in detail, I suppose

If separately, maybe you don't catch a thing. But as a batch, Judg16-18 runs together like a Tarantino film, little details linking disparate bits into a concrete theme. Thoughts incoherent right now, so running diary:

* Deserves its own musing at some point, but the contrast twixt Samson strong (muscles) and Samson weak (for bad women) is high irony
* Seriously, how sound a sleeper are you if you don't awake to knives on your scalp? What, you think Delilah's just stroking your locks? Some part of me believes Samson was sick of it all and just let it happen.
* Love the phrase "his soul was annoyed to death". That, I understand (not from a nagging wife, but the real world and nagging annoyances).
* Again, for another time "he did not know that the Lord had departed from him". So appropos to, well everybody.
* The 1100 silver in 17 -- has to be same as the 1100 in 16, right? Has to be. Seriously, he stole it from his mother?!
* The motherthief's mom is a thief herself. She commits the 1100 to a graven image and instead only takes 200 out and stashes the other 900. Runs in the family...
* Micah and the priest are both looking out for themselves while at the same time trying to please God -- but in their own sort of rationalized ways that reveal their lack of knowledge of God and what He wants. Symbolic of whole world, these two.

Like a Tarantino flick gone holy.