuries BCE Bet Shemesh expanded into a large administrative center with complex fortifications, an iron workshop, and an impressive underground reservoir hewn from the rock. The Israelite city was ultimately destroyed by the Assyrians in 701 BCE. The reservoir was eventually blocked with 150 tons of landfill to prevent Judaeans from returning to resettle the city. Bet Shemesh ultimately lost its prominence; it is mentioned once in the Talmudic literature as a very small town (j. Ta‘anit 4).

Fig. 5. Tel Bet Shemesh

Remains of a fifth-century CE Byzantine monastery are visible here.

Setting the Scene

Behind you, to the east of the tel, is the modern city of Bet Shemesh. Straight ahead, westward, is Yishi, a moshav founded by Yemenite immigrants in 1950. To the right, northwest, is Kibbutz Zorah, named for the biblical town of Zorah, which was located nearby. You passed Eshtaol as you came here on Route 38, and Timnah, also not visible from here, would have been located several miles northwest of Bet Shemesh. All these towns are mentioned in the Samson stories.

The Context

The Samson cycle of stories in Judges 13–16 takes place on the home turf of Israel’s most formidable enemy, the Philistines. The tribe of Dan, Samson’s tribe, set out to claim its inheritance in the area between the foothills of Judaea and the coastal plain, a rich swath of agricultural land controlling an important segment of the ancient trade route. However, this area had already been claimed by an invader arriving in ancient Canaan from the west, about the same time the children of Israel were arriving from the east and settling in the promised land. The Philistines were one of the Sea Peoples who left their homelands in the Aegean Sea following a violent upheaval at the beginning of the twelfth century BCE. They arrived in the land of Israel from the sea, violently displacing the local Canaanites who lived there and taking control of the coastal plain and inner lowlands.

The Philistines are portrayed in the Bible as strong and organized, but they are repeatedly referred to as “uncircumcised,” evidently their most distinguishing characteristic in a region where Israelites, many Canaanite peoples, and Egyptians practiced circumcision. This ethnic and cultural marker set them apart from the locals and the readers who identified with them. Today “Philistine” is a byword for a person lacking in culture and indifferent to aesthetic values (regardless of what’s under his overalls). This misguided stereotype is a minor victory for the authors of the Bible, who clearly wished us to remember the Philistines in a negative light.

However, the archaeological evidence teaches us that the Philistines were a highly sophisticated society. The technological innovations they brought with them to Canaan deeply enriched the local culture and sparked a long-lasting developmental trend in the eastern Mediterranean. The Sea Peoples invented the prototype of the ship widely used for commerce in the region for hundreds of years, as well as important innovations such as advanced rigging, the crow’s nest, and the composite anchor. Their round-bottomed jars safely fitted into round holes in the hold enabled the safe transport of liquids such as wine and oil over the high seas, and their introduction of square-cut building stones became a standard of local architecture. They had a unique style of pottery and a well-organized administrative system.

Perhaps most importantly the Philistines held a distinct advantage over the tribes of Israel in two realms: military prowess and metallurgy. The Israelite army was made up of volunteers, often reluctant tribesmen who had to be convinced to take up arms. The Philistine army was well organized, consisting of multitudes of conscripted troops ready to operate on very short notice. They took control of the fertile coastal plain and the valleys of the lowlands, threatening to move eastward into the Israelite enclaves.

The second significant advantage of the Philistines over the Israelites was their monopoly of metal technology and raw materials. The seafaring Philistines were able to access the international markets for tin and copper, the two components of bronze. Tin was unavailable at this time in ancient Israel. They also arrived in Canaan already equipped with the technology and the means to transform iron into steel, enabling them to outfit their army with swords, spears, and fittings for chariots. (For an abbreviated catalog of some of these items, read the description of Goliath as he goes out to battle in 1 Sam. 17:4–7.) The Philistines ensured that the Israelites would remain militarily inferior by preventing their access to bronze and iron. They allowed their Israelite neighbors to patronize Philistine blacksmiths in order to service their agricultural implements (1 Sam. 13:19–22), but the Israelites had no means of producing or procuring bronze and iron weapons, putting them at a distinct disadvantage vis-à-vis their Philistine adversaries.

