Commentaire de citation sur Les Juges 16:27

DAN SHALL JUDGE ‘YADIN’ HIS PEOPLE. This has the same meaning as in the verse, For the Eternal ‘yadin’ His people,¹⁷⁷Deuteronomy 32:36. which Onkelos translates as, “For the Eternal will judge the judgment of His people,”¹⁷⁸Here also, the sense of the verse is: “Dan will judge the judgment of his people.” just as in the expressions: Be thou my judge, O G-d, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation;¹⁷⁹Psalms 43:1. The cause of the widow.¹⁸⁰Isaiah 1:23. The reference should rather be to Verse 17 there: rivu almanah (plead for the widow), which means rivu riv almanah (plead the plea of the widow). Here, likewise, the sense of the verse is: “Dan will judge the judgment of his people.” (T’chelet Mordechai. See my Hebrew commentary, p. 270, Note 39.) The verse is thus stating that Dan will avenge the cause of his people, all the tribes of Israel, as one.¹⁸¹As explained further in the text, it is clear that Ramban is transposing the words of the verse and interpreting it in the following way: “Dan will judge his people,” that is, Samson, a descendant of the tribe of Dan, will avenge the cause of his people from the hands of the Philistines. And who are “his people?” All “the tribes of Israel.” And how will that help affect them? “As one,” that is, as one whole nation, for when, at the time of Samson’s death, the Philistines’ temple collapsed, all the lords of the Philistines (Judges 16:27) died, and thus all “the tribes of Israel as one” were delivered from their hands. And the purport of it is as follows: The Philistines wronged all Israel many times. In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath¹⁸²Judges 3:31. they began their oppression of Israel, and in the days of Jephthah it is written, And He gave them over into the hand of the Philistines,¹⁸³Ibid., 10:7. and after the days of Abdon the son of Hillel,¹⁸⁴Ibid., 12:13. it is also written, And the Eternal delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.¹⁸⁵Ibid., 13:1. There was none among the Judges who subdued them or had any victory at all over them. Now although it is written concerning Shamgar, And he smote the Philistines six hundred men with an ox-goad,¹⁸²Judges 3:31. this was not “vengeance,” relatively speaking, as it was not a great slaughter.¹⁸⁶II Chronicles 13:17. This is why it is written concerning Samson, And he shall begin to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines,¹⁸⁷Judges 13:5. and he avenged the cause of Israel from them for he slew many people and killed all the lords of the Philistines.¹⁸⁸See ibid., 16:27 and 30. Scripture mentions yadin (he will judge), since this avenger was a judge, not a king. It is possible that this interpretation coincides with the opinion of Onkelos, who translated: “In his days his people will be delivered.”¹⁸⁹Thus it is clear that Onkelos also explained the word yadin as meaning “will avenge.” See also my Hebrew commentary, p. 270.
It is possible that the expression, as one of the tribes of Israel, means “as the outstanding one of the tribes,” namely, Judah, concerning whom it is said, Thy hand shall be on the neck of thine enemies,¹⁹⁰Above, Verse 8. thus implying that this one also¹⁹¹The judge from the tribe of Dan, namely, Samson. will be victorious over his enemies and subdue them.

יהי דן, “Dan will be, etc.” There are several reasons why Yaakov in his blessing compares Dan to a serpent, a snake. The first one is that Samson, unlike others before or after him, did not command armies in his battles against the enemy of his people. He acted totally alone, just like a snake which attacks from an ambush, coming out of its lair. Secondly, just like a snake receives some mysterious whisper which causes it to act aggressively, so Samson would respond to the whisperings of Delilah. This is the deeper meaning of Judges 16, 16-17: “Finally, after she had nagged him and pressed him constantly, he was wearied to death and he confided everything to her. He said to her: ‘no razor has ever touched my head; for I have been a Nazirite to G’d since I was in my mother’s womb. If my hair were cut, my strength would leave me and I should become as an ordinary man.’” Furthermore, just as a snake is also known as שרף due to its venom which burns, so Samson burned down the fields of the Philistines when the corn in them was close to being harvested. (Compare Judges 15,5). Also, just as the snake attacks man in his heel, at is lowest point, seeing the first serpent had been condemned to crawl on its belly, and G’d had told it that the way it would attack man would be by biting man’s heel (Genesis 3,14), so Samson is described as נוקב עקבי סוס “attacking the heel of a horse,” i.e. bringing down the pillars of the temple of the Philistines (compare Judges 16,29). He killed 3,000 Philistines who were sitting on the roof of that temple (Judges 16,27). The reason Samson’s exploits are described here as causing “the rider to fall backwards,” is that when a snake bites the heel of a horse, the horse rears upwards with its front legs throwing its rider backwards. Just as the snake kills without the use of a sword, so Samson killed without conventional arms as mentioned in Judges 16, 30: “those who were slain by him (when he made the pillars of their temple collapse) outnumbered those whom he had killed while he was alive.”
Bereshit Rabbah 99,11 relates that just as a serpent is vengeful so Samson was vengeful. This is based on Judges 16,28: “O, Lord give me strength once more to take revenge of the Philistines, if only for one of my two eyes.” Thus far the Midrash.

THAT BITETH THE HORSE’s HEEL.¹⁹²Verse 17 here: Dan shall be a serpent by the way, a ‘sh’phiphon’ on the path, that biteth the horse in the heels, so that his rider falleth backward. This alludes to the two pillars¹⁹⁶Judges 16:29. upon which the house of Dagan, the Philistine god, rested, whereas the three thousand people who were upon its roof¹⁹⁷Ibid., Verse 27. are “the rider that falleth backward,”¹⁹⁸See Note 192. for when the snake bites the horse’s heels, the horse lifts its head and his forefeet, causing the rider to fall backward.