데릴라의 혀의 공격과 삼손의 언어 회복

Abstract

This article aims to analyze how Samson's language, which had fallen due to the temptation of Dalila is recovered by her next verbal attack that was made when he met her again in jail. Samson's tragedy is caused by his being overcome by Dalila's entreaty, that is, her powerful language. In his first verbal fighting against her he handed over his "fort of silence" to her powerlessly. Her language made him sin against God by divulging his secret with God. His language lost power and lacked the ability to discern between the true and the false. He showed a shortage of spiritual insight which made it possible for him to distinguish what he heard and what it really meant. His inner blindness before his total physical blindness led him not to acknowledge what the real intention of the speaker was. He was cheated by the surface meaning the speaker conveyed with the sound of a word and could not know the real meaning that it intended to convey. His second meeting with her, however, gives him the opportunity to recover his fallen language. Her goal of visiting him is to ensnare his soul and take him in her control again. She tries to persuade him to accept her suggestion of freeing him out of the prison and living with her peacefully for the rest of his life in his home town. But he shows an active and strong attitude towards her. His responses are more than say "no". They display his progress in the awareness of the role and meaning of the complicated language. Her language acts as an impetus to give his powerless language an energetic power. As a result his language becomes stronger than before and he is equipped with sufficient spiritual power to see clearly the difference between what is heard and what is really meant. He can no longer be deluded by the literal meaning which the utterance of the speaker conveys first. The suffering and imprisonment which he has experienced as a result of his sin have led him from self-centeredness to God-centeredness. They do more than anything else to recover his fallen language. Dalila's verbal attack plays an especially important role in making his powerless language a very powerful tool which is ready to be an instrument or an agent that performs God's providence for men. Her verbal attack against him transforms his thinking and attitude towards language so that his language eventually may get back what is lost because of his fall.