Judges 13

¹The Israelites again did what was offensive to the LORD, and the LORD delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.

²There was a certain man from Zorah, of the stock of Dan, whose name was Manoah. His wife was barren and had borne no children. ³An angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her, “You are barren and have borne no children; but you shall conceive and bear a son. ⁴Now be careful not to drink wine or other intoxicant, or to eat anything unclean. ⁵For you are going to conceive and bear a son; let no razor touch his head, for the boy is to be a nazirite to God from the womb on. He shall be the first to deliver Israel from the Philistines.”

⁶The woman went and told her husband, “A man of God came to me; he looked like an angel of God, very frightening. I did not ask him where he was from, nor did he tell me his name. ⁷He said to me, ‘You are going to conceive and bear a son. Drink no wine or other intoxicant, and eat nothing unclean, for the boy is to be a nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death!’”

⁸Manoah pleaded with the LORD. “Oh, my Lord!” he said, “please let the man of God that You sent come to us again, and let him instruct us how to act with the child that is to be born.” ⁹God heeded Manoah’s plea, and the angel of God came to the woman again. She was sitting in the field and her husband Manoah was not with her. ¹⁰The woman ran in haste to tell her husband. She said to him, “The man who came to me before has just appeared to me.” ¹¹Manoah promptly followed his wife. He came to the man and asked him: “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?” “Yes,” he answered. ¹²Then Manoah said, “May your words soon come true! What rules shall be observed for the boy?” ¹³The angel of the LORD said to Manoah, “The woman must abstain from all the things against which I warned her. ¹⁴She must not eat anything that comes from the grapevine, or drink wine or other intoxicant, or eat anything unclean. She must observe all that I commanded her.”

¹⁵Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, “Let us detain you and prepare a kid for you.” ¹⁶But the angel of the LORD said to Manoah, “If you detain me, I shall not eat your food; and if you present a burnt offering, offer it to LORD.”—For Manoah did not know that he was an angel of the LORD. ¹⁷So Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, “What is your name? We should like to honor you when your words come true.” ¹⁸The angel said to him, “You must not ask for my name; it is unknowable!”

¹⁹Manoah took the kid and the meal offering and offered them up on the rock to the LORD; and a marvelous thing happened while Manoah and his wife looked on. ²⁰As the flames leaped up from the altar toward the sky, the angel of the LORD ascended in the flames of the altar, while Manoah and his wife looked on; and they flung themselves on their faces to the ground.—²¹The angel of the LORD never appeared again to Manoah and his wife.—Manoah then realized that it had been an angel of the LORD. ²²And Manoah said to his wife, “We shall surely die, for we have seen a divine being.” ²³But his wife said to him, “Had the LORD meant to take our lives, He would not have accepted a burnt offering and meal offering from us, nor let us see all these things; and He would not have made such an announcement to us.”

²⁴The woman bore a son, and she named him Samson. The boy grew up, and the LORD blessed him. ²⁵The spirit of the LORD first moved him in the encampment of Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.

14

¹Once Samson went down to Timnah; and while in Timnah, he noticed a girl among the Philistine women. ²On his return, he told his father and mother, “I noticed one of the Philistine women in Timnah; please get her for me as a wife.” ³His father and mother said to him, “Is there no one among the daughters of your own kinsmen and among all our people, that you must go and take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?” But Samson answered his father, “Get me that one, for she is the one that pleases me.” ⁴His father and mother did not realize that this was the LORD’s doing: He was seeking a pretext against the Philistines, for the Philistines were ruling over Israel at that time. ⁵So Samson and his father and mother went down to Timnah.

When he came to the vineyards of Timnah [for the first time], a full-grown lion came roaring at him. ⁶The spirit of the LORD gripped him, and he tore him asunder with his bare hands as one might tear a kid asunder; but he did not tell his father and mother what he had done. ⁷Then he went down and spoke to the woman, and she pleased Samson.

⁸Returning the following year to marry her, he turned aside to look at the remains of the lion; and in the lion’s skeleton he found a swarm of bees, and honey. ⁹He scooped it into his palms and ate it as he went along. When he rejoined his father and mother, he gave them some and they ate it; but he did not tell them that he had scooped the honey out of a lion’s skeleton.

¹⁰So his father came down to the woman, and Samson made a feast there, as young men used to do. ¹¹When they saw him, they designated thirty companions to be with him. ¹²Then Samson said to them, “Let me propound a riddle to you. If you can give me the right answer during the seven days of the feast, I shall give you thirty linen tunics and thirty sets of clothing; ¹³but if you are not able to tell it to me, you must give me thirty linen tunics and thirty sets of clothing.” And they said to him, “Ask your riddle and we will listen.” ¹⁴So he said to them:

“Out of the eater came something to eat,

Out of the strong came something sweet.”

For three days they could not answer the riddle.

¹⁵On the seventh day, they said to Samson’s wife, “Coax your husband to provide us with the answer to the riddle; else we shall put you and your father’s household to the fire; have you invited us here in order to impoverish us?” ¹⁶Then Samson’s wife harassed him with tears, and she said, “You really hate me, you don’t love me. You asked my countrymen a riddle, and you didn’t tell me the answer.” He replied, “I haven’t even told my father and mother; shall I tell you?” ¹⁷During the rest of the seven days of the feast she continued to harass him with her tears, and on the seventh day he told her, because she nagged him so. And she explained the riddle to her countrymen. ¹⁸On the seventh day, before the sunset, the townsmen said to him:

“What is sweeter than honey,

And what is stronger than a lion?”

He responded:

“Had you not plowed with my heifer,

You would not have guessed my riddle!”

¹⁹The spirit of the LORD gripped him. He went down to Ashkelon and killed thirty of its men. He stripped them and gave the sets of clothing to those who had answered the riddle. And he left in a rage for his father’s house.

²⁰Samson’s wife then married one of those who had been his wedding companions.

15

¹Some time later, in the season of the wheat harvest, Samson came to visit his wife, bringing a kid as a gift. He said, “Let me go into the chamber to my wife.” But her father would not let him go in. ²“I was sure,” said her father, “that you had taken a dislike to her, so I gave her to your wedding companion. But her younger sister is more beautiful than she; let her become your wife instead.” ³Thereupon Samson declared, “Now the Philistines can have no claim against me for the harm I shall do them.”

⁴Samson went and caught three hundred foxes. He took torches and, turning [the foxes] tail to tail, he placed a torch between each pair of tails. ⁵He lit the torches and turned [the foxes] loose among the standing grain of the Philistines, setting fire to stacked grain, standing grain, vineyards, [and] olive trees.

⁶The Philistines asked, “Who did this?” And they were told, “It was Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, who took Samson’s wife and gave her to his wedding companion.” Thereupon the Philistines came up and put her and her father to the fire. ⁷Samson said to them, “If that is how you act, I will not rest until I have taken revenge on you.” ⁸He gave them a sound and thorough thrashing. Then he went down and stayed in the cave of the rock of Etam.

⁹The Philistines came up, pitched camp in Judah and spread out over Lehi. ¹⁰The men of Judah asked, “Why have you come up against us?” They answered, “We have come to take Samson prisoner, and to do to him as he did to us.” ¹¹Thereupon three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave of the rock of Etam, and they said to Samson, “You knew that the Philistines rule over us; why have you done this to us?” He replied, “As they did to me, so I did to them.” ¹²“We have come down,” they told him, “to take you prisoner and to hand you over to the Philistines.” “But swear to me,” said Samson to them, “that you yourselves will not attack me.” ¹³“We won’t,” they replied. “We will only take you prisoner and hand you over to them; we will not slay you.” So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.

¹⁴When he reached Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. Thereupon the spirit of the LORD gripped him, and the ropes on his arms became like flax that catches fire; the bonds melted off his hands. ¹⁵He came upon a fresh jawbone of an ass and he picked it up; and with it he killed a thousand men. ¹⁶Then Samson said:

“With the jaw of an ass,

Mass upon mass!

With the jaw of an ass

I have slain a thousand men.”

¹⁷As he finished speaking, he threw the jawbone away; hence that place was called Ramath-lehi.

¹⁸He was very thirsty and he called to the LORD, “You Yourself have granted this great victory through Your servant; and must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” ¹⁹So God split open the hollow which is at Lehi, and the water gushed out of it; he drank, regained his strength, and revived. That is why it is called to this day “En-hakkore of Lehi.”

²⁰He led Israel in the days of the Philistines for twenty years.

16

¹Once Samson went to Gaza; there he met a whore and slept with her. ²The Gazites [learned] that Samson had come there, so they gathered and lay in ambush for him in the town gate the whole night; and all night long they kept whispering to each other, “When daylight comes, we’ll kill him.” ³But Samson lay in bed only till midnight. At midnight he got up, grasped the doors of the town gate together with the two gateposts, and pulled them out along with the bar. He placed them on his shoulders and carried them off to the top of the hill that is near Hebron.

⁴After that, he fell in love with a woman in the Wadi Sorek, named Delilah. ⁵The lords of the Philistines went up to her and said, “Coax him and find out what makes him so strong, and how we can overpower him, tie him up, and make him helpless; and we’ll each give you eleven hundred shekels of silver.”

⁶So Delilah said to Samson, “Tell me, what makes you so strong? And how could you be tied up and made helpless?” ⁷Samson replied, “If I were to be tied with seven fresh tendons that had not been dried, I should become as weak as an ordinary man.” ⁸So the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven fresh tendons that had not been dried. She bound him with them, ⁹while an ambush was waiting in her room. Then she called out to him, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!” Whereat he pulled the tendons apart, as a strand of tow comes apart at the touch of fire. So the secret of his strength remained unknown.

¹⁰Then Delilah said to Samson, “Oh, you deceived me; you lied to me! Do tell me now how you could be tied up.” ¹¹He said, “If I were to be bound with new ropes that had never been used, I would become as weak as an ordinary man.” ¹²So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them, while an ambush was waiting in a room. And she cried, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!” But he tore them off his arms like a thread. ¹³Then Delilah said to Samson, “You have been deceiving me all along; you have been lying to me! Tell me, how could you be tied up?” He answered her, “If you weave seven locks of my head into the web.” ¹⁴And she pinned it with a peg and cried to him, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!” Awaking from his sleep, he pulled out the peg, the loom, and the web.

¹⁵Then she said to him, “How can you say you love me, when you don’t confide in me? This makes three times that you’ve deceived me and haven’t told me what makes you so strong.” ¹⁶Finally, after she had nagged him and pressed him constantly, he was wearied to death ¹⁷and he confided everything to her. He said to her, “No razor has ever touched my head, for I have been a nazirite to God since I was in my mother’s womb. If my hair were cut, my strength would leave me and I should become as weak as an ordinary man.”

¹⁸Sensing that he had confided everything to her, Delilah sent for the lords of the Philistines, with this message: “Come up once more, for he has confided everything to me.” And the lords of the Philistines came up and brought the money with them. ¹⁹She lulled him to sleep on her lap. Then she called in a man, and she had him cut off the seven locks of his head; thus she weakened him and made him helpless: his strength slipped away from him. ²⁰She cried, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!” And he awoke from his sleep, thinking he would break loose and shake himself free as he had the other times. For he did not know that the LORD had departed from him. ²¹The Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They brought him down to Gaza and shackled him in bronze fetters, and he became a mill slave in the prison. ²²After his hair was cut off, it began to grow back.

²³Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon and to make merry. They chanted,

“Our god has delivered into our hands

Our enemy Samson.”

²⁴When the people saw him, they sang praises to their god, chanting,

“Our god has delivered into our hands

The enemy who devastated our land,

And who slew so many of us.”

²⁵As their spirits rose, they said, “Call Samson here and let him dance for us.” Samson was fetched from the prison, and he danced for them. Then they put him between the pillars. ²⁶And Samson said to the boy who was leading him by the hand, “Let go of me and let me feel the pillars that the temple rests upon, that I may lean on them.” ²⁷Now the temple was full of men and women; all the lords of the Philistines were there, and there were some three thousand men and women on the roof watching Samson dance. ²⁸Then Samson called to the LORD, “O Lord GOD! Please remember me, and give me strength just this once, O God, to take revenge of the Philistines, if only for one of my two eyes.” ²⁹He embraced the two middle pillars that the temple rested upon, one with his right arm and one with his left, and leaned against them; ³⁰Samson cried, “Let me die with the Philistines!” and he pulled with all his might. The temple came crashing down on the lords and on all the people in it. Those who were slain by him as he died outnumbered those who had been slain by him when he lived.

³¹His brothers and all his father’s household came down and carried him up and buried him in the tomb of his father Manoah, between Zorah and Eshtaol. He had led Israel for twenty years.

The Birth of Samson

Judges 13 begins with the standard opener we have come to expect in the stories of the settlement period in the book of Judges: the undisciplined Israelites had strayed from the path of faith yet again, and God had punished them by delivering them into the hands of the enemy. This time it was the Philistines, and the Israelite tribes of Dan and Judah had suffered under them for forty years. Presumably, God was ready to give them a break and dispatched an angel to inform the barren wife of Manoah the Danite that she would conceive a son. This child would be dedicated to the Lord, and “he shall be the first to deliver Israel from the Philistines” (13:5).

Right away we know this story is not going to end well. The phrase “he shall be the first” implies that the liberation of Israel from the Philistines will be a long, tortuous process that will not be completed by Samson (but eventually by David). He will have impressive successes, but he will not vanquish the enemy; rather, they will vanquish him. The people of Israel have not yet proven their commitment to the covenant they made with God. Therefore, they are not deserving of complete deliverance. Instead, they get a problematic hero. This is a setup.

For starters Samson’s pedigree is somewhat questionable. His mother is never mentioned by name, remaining largely anonymous throughout the story. His father, Manoah, is depicted as a doofus; he is not privy to the announcement of Samson’s conception and is left trailing after his wife in search of information from the messenger angel (Judg.13:11). Much has been written in the rabbinic literature about his bumbling nature and dubious intelligence. Not the sharpest tool in the shed. Curiously, an intimate union between Manoah and his wife is never reported. In fact, some commentators have suggested that Manoah’s absence when the angel spoke to his wife the first time is a hint to the identity of Samson’s real father. She was out there by herself in a field when the angel appeared, no witnesses. Who knows what really happened, and anyway, would you blame her?

Young Samson was blessed by God and gradually grew aware of his special gifts. As a kind of BamBam Flintstone, innocent and naive, he no doubt surprised those around him and himself with his feats of superhuman strength. Although he may have been frightened by the realization that he was a freak of nature, perhaps he took comfort in knowing he was destined for great things. Then he hit puberty, and all hell broke loose.

Samson’s Women

Samson the hero struggled to build normative relationships with women. When we next meet him, he is hopelessly infatuated with a Philistine girl he had caught sight of on a jaunt to Timnah, a city of the uncircumcised. He demanded that his parents arrange a marriage to her at once, and they responded with that timeless “Jewish” guilt trip: couldn’t you find someone from the tribe to marry? Unbeknown to all of them, the hand of God was behind Samson’s hots for the Philistine maiden (Judg. 14:4), but it seems that even in ancient Israel gentile girls wielded a magnetic power over men of the Mosaic faith. What was it about them? Did they have cute, upturned noses? Narrow hips? Blonde highlights from frolics in the crow’s nest? Opposite these bewitching women, Samson couldn’t think straight.

The first showdown came at the wedding when Samson’s Philistine guests at the bachelor party were frustratingly stumped by his riddle. Clearly unwilling to concede gentlemanly defeat, they threatened to ice the bride and her family if she didn’t come up with the answer. An intelligent woman would have appealed rationally to her new husband: “Darling, the townies’ honor is at stake. If you make them look bad, they will kill me. Please find a way to let them win and boost their self-esteem so that you and I can conclude the celebrations and live together happily ever after.”

However, the Philistine bride (who, interestingly, also remained nameless) instead chose the newlywed tack: she accused Samson of withholding information because he didn’t really love her. She then proceeded to lock herself in the equivalent of the bathroom and to cry for the entire weeklong wedding party. She nagged her new husband so relentlessly that he finally gave in and revealed the answer to the riddle. Not only did Samson go home furious after being bested by the wedding guests, but the reader is left wondering how the hero of Israel gave in to a whining, vapid Philistine “princess.” He vented his anger by slaughtering thirty Philistines in Ashkelon. As the Samson story unfolds, every failed relationship with a Philistine girl will be followed by an act of terrorism.

After three experiences with Philistine women, hundreds of dead Philistines, and untold damage caused by Samson, the story climaxes with Delilah the infamous temptress. Her origins are never mentioned; she may have been a Judaean girl (according to the rabbinic commentators her Hebrew name means “she who weakened”) or the ultimate shiksa. She is the only woman in Samson’s life whose name is revealed to us, and we are told that Samson loved her, although she was unaware of his nazarite vows and the significance of his long hair. We never learn whether she loved him, but if she was willing to entrap him in exchange for money it’s possible that his love for her was unrequited. Samson must have known this, but he played along at her game, coyly offering false explanations for the secret of his strength. She tied him up every which way and made him jump while her handlers waited for results. He sent her running for fresh thongs, new ropes, pins with a loom—anything to keep her busy and out of reach of his secret. But Delilah too pulled the emotional card. “How can you say you love me, when you don’t confide in me?”(16:15). And he fell for it. Samson, the great Jewish hero, was humiliatingly defeated because he couldn’t resist the power of a nagging girlfriend. He succumbed knowing full well that the consequences would be horrendous, preferring death to her relentless hectoring.

An Imperfect Hero

The most vexing question about these stories is the glaring contradiction between Samson’s designation as a superhero without an army and his potential to defeat the Philistines, and his undoing to a very tragic end thanks to his great weakness in the face of a woman. Despite the unique circumstances of his birth and God’s blessing over him, Samson’s destiny was ultimately to be defeated by his own character flaws. How could God have chosen such a problematic individual to be the redeemer of Israel? What was God thinking when he devised this bizarre strategy to deliver his people?

If we reread the verses about Samson’s birth story and the prediction that he would begin the conquest of the Philistines, we can’t say we weren’t warned that the Philistines would prevail over him. Samson was not the ideal hero, but he was probably the best the Israelites had to offer in the search for leadership potential. The fact that he couldn’t deliver the goods was indicative of the sorry state the people of Israel had reached at this point. Scattered, incohesive, in constant violation of the special covenant they had taken on, the tribes of Israel were a mess. God, in his mercy, tried to help out, and Samson was the best material he had to work with. He was a reflection of the rut into which the Israelites had fallen and were now stuck, spinning their wheels wildly in an attempt to extricate themselves. In revealing the disappointing results of Samson’s gifts, the book of Judges is leading us toward an inevitable conclusion: the answer to Israel’s tribulations is not charismatic chieftains but rather a stable monarchy.

So, should we urge our kids to eat their spinach so they can be strong like Samson? The rabbinic sages concluded that Samson was not a great role model, insisting that physical strength is meaningless as long as it is not matched by strong character and integrity. The Mishna declares, “Who is strong? He who can control his desire”(Avot iv,1), thus effectively framing Samson in a negative light.

Yet, Samson’s might has left an indelible impression nonetheless. The Danite strongman is a bona fide brand name in modern Israel; the name “Samson” has been adopted by a diverse collection of groups such as units of the Israel Defense Forces, special force squads of the police, and a chain of body-building gyms. With the birth of the Zionist movement, the idea of the new Jew—physically strong, independent, and resolute—was nourished by the Samson character, who, rediscovered and reinvented, symbolized strength, self-reliance, and victory in his modern Zionist remaking.