Eve and Delilah

          What is with these ladies?
          Really though...shall we take a look at Delilah's twisted logic?        
          We shall:

The "Look, it was my fault for being weak..."

"It was a weakness in me, but incident to all our sex, curiosity, inquisitive, importune of secrets, then with like infirmity to publish them, both common female faults:" (777)

"But you probably should have expected that in the first place..."

"Nor shoulds't thou have trusted that to woman's frailty:" (783)

"I was just scared you would leave..."

"I saw thee mutable of fancy, feared lest one day thou wouldst leave me." (794)

"So your imprisonment is obviously ideal..."

"Here I should still enjoy thee day and night mine and love's prisoner," (807)

"Besides, I'm a hero! How cool is that?"

"How honorable, how glorious to entrap a common enemy, who had destroyed such numbers of our nation." (857)

"I mean, how could I say no?"

"What had I to oppose against such powerful arguments?" (862)

          Delilah has--ONE--the gall to visit Samson while he's a prisoner--TWO--claim that it was her inherent weakness and ladyness that couldn't help but hurt him, and--THREE--take it all back once she realizes Samson is still doesn't want to be with her. Who can really blame him? Wasn't this at least offense number three or four against him?

         Now I'm reconsidering the title to this post a little...I guess I'm not really hating so much on Eve as I am Delilah, but there are some similarities. 

          First of all, where was in in Paradise Lost that Satan decides to tempt Eve first because he knew that she could be more easily coerced to eat the fruit? In turn, she could more successfully convince Adam to eat it, too, because, c'mon...how could he resist? Similarly, Delilah gains the trust of Samson and gets him to share his greatest secret with her.

          Both women are largely responsible for exposing their lover's to sin/danger. Although, thankfully, both the men (hopefully Adam...I'm not completely sure) recognize where they went wrong, too. Samson does admit, "Whom have I to complain of but myself?"

          I really like Samson (although he did weirdly try to egg on the fanboy Harapha into fighting him). He seems to take full responsibility for his actions. He refused to entertain the enemy with his feats of strength, even when the messenger said things might get worse for him if he refused. No one was actually forcing him to do it though, and Samson pretty much replied with, "Over my dead body." 

        I was terribly split on writing about this, or the "justify the ways of God to man," idea, as there are sooooo many examples of that in here. Here's one: "God of our father, what is man! That thou towards him with hand so various, or might I say contrarious, temper'st thy providence through his short course, not evenly, as thou rul'st the angelic orders and inferior creatures mute, irrational and brute." (174)  But I will hopefully get to that another time